Preamble -
In October and November of 1990 Anne and Gary Andrews trekked in Nepal. We were part of a group organised by World Expeditions - their "Classic Everest" tour. The group gathered in Kathmandu, and after a 200 kilometres bus ride to Jiri, the staging point, the trek commenced on 16 October. We arrived back in Kathmandu 22 days later. After two days R & R the party dispersed: some home, some on to further Nepal adventure, and Anne and Gary to Delhi for a few days in north-west India. The Andrews arrived home on 18 November after a memorable 38 days away.
There were 13 trekkers, from widely scattered parts of Australia -
from Brisbane - Brad Greentree
from Sydney - Maryanne and Shannon Kinsella, Geoff Bonney,
Kay Johnson, Ray Saunders, Owen Jensen
from Lorne - Ian Ridgeway
from Melbourne - Anne and Gary Andrews, Pam Debney, Naomi Mathews, Andrew Wilson.
In addition, the trekking party included a leader (Mohandra), two Sherpa assistants (Dunbar and Tendi), seven kitchen staff, and a large number of porters. Plus Cheering, "the boy Sherpa".
What follows was taped by Gary during the trek. The tape ends on the last day in the mountains, before the light-aircraft return flight to Kathmandu.
A few weeks later, after we'd all returned to Australia, most of the trekking group were able to spend a weekend of reminiscence and fellowship at Anne and Gary's home in Melbourne. We were able to choose from each others' photographs, and prints were later exchanged. This Blog contains but a few snaps from the combined trove.
The Diary -
Tape 1 - Side 1
It's Tuesday lunchtime. We've stopped on the trail. Yes, we're on the trail, and waiting for lunch to be served. Our day officially started around seven, although I was out at five-thirty poking around the town of Jiri. Jiri is the starting point for the trek to Everest. My diary started with a big lie. We were not trekking to Everest, but - if we could make it - to Everest Base Camp, the staging point for the mountaineers. There is a world of difference between trekkers and climbers! Five-thirty it was just getting light and the shops were all open for business. Not that there was any business, but the town was alive with people getting ready for........whatever they do. Seven o'clock we had our morning tea served to us in the tent, and hot water for washing. Made a late start, around eight, because there was a lot of organising to do with the new group of porters who were recruited - mostly the night before, after we arrived in Jiri.
It's a brilliant sunny day, although there's lots of quite heavy cloud. Strangely, we haven't passed under it. We've caught our first glimpse of snow-capped peaks, although they're really only hills compared with what we will be seeing later.
The first three days we climb up reasonably-sized hills and then down the other side to camp. We're on the trail for about five hours each day, but it's very leisurely paced. We've stopped several times for a long smoko and a cup of tea from one of the tiny settlements along the track, and now we've stopped for lunch - and it's barely ten past eleven. It's all down hill this afternoon, and I'm sure we'll be reaching our camping spot in about an hour-and-a-half after lunch. This, I suppose, is acclimatisation in the early stages - testing us more for leg and aerobic fitness than for the altitude difficulties which we'll confront later.
There are thirteen of us in the group, and so far we're all having a jolly time. Our group leader, Mohandra, is in fact not Nepalese - he comes from Darjeeling
- but he's done this trek many times, along with a number of other treks through Nepal. Darjeeling is in West Bengal state, north-east India - on the Nepal border. With the party are two people they describe as Sherpas, but are really the guides. Sherpas are a separate racial group, of Mongolian origin, living in the Solu Khumbu valley of Nepal. They don't carry big packs, nor does Mohandra, and they're responsible for keeping us on the trail and getting us to our destination each day. In addition to that there are seven kitchen staff. The chief cook doesn't carry a pack, but all the others carry the kitchen on their backs - and the food. And then there are twenty or so porters who carry the tents, and our duffle bags - which contain all our clothes, medical supplies, spare film, muesli bars, sleeping bags, you name it.
Since arriving in Nepal things have been absolutely splendid, but it didn't start out too well. On Friday we awoke to the news that there was an air re-fuellers' strike, and it took me two or three hours to ascertain that in fact the international flight was still going. The strike was confined to Melbourne, and the airline had the good sense to touch down in Adelaide to refuel so that we could get to Sydney. But there was still quite a delay, and then a delay in Sydney also, and we arrived in Bangkok several hours late. I must break here because tea has arrived. Tea, it seems, will be a necessary prelude to every meal.
