Category: Langtang

Madhu said there was no point in trying to get transport to Syabrubesi from Dunche, as it is infrequent and already full, but this was just as well as it provided the opportunity to make a new approach into the Langtang Valley, and we had the time.

As we left the town, we could see the road ahead hugging the mountain, and how it had been carved out of the rock. Some sections had buttressing and support below. Simple but impressive engineering, but how secure was it? There were no safety rails anywhere to be seen. This view was instantly recalled from earlier visits, how alarming it looked, and how you had to trust; not only the road itself, but the driver of the bus, full as it was of talkative, unmindful fourteen year olds, the grade nine students from our school.

Winter is a time when the vast northern Indian plain sends its terrible air quality seeping up onto Nepal. It joins with Kathmandu’s local pollution and continues on into the Himalayas. While the air in the early hour after sunrise appears clear enough, as soon as the sun’s rays start to slice the atmosphere the refraction of the light shows up the myriad small particles that have come all this way from the cars and factories. Nepal, which has supposedly the highest and purest mountain air in the world, is not being spared the planetary curse of polluted air.

The extent of the pollution could be seen on the weather app windy.com, which has layers showing air quality and the various pollutants – take your pick from nitrogen dioxide, PM2.5 and aerosol; then you can check the ozone reading too. So the information from satellites had been distilled into this amazing app, and allowed us to compare what we saw with our eyes with the online map confirming the air quality. Yes, there was air pollution, and it stretched all the way to the Tibetan plateau. The question was: at which point would we come out into pristine clarity on this trek?

A bittersweet experience on a trek is the knowledge that height gained is often sacrificed in height lost. Thus today we could see the long descent to the floor of the Langtang valley where the path would join the main trail. Finally in the valley was a lodge where we could have a hot cup of ginger tea, though the morning was chilly as the narrow valley was still in shade.

All day a helicopter flew up the valley and back, carrying long baskets of steel for concrete pillar construction; a disruptive, angry noise in this natural area, as many as fifteen trips. We met a group returning which had climbed Yala Peak (5500m), one of the easier trekking peaks, as they are called. They mentioned that there was plenty of snow at the top.

Lunch was at Bamboo lodge, finally in warming sunshine. It’s an area where the very rare red panda lives, eating the bamboo shoots, of course. It is threatened by loss of habitat. More prevalent were the red monkeys, who were chased off by a stone-throwing girl at the lodge. Half-grown chickens scrabbled in the dirt.

Conversation turned to the cow family in Nepal. We would see Dzo on the trail, a hybrid between yak and domestic cattle. The Dzo is male and infertile, but the female, called Dzomo is fertile. Yaks are in the cow family, but buffaloes are not, in Nepali eyes. Thus the large Hindu Newari community, may eat buffalo meat, because they don’t define the buffalo as being of the cow family. Brahmins and Chhetris may eat goat or mutton as well as chicken. Madhu recognised that the universal dal bhat (lentils and rice) lacks protein, but he mentioned that goat meat is fatty, so not so healthy.

One of the saddest animal sights in Nepal is the dumping of young bulls at roundabouts where they try to forage some sort of provender, but may end up swallowing plastic refuse. They have no economic value. They cannot be eaten, but to look after them involves the expense of providing fodder. So only the cow is venerated and protected, the bull is marginalised and excluded.

We passed the cliffs where wild bees have their honeycombs and where bee collectors make a perilous descent to extract the highly valued and reputedly psychotropic melliferous product. It was not long before we arrived in Lama Hotel, the usual first day stop on the Langtang trail. Earlier in the winter there had been a fair bit of snow, particularly in the Gosaikunda area, but it was relatively mild now, in mid-February. My experience in Nepal in earlier years, is that the weather often became warmer in the last week in February, a rush of sap and springtime. So we were on the cusp of that.

A high wind in the night, then stillness. Sleep came with difficulty in the mountain air. Then a bright morning with no wind; warm in the sun. The valley opened out to a Scottish highland glen, with its boulders, its rushing river, its small hydroelectric scheme with insulated pipe. A majestic stupa crowned a rise.

Kyanjin Gompa had undergone a building boom of new lodges for the trekkers, with some having three levels, many in the bright colours Nepalis like, all jumbled together and overshadowing their neighbours. But the crowding was due to a prohibition on building on the grazing land, so it had logic. The trekkers congregated at the one lodge that was open. Sunlight warmed the common area.

In the afternoon we climbed up on the approach to Tsergo Ri, a time-honoured ritual of acclimatisation: go high, sleep low. Even another 300m up from Kyanjin Gompa would help the lungs manage the real climb the following day. The path was clear. Bishnu kept going up just a bit more, to make sure the effort didn’t stop short of the required pain. From this vantage point, you could see the familiar peaks and glaciers from a different perspective, including the twice-ascended Kyanjin Ri.

