Beaten Track – Where?!

I’ve mentioned the “beaten path” several times in this blog and there is no better place to feel like you are getting off it than Nepal. True, the Everest base camp and Annapurna regions can be heaving, but even they, by comparison with many popular tourists spots are relatively quiet. And just a few hours out of Kathmandu you can find yourself driving down a road to nowhere to start a trek that will lead you through untouched villages and no sign of anyone but locals for nearly three weeks – nothing else we’ve ever done on our travels can come close to this sense of adventure.

We had read about the Rolwaling valley trek with ascents of Parchemo and Ramdung and thought we had a pretty good idea of what we would be facing, having also previously trekked the Everest trail and summited Mera Peak. However we failed to account for moving glaciers and other such dynamic factors! Our first adventure was hiding out in a local house for a day during the national elections, the first for Nepal, as we had been warned that it would be best not to be seen on the trails. Then we had several route issues due to landslides and new roads being built. Once we got to a decent height, we were then faced with a completely different route to the traditional one for Ramdung (much harder, but more fun!) and significant changes in route across the glacier up to the Tashi Lapcha. We really enjoyed it and had an amazing summit day, but it was without a doubt the hardest couple of weeks of our lives! The downsides of summit day were that I was left with a respiratory infection and Steve with the beginnings of frost bite and we were unable to recover quickly enough for an ascent of Parchemo. It looks like a really beautiful mountain so we’ll just have to go back for it!

As always, seeing the incredible scenery of Nepal was but a close second to spending time with the sherpa people. We often see people trekking without guides and they really are missing the point. Don’t get me wrong, for those who are doing serious and dangerous mountaineering, the less sherpas they use the better as far as I’m concerned – I know the sherpas can make more money on these expeditions but at what cost? Pumori is notorious for regular avalanches, yet still Westerners send sherpas up there to fix ropes and many of them are killed – fix your own ropes if the risk is that high or climb easier mountains!! But trekking is safe and for the trekker it is better in every way if undertaken with a sherpa guide.

As an aside related to the sherpas… we think we have a pretty good handle on ethical travelling and responsible giving: we know not to pay the dollar to free the bird from a cage as it just encourages the capture of more birds – give the dollar to an animal welfare centre instead; we know not to give money to children begging as it encourages their families to continue sending them onto the streets – give the money to local schools/child welfare instead; we know to properly research an issue/institution before supporting it. We know to organise our treks through Community Action Treks for many reasons: because ALL the profits go to Community Action Nepal which supports local projects such as school and hospital building, with sustainability as a priority; because they pay a good wage to all their staff; because they provide good equipment and training to all staff; because they enforce a minimum age and maximum load for porters; because they organise insurance for their staff and so on; because they have the best staff and most amazing treks! But when the 16 or so sherpas come storming past you at 5700m with 30kg loads over a crevassed glacier, (and still singing as always) your first thought isn’t, “that’s good, we’re providing well paid, responsible employment for all those people for three weeks” – you just feel guilty! Consequently, our only mistake when in Nepal is that we always tip well over the recommended amounts - yes, we also know the negative issues that can arise from this, but feel having been there several times, we get to know our boys well enough to decide what is appropriate and where misuse might occur.

NB. This and the following entries were effectively written in the places to which they refer, however there is limited access to email in the Himalayas so they were only typed up a week after we got home!

Mandi

Better Than (a) Wedding - the whinge

It is no secret that marriage is not something I’ve ever really wanted, especially the traditional white wedding bride part. This has always tended to meet with one of two assumptions: either I am desperate and therefore lying, or I am weird. Steve and I have been together seven years and he wanted us to get married 5 years ago, which should be enough to refute the first option, but I will accept weird as it implies different – not always a bad thing!

Despite my reasons being based on logic, (which I have yet to find anyone able to pick any decent size holes in) I have also been struck by reactions to my point of view. Interestingly, if a man makes a comment to the effect that marriage is unnecessary or unwanted, that is considered acceptable if not normal. However if a woman holds the same views, it is often seen as a challenge to those who follow a traditional route. This is unfair and frankly insulting in many ways, but in particular, I am, and always have been, perfectly capable of supporting friends and others with different views to my own. I have been to many traditional weddings of friends and could not be happier to be there to see their dreams come true. But that doesn’t mean I have the same dreams.

So why the change of heart? As I haven’t room to go into all the reasons for my standpoint, neither can I fully explain the reasons for the compromises we reached but I guess they can be summed up thus: largely due to travelling I expect, we have learnt, or rather are still learning to accept that we have to live in the world as it is. My reasons for not marrying still stand however and I still await a good argument against my logic!

Of course there was also the added complication that I managed to find the perfect man – not something that I would ever have believed could exist. Being the perfect man, Steve has the rare quality of possessing the balls to do things his own way and our sherpa wedding at Thame gompa, mid-trek, was as different a wedding day from the traditional “Western” one as you could ever imagine. The day before our ceremony we had our first shower (i.e. water and soap, not as in the American version!) for two weeks – no bride ever enjoyed her pre-wedding shower more than I did! It was even a ‘proper’ shower and not just a bucket of water as we had expected – luxury. Being in the Himalayas, we of course had a more beautiful blue sky than we could ever see at home, even on the clearest day. My hairdresser was me, with my little travel brush inside our tent. My car was my walking boots and poles. Sonam organised traditional sherpa outfits for us, (and I had gone to the extravagance of getting a traditional Tibetan dress made) but underneath these were our trekking clothes and boots. Our backdrop was Kantega, Thamserka and Cho Oyu, with Chomolongma (Everest) just around the corner. Our wedding breakfast was Tibetan tea, chang, chang and more chang! The one Western tradition we adhered to was the “something borrowed…” one, (I’m ridiculously superstitious and didn’t want to tempt fate!) and my something blue was Steve’s trekking socks that he washed for me the day before. In my book, THAT is true romance! But then, I’m weird.

Mandi