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I was wrong. It wasn't tea, it was warm orange cordial. Surprisingly pleasant.
The flight to Bangkok was very good. Thai International. There were quite a number of spare seats, and they had left the central section fairly vacant, and a number of people were able to relocate themselves and sleep across the seats. Anne was one of them. Anne wasn't too happy with the flight, but it was better than a number she's been on, and she was able to sleep a fair bit. I read every magazine and paper available, and somehow managed to fill out around ten hours doing pretty much nothing. Tried not to eat too much, as we're told, and succeeded pretty well. Although staying overnight only in Bangkok we still had to clear through Customs, and that took quite a while. We were collected by the World Expeditions representative there (who was also gathering up people for other trips) and taken to our hotel - very immodestly named The First Hotel. Not bad. Probably rated around three star, and certainly not roughing it in the style that we'll be roughing it later on.
It was late, around ten-thirty, which because of the time difference was equivalent to one-thirty back home. Since you can hardly do justice to Bangkok with one hurried look around town at that time of day we decided, instead, to go to bed. No sooner in bed than a feverish knock on the door from two of the other group - two chaps who'd found themselves billeted together in a room with a single bed only. Much hilarity; and we did a quick swap with them. When I say "single" bed I mean one double bed. Very comfortable though. Before the swap we had had two singles.
Next morning: although we're making an early start we were up much earlier. Had plenty of time for a stroll around the local area. Just a short way from the hotel we found a local market and spent half-an-hour or so prowling around there. Notable absence of health regulations, but an abundance of produce. The hardest ones for us to accept are the meat stalls, and the fish stalls, where everything but everything seems to be for sale for some purpose or other. A very few of the stalls had piles of crushed ice, but mostly the food was just lying on the bench, frequently covered in flies.
Back to the hotel. On to the bus. Into the airport. Again flying Thai Airlines. Direct to Kathmandu, around three hours. Another good flight, although the plane absolutely packed. Kathmandu Airport is a new building, and in many ways rather grander than they need to have. Something of a waste of money. With the size of the queues at the immigration checking counters, it would be smarter for them to have spent the money having more officials than to have spent it on grandiose brick colonnades. If you're travelling alone you would want to get local currency straight away - as we found out later, there was no exchange counter inside the barrier, only outside. Fortunately, being with a conducted tour we didn't have to worry about paying for taxis or any such things.
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I've just gathered a group of interested Nepalese who've been walking along the trail as I was recording, who stopped to watch. So I replayed the tape for them. Yes, they knew it was a cassette - they used that word - and they knew there were Eveready batteries in it. But I'm sure they'd never seen anything of this size before, especially the miniature cassettes. I've also realised that the wind that's blowing around me up here on the trail is picking up on the tape and making it rather noisy.
The cook and his six assistants have been at it for quite some time and no results yet. So clearly lunch, and everything about this trek, I think, is going to be a very leisurely affair.
After clearing through Immigration there was a long wait before our bags emerged, and then the queues again to go through Customs. All our bags were carrying World Expeditions tags and, not surprisingly, would be able to be identified by their porters who - we thought - would come up, grab our bags, and offer to see us through Customs rather more quickly than we were achieving by standing in the queue. I fell for it - Anne didn't - and assumed that they were indeed from World Expeditions' local office, and that we were getting the fast track treatment. Not so. Having put the bags up on the reverse side of the Customs desk they then asked for money to pay them for their services. Not only wouldn't I have paid them but I had no local money anyway. When I said that, they offered to accept any currency at all. So back into the queue, and through Customs! One of the bags was opened, but a fairly cursory look - with Anne all the time saying: "Oh my goodness. It was so hard to get everything in there we'll never be able to close the case again." Outside the gate we were met by the official World Expeditions people, piled on a bus, and taken to our hotel - the Hotel Kathmandu. From the World Expeditions notes: "Kathmandu airport can be a confusing place so we will briefly explain the routine here. Once you have passed through Immigration at Kathmandu airport please collect your baggage from the baggage belt and proceed directly to the Customs officers. Once cleared go out the two sets of doors where a World Expeditions staff member will identify you from your baggage label and show you to the area in which your Group Leader will be waiting. Airport porters are usually very quick to pick up your bags and head out the door. Don't worry - just keep the porters with you and the porter fee will be paid by World Expeditions staff outside the terminal." It wasn't quite that easy!
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Our head Sherpa has just been washing his hair under a water pipe. Everywhere you look there's water running down some hillside, and whenever there are people living nearby they seem to have diverted some of the stream through a pipe which is generally running out over the trail or across a rock. And while we can't drink the water I don't see any reason why we can't use it to wash our hair. It's a little hard to do that in the mornings in one small basin of water, crouched on your knees inside the tent with your head out, or vice-versa. The water has just been poured off the rice so I think lunch must be imminent. World Expeditions: "A bowl of warm water for washing is provided each morning, and often we will camp or have lunch next to a river where you can bathe or wash clothes. We highly recommend you bring bio-degradable soaps, shampoos and washing liquids/soaps (try your local camping or health food shop)."
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Well here we are on the second day of our trek. We've stopped for lunch.
Yesterday our lunch stop was a large grassy clearing on the brow of a hill. We could spread ourselves around and lie on the grass recuperating. But today we're perched on a tiny bank, sitting on rocks and logs beside a stream. I'm sure you can hear it running. The mechanical noise you can hear is a water driven mill wheel. Not in use, but turning nonetheless. We've had a steady climb since leaving our overnight camp. Quite a reasonable degree of difficulty, but the Sherpa is taking us very slowly, and we've paused a number of times for long breaks - ten minutes or so. And paused at two-or-three-house settlements where we can buy tea or hot Coke or Seven-up. We're not interested in trying the soft drink, not just because it's warm, but because it's sure to make us more thirsty. We haven't really been thirsty, but we're drinking a lot of water to accustom ourselves to the requirement later on at higher altitude where we have to drink four litres of liquid a day to combat the dehydration that occurs there.
One of the girls is causing some amusement by trying to take her tee shirt off, claiming that there's no privacy around here. Well, privacy is something in these mountains that you very soon learn to live without. Not only do people take a leak wherever they feel like it, but they take a bog anywhere too. Little piles literally everywhere. No sign of toilet paper, so the bum-wiping left hand is an institution in these parts. As we're climbing up these slopes we tend not to look upwards, rather concentrating on our feet and getting a firm footing. But we can always tell within about twenty metres that we're coming upon a house, or a small settlement, simply because of the smell of human excreta. No such thing as a lavatory, and they just seem to walk out the back door, down the trail a bit, and let fly. I hope they have dung beetles to carry the waste away, but I suspect not. What we have seen........plenty of times when the chooks have been poking around in the general vicinity. Makes you wonder about the eggs! Dung beetles are a sub-family of the scarab beetle, of which there are some 3000 varieties. Dung beetles are scavengers, feeding on decaying vegetation or on the dung of grazing animals. Most lay their eggs in underground chambers supplied with dung, on which the larvae feed. The burrowing process not only fertilises the soil but achieves aeration. Australia's 250 species of dung beetle have evolved to process the dung of native animals, and do not cope with the moister dung of cattle. It was a scientific triumph of the CSIRO to import some 55 varieties of African and Mediterranean dung beetles between 1967 and 1982 to dispose of cattle dung. All very interesting, but I've been unable to ascertain whether Nepal has any dung beetles of its own.
The strength of the porters is amazing. We set off before they did yesterday morning so we didn't know which of the group that had gathered around were actually the porters; and we didn't see them until well after we'd arrived at our campsite yesterday afternoon. We were staggered. They're the very smallest of people that we've seen anywhere. All under five feet, and not particularly muscly looking. But the load they can carry is prodigious. Our instruction from the outset was to make sure that our duffle bags didn't exceed fifteen kilograms each. It's a pretty respectable weight, and we expected to see the porters carrying one bag apiece. Don't you believe it! Each of these tiny men was carrying three of our duffle bags. