This time I am flying in from Thailand after a great week with some chums
in a villa on Koh Samui. Once at Kathmandu airport, I get the usual demand for
tips from some chap who has managed to wrestle my trolley away from me for the
30 second walk to the transfer bus, but I only have Thai coins or nothing less
than $5 (which I am certainly not giving him) and he turns up his nose at them
so I give my best confused, tourist face and he soon wanders off to harass
someone else.
Shortly after that we head into town and it is quite a surprise to see how
little Kathmandu has changed since I was last here about 12 years ago - the dome
of brown smog still sits over the city. Kathmandu remains a very poor town on
the outskirts and the living conditions really aren't great - it is very hot,
dusty and chaotic.
After a bit of a drive, and a lot of near misses, we get to the hotel which
is in the centre of the tourist district, Thamel. The hotel provides a lovely,
quiet retreat from the noisy bustle of the area although the rooms are really
basic with the 'ensuite bathroom' little more than a toilet with a shower stuck
on the wall and a sink behind the door. Still, there is probably little that is
better here and the better hotels are quite a way from this area which also has
all the infrastructure for outdoors tourism in Nepal.
Most of the rest of the group arrive a bit later in the mid afternoon and
after a quick pit stop to dump bags etc we head off for a bit of a wander and to
change some money. Whilst out, one of the chaps wants to pick up a local SIM card
to make calls home on the rare occasions that we have reception. However, for
a foreigner to get a local sim, they need to provide their passport along with a
passport sized photo for the retailer to keep. He doesn't have one and but I
have one left over from the ones I brought for my visa and so we get a photocopy
of my passport from the lovely ladies next door and the chap seems happy to
accept my passport and photo for someone else to get a SIM card. The next issue
is that the phone is locked (ie it can't accept a Nepali sim card) but a quick
call later and we are told that this man has a brother nearby who can unlock the
phone for a very cheap price if we leave the phone with him for the next
hour.
After that, and with no small amount of trepidation, we head back for a beer
in the hotel garden and to meet the local agents. They seem nice enough but soon
say the dreaded words 'cultural show', an event which I have come to dislike
intensely over the years. I am trying to work out a means of escape when someone mentions that
it is a half hour drive to get there which unfortunately is not possible for us
as we need to pick up the unlocked iPhone shortly and so we have to drop
out.
After a quick supper and couple of beers, a combination of jet lag and
missed sleep catches up with the group and we head to bed. With plans for the
next day of kit check and sightseeing.
The expedition is roughly structured as follows:
- Fly to Lukla which is the nearest airport to the Khumbu valley which has a lot of Nepal's climbing and trekking.
- Trek up the Khumbu valley (past Ama Dablam) to Island Peak which is one of the most popular trekking / easy climbing peaks and summits.
- Trek back to Ama Dablam for our ascent of that - we should do this much quicker than normal as we should be pretty handily acclimatised after our ascent of Island Peak.
- Trek back to Luckla and fly back to Kathmandu.
Some of you may be thinking, hang on a minute, Ama Dablam is not one of the
7 Summits; why are you climbing it. There are probably 3 reasons for it:
- The 7 Summits are more physically tough than technically difficult and I wanted to have climbed a properly technical mountain.
- Everest is the most technical of the 7 Summits and also you are dealing with that at significant altitude. This is the weakest part of my mountaineering and I wanted to push / prepare myself here by climbing a rather more technically difficult mountain at a lower altitude.
- I will be climbing Everest from the Tibetan rather than Nepalese side and as such will miss out on the iconic trek up the Khumbu valley to the mountain. This trip will give me most of that.
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