The Langtang Trek

Walking. Hiking. Trekking. That’s what most people come to Nepal for. And that’s what I did for a vehicle-free, crowd-deficient week in the Langtang valley. The plan, as presented in Kathmandu, was as follows: one need to hire a guide and/or porter and/or guide come porter and let oneself be steered up the valley under the scrupulous eye of a very capable Nepali person who would explain in great English the beauties, customs and curiosities of the area. It would only cost anywhere between $500 and $1000. And, even if, say, the guide might have the same grasp of English as an Armenian puppy (which is not entirely unprecedented), one should never travel alone! One is at high risk of getting lost, missing or disappearing altogether, as some very convincing posters have shown. To be fair, this country has its substantial quirks, so it’s entirely possible (as I still suspect) that the missing people just wanted to stay missing for a bit longer than anybody would have expected them to.

They almost persuaded me to change my mind altogether and not go at all but, while attending a Couchsurfing meeting (every Monday at 6 PM at the Nepali Tapas Restaurant in Thamel!), I met a Spanish couple that was planning to go unaided through the auspicious Langtang valley. They carefully instructed me on how to get the trekking permit and, just like that, we scheduled a date for the following day to start our mountainous adventure, which inevitably started with – you guessed it – a bus ride. We arrived at our destination early enough to go through the sights, that is the main road and the houses and lodges surrounding it and, after a nice chat and a long-awaited dinner, we went to bed with that feeling you get once you know you’re going to start something spectacular in the following hours.

And start we did! From our guesthouse we passed our first bridge

this is not it but try to imagine one exactly the same placed in the middle of town

and stopped at the local Nepali German bakery for coffee and muffins.

It was supposed to be a three-to-four-day trek uphill to our future headquarters, Kyanjin Gompa, stopping every day in some little dwelling with lodges and hotels after about five hours of trekking. But, as these tourist abodes appeared along the way every hour or so, we took our time to stop for coffee and snacks. Once on a roll, I stubbornly went faster than my smoke-filled lungs would have enjoyed and left the Spaniards one lodge before, only to stop at a place with more trekkers than I would have imagined possible (the place looked fairly small so I had trouble visualizing all those people in not a lot of rooms but they eventually fit and my fright of having to share my room with somebody evaporated. I might as well have shared a room, as the damp plywood separating the tiny confines stopped the snores from tickling my ears as much as fish stop water – at all!).

With lungs protesting some more, I arrived the second evening in Langtang Village, the only place that is actually home to some of the 200 people living in the whole valley. As it was mentioned before, all the other places on the way have been lovingly erected keeping the trekkers’ comfort (but mostly their money) in mind. But I got a nice, cold cardboard box which passed for a room as a nocturnal shelter just as it started raining.

Enthusiasm dampened, I enjoyed the evening with the family and reluctantly left the warm kitchen with the warm iron cast stove strategically placed in the middle for my meagre four plywood walls for the night. I thought the good weather had eluded my trekking venture, that the end of the season had been marked by rainy days and icy nights, that the mountains thought about it and decided to be spiteful towards me, but the next morning only brought about good weather and weak coffee

and the three hours of trekking that would take me from 3400 m to 3800 m were a rather large compensation of the previous night’s pessimistic conjecture: donkeys, porters, stupas and snow-capped mountains all came together in one big flood of Tibetan routine life and I took it in as much as possible while also gulping for the air that visibly grew thinner.

Upon arriving in Kyanjin Gompa – the outmost tourist settlement of Langtang valley –, and after finding a suitable guesthouse built, unexpectedly, out of brick and wood, I shocked everybody (including myself) and declared that I would climb Kyanjin Ri, the mountain that protectively watched over the little village. After all, that’s how it’s done, right? One always walks a little bit higher than their sleeping place to avoid the terrible headaches of altitude sickness, and, after all, it’s good practice. A beautiful afternoon awaited my panting and wheezing and my cussing myself for not taking with me either water or cigarettes, the two vital ingredients of my mountaineering life, which (I was about to find out) are a vital ingredient of mountaineering life and an almost deadly ingredient of said mountaineering life respectively. About the time my lungs had finally managed to get their message through, I was at 4450 m on Kyanjin Ri trying to stand straight confronted with vicious gusts of air.

The following day would be rest day. I decided that sleeping in would be the main attraction but life was in the way. Daily life. You see, Tibetans have this special way of communicating, understandable in the circumstances of great winds and even greater distances: they don’t really say anything; they shout it. They shout it LOUD AND CLEAR so that they’re sure their message has been properly received. And if all the conversations aren’t enough, the alluring morning sounds of gathering spit from the forgotten depths of throats and propelling them forcefully anywhere they reach… all this is truly enough to wake up even a hibernating bear. So ‘rest day’ became ‘reading day’, which in turn morphed into ‘glacier trek day’, which turned into ‘heavy menacing clouds gathering overhead’ day, which metamorphosed into ‘Tibetan bread and yak cheese lunch’ day, which reverted back to ‘reading day’ and finally ended in ‘having dinner and listening to Tibetans shouting’ day.

Next day’s plan was quite straightforward: wake up early (and, with any luck, avoid the Tibetan morning practice) and trek to Csargo Ri, a 4984 m high mountain, that would probably short-circuit my lungs but considerably inflate my ego. The only slight inconvenience was that it had snowed during the night. I was having second thoughts and compassion for my lungs. Also, as I only smoked very little, I started to contemplate another rest day with weak coffee and some cigarettes. But my ego got the better of me and I reluctantly started towards the mountain… only to find that I can’t find the way. Again my self-preservation instinct told me to stay away from such challenges but, alas, a Swiss couple came to the rescue and showed me the way. I was going up, sluggishly at first but then quite lethargic bordering on at all. And, when I came to a standstill, partly because I was pondering my option to shamefully turn around, but mostly because I could not see the path any more, the Swiss stopped being neutral and got involved:

The stars had chosen my path (with a little help from the Swiss couple, of course), so I went on. But somehow, it didn’t get any better, only if by ‘better’ you mean navigating through knee-deep snow and large boulders and, finally, crawling out of them with wet shoes and a mood that could curdle milk. But I was there and I had to somehow commit this historic event to memory so here’s a sample:

Impressed? Didn’t think so. Well, the photos might have turned out better if it weren’t for the fact that while falling and crawling through the aforementioned snow, my camera – strapped loosely around my neck like any self-respecting tourist would have it – shared my fate and got equally wet. But here are some pictures from before: