Hi Everyone. Sama and I are in a small village called Thulo Syabhu, which is in the northern part of Nepal, close to Tibet. As I write this I'm in front of a window with a beautiful view of mountains that are actually in Tibet. Being only a couple of hours walk from the nearest road, its the first place we've come to that has internet. It's near the base of the Langtang river valley with fantastic views and is a nice change from the cold of the high altitudes. The people in this village are Tamangs, of mainly Tibetan descent. We have just spent 6 days walking here from Sundarijal, just outside of Kathmandu. We left most of our gear (and our bikes, obviously) behind and have just been carrying the bare essentials. We decided to do it without a guide or porter, and have met quite a few others doing the same thing (mainly Europeans) and formed some nice relationships with those going in the same direction, exchanging tales in the evenings. We've also met plenty of Nepalis of course, who are for the most part very friendly and open. Often its for the purpose of confirming we're heading in the right direction. There are lots of forks in the path and none of those nicely painted signs or painted rocks you get in Germany, just yesterday's footprints if it hasn't rained and a few biscuit and chocolate bar wrappers.
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The path we have been on has been a very up and down one, taking us to gradually higher and higher levels, and finally over a 4660metre pass before descending to Gosaikunda Lake, which is a sacred pilgrimage place for Hindus. It was also sub freezing, and by far our coldest night so far. It also got a bit difficult to acclimatise to the lower oxygen levels going up, with plenty of stops to catch breath during the last thousand metres or so. The views on the way down were magnificent, lots of snow capped peaks, deep valleys, waterfalls, etc, and nicely spaced tea houses. The great thing about trekking here is you hardly need to carry anything as there are lots of lodges with warm beds (and with surprisingly comprehensive menus) although some groups seem to have lots of gear and incredibly overloaded porters. Also, although there are quite a lot of young people trekking, just as many or possibly more would be between 45 and 60, but sometimes older, which surprised me, maybe I'm a bit ageist. But its great to see that we still have lots of trekking time ahead of us. Sama calls them CUBBWETES, which stands for cashed up baby boomers with expensive trekking equipment. Okay, that's all for now, we have some great photos, but uploading them would take a week on this internet speed. I pinched the yak photo above from an internet site, just to put you in the mooood.
Sean :)
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