Day 4 - Up the Langtang Valley to Lama Hotel

Up early to head up into the Langtang Valley. We are walking alongside the river all the way up the valley and it is fairly wooded as we start off. The trek is meant to be 5 hours today but that is probably at a very leisurely pace.

 





Walk up from the roadhead



One of the many vertigo inducing bridges we have to cross - I have seen a few of these at the bottom of ravines so their safety is far from assured

 

We end up having a few breaks on the way up and then a two hour stop for lunch so we actually take quite a bit longer overall.



The first of many breaks

As we round a bend and cross the river we get our first view up the valley

I have ended up a bit ahead of the rest of the group and come across a cluster of teahouses the first of which is called the Lama Hotel so I take my pack off and start talking to an Aussie chap who is trying to get a cold beer from the teahouse.

Lama Hotel

Whilst chatting I glance at another teahouse and see that it is also called Lama Hotel, and then another - this is most confusing! I ask the lady running the teahouse which is the Lama Hotel and she says here. I then ask pointing to the next one if that is the Lama Hotel; yes, she says. Same, same teahouse I ask; no, she responds. That one (pointing to the next building up) Lama Hotel, I ask. Yes, she says smiling. I give up trying to work this out, smile and say thank you and continue chatting to the other trekkers who have found the whole thing highly amusing. A bit later on, the rest of the group arrives and we go to the next building up - it turns out that for some reason the whole area is called Lama Hotel - and all the teahouses have almost identical names.

Still energised by an excellent first day on the trail we head out for a beer with the people I was talking to earlier. A beer unsurprisingly turns into several until it gets too cold to stay outside which coincides with supper being ready. We do become the centre of attention over supper as the rather more than planned beers have their usual impact. After supper we have an initial discussion about altitude sickness which I can't say was necessarily treated with the right degree of seriousness by all of us.

We will be eating at the various tea houses along the way and the food is pretty much the same in all of them - the valley is vegetarian so there is no meat, but tinned tuna will be available intermittently. The food is pretty hearty up here and will consist roughly of:

Breakfast: porridge, bread and eggs
Lunch and dinner: soup then noodles or rice with curry, fried vegetables and cheese. There are good apples here so we will get fresh apples as well as apple pie.