We met a well-muffled Greek trekker who had reached the summit. He reported that after 2.00 pm the wind got up. He congratulated me on the mere presence of such an aged spirit at this height. We eschewed a handshake for the protocol of elbow bumps. We fed the local crows biscuits. The one which pecked aggressively also had the biggest head … the male of the species?

Two high passes cross from Helambu to Langtang, the Ganja La and Tilman’s pass. We thought we could see two entrances to the Ganja La on the opposite slopes of the valley. These passes with their steep snowfields at the top are only for autumn, perhaps springtime. It is a bit late in life for more adventurous trekking, so these peaks and passes have to be considered carefully, but for the embodied spirit a dream still beckons.

This was the climax of the trip. Would I get up without any altitude symptoms, weakness, headache? Pepe, a young Catalan from Barcelona, joined us at the start. We gave him some suncream. Then he streaked ahead.

It was just a long, long ascent. The only tricky part was when you reached an intermediate saddle adjoining a corrie. There were large snow-covered rocks, and as the snow was not firm and frozen you could have dropped through and twisted an ankle. Bishnu was good at spotting the most secure way. Now we met Pepe leaping his way down. We could see the ridge to the summit, with its boulders and lip of snow.

A surge of optimism and energy arrived, with the delight of knowing you would make it in fine weather, and still no altitude problems. Tremendous 360 degree views. The unassuming Yala Peak (5500m), just a rocky bump on a ridge that continued higher, remained for a camping trek in the future.

The whole ascent had been 1000m. Care was needed on the descent, with rocks more reliable than snow, and the path proving slippery. Looking down there was a sense of achievement. Had we really come all this way up? Eight hours, including thirty minutes at the top, at my slowish pace. But slow and steady won the race.

You always leave something else that you may do, to give a reason to come back. It may be Yala Peak, Gosaikunda pass, or Kanja La pass and peak. Or all three together, perhaps. Langtang is a great place for a short trek in winter, and also offers those additional variations when the weather is warmer in the main trekking seasons.

The following day: a last look back at Tsergo Ri, then the descent to Lama Hotel. Then sitting again in that kitchen, where the smoke mysteriously disappeared, invisible, through a space in the roof. Then the next day, down into the damper and hazier air at Syabrubesi, and to enjoy the usual luxuries of a softer bed, a warmer room, and richer food, before getting in to our jeep and the journey back to Kathmandu.

A trek is not just a geographical displacement; it is always a change in consciousness. Here is where it started, in Dhulikhel, just outside the main urban area of Kathmandu, in the early morning haze.

The discussion of this haze, as part of a massive bank of pollution from the North Indian plain and how it had invaded the air space all the way to the border with China, and how you had to climb to about 3800m to get completely out of the sea of particles, was part of the discovery.

Knowing that we would walk over the site of the destruction of Langtang village in the 2015 earthquake, we reminisced about another disaster in recent years, the October 2014 snowstorm on the Annapurna range. In the peak trekking season, when the monsoon is over and the weather is usually dry and sunny but not yet too cold, trekkers flock to the Annapurna circuit, with its high pass, the Thorung La (5415m). The snowstorm was caused by a tropical cyclone which formed in the Andaman Sea and progressed over the Bay of Bengal gaining in intensity. It moved in a north westerly direction towards Nepal. It was recognised and expected in India, but there does not seem to have been any early warning system in Nepal for trekkers in the way of the storm.

I used to check satellite photos of the Indian subcontinent published by the meteorological office in Britain. I distinctly remember observing the very pronounced depression (Cyclone Hudud) and seeing it track into India. It was clear that it would go on towards Nepal and only be drained of its energy on the sheer walls of the Himalayas, but at what cost?

Sitting in a comfortable room (at that moment I was working in Cajamarca, Peru) I could have sent a message to Nepal. I could see the storm making its unexpected journey to the mountains. I did recall that there can be very late storms in October or November. I remembered that the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal can produce these spontaneous tempests at almost any time in the year, certainly outside the monsoon. Probably one assumed there could be a warning from the Nepali authorities.

Unlike an earthquake, you can predict the weather at least three days in advance with some certainty, but there was no awareness nor communication with the Annapurna area, and the trekkers became trapped in conditions which saw almost two metres of snow arrive suddenly at a time of year when this is not at all expected. At least 43 people died.

Madhu and Bishnu have a nephew, Anish, who was a porter on the Annapurna trek during the storm. Somehow he got over the Thorung La, arriving at Muktinath with his group very late at 9.00 pm. But one of the porters did not survive. The intensity of the storm was local. Canadian friends of Madhu and Bishnu were in Langtang at the time, where the only signs of the storm were snow flurries and wind.

Another area that has seen avalanches after unseasonal snow is the upper part of the Annapurna Base Camp trek. On an earlier trek here, we came across a former trekking guide sitting on a wall, crutches beside him, with a tin for donations. Both his legs had been amputated below the knee after he had been trapped in such an avalanche. The cause was an unseasonal November snowfall resulting from one of those sudden storms funnelling up from the Bay of Bengal. Madhu mentioned that in the last month there had again been fatalities on the ABC trek, again due to the unforeseen instantaneous avalanches from above the sheer enclosing cliffs on the trail.

Risk management is a concept used to control the effects of unfortunate events. In the context of these disasters, some measures can certainly be applied to mitigate earthquakes, and the sudden onslaught of bad weather. But a more insidious danger is breathing polluted air, especially for the developing brains of young children, and for the accumulated effect on adult lungs.

We started the trek in Dhulikhel, where a series of hotels has been built on a ridge facing the long mountain chain of the Himalayas, to celebrate one of the greatest views in the world. But now, in the viewing season after the monsoon, the air is never as clear as it used to be, the local Kathmandu valley pollution being amplified by the North Indian pollution. The mountains often remain obscured. Nepal is at the mercy of its larger neighbour in this respect, and this is now being recognised and documented.

https://www.nepalitimes.com/here-now/how-transboundary-haze-affects-nepal/

At present the pot cannot call the kettle black, unless Kathmandu becomes irreproachable and stainless in the matter of its air purity.

Day 0: Wednesday 12 February 2020
There was a window of opportunity in February, before work obligations in the spring. Covid was just starting its march across the world. Could there be a quick trip to Nepal, as the recorded cases of coronavirus were so far tiny? A convenient short winter trek would be Langtang.

Memory is unreliable. Had I done this trek in January two or three times? I recalled twice ascending Kyanjin Ri (4774m), an outlying peak above the Kyanjin Gompa, the last settlement on the trail. The second of those ascents had been accompanied by chest pains, warning signs of altitude stress on the lungs. The ascent from Langtang Village to Kyanjin Ri is 1344m, which can be too much in a single day, especially as the overall ascent in the Langtang trek is rapid.

I had inflated to three the number of previous visits, a common ego problem: exaggeration! The third unconfirmed occasion was a trip for grade nine students which I had organised but not accompanied. The chest pains on Kyanjin Gompa were during another later school trip. So: this new trek would be the third one up the Langtang Valley.

The trek would be familiar, but could it reveal something? What new vistas would open up after a successful climb of Tsergo Ri (4984m), the peak that dominates the views on the upper part of the valley trek? The students on the earlier trek had been willing to try the peak, but it had been safer not to go up: in January it was snow-covered, not all had suitable boots, and the icy nature of the ascent and descent could be risky. Now, it would be feasible.

No journeys in Nepal can be made without commenting on the state of the roads. Every village wants a new motorable road. But often these are bulldozed in without thought of the likelihood of landslides in the monsoon. I remembered some massive landslides on this road, and the vertiginous mountain-hugging path the road would take. It caused some nervous moments when taking the students up to the start of the trek at Syabrubesi.

Now this road was being improved with the aid of Chinese grants, as it connected with the border and could be used to enhance trade, so we made quite good progress on the widened stretches. But after lunch we came to a long queue of vehicles: a truck heavily laden with cement had got stuck in mud and no one could pass in either direction. After some three hours waiting, I said to Madhu and Bishnu, “Come on, let’s just walk to Dunche. We don’t need to get in to Syabrubesi. And the following day we can go over to U Kyang, the Tamang village.”

It was a gentle walk of about 10 km, and we even got a short lift on the school bus, though we had to get out in order to register at the entrance of the National Park, where rucksacks had to be unpacked. The soldiers were particularly interested in whether we were secreting drones, which are prohibited. The bus had the rules of transport written on a whiteboard at the front, with such recommendations as: Remember, you are on School Bus. Take your seat and do not talk loudly. And finally: The harder you work, the luckier you get. On the path we could see a hardy goat devouring aggressive looking nettles, its leathery tongue lashing the leaves, relishing every bite.

It was a cold, damp evening when we approached Dunche in the last light of day. This town is the starting point for the ascent to the sacred lakes of Gosaikunda, and sees a massive influx of pilgrims trekking up to the abode of Shiva during the festival season in August. But now it was relatively quiet. I think we were the only guests at one of the roadside hotels on the main stretch of the town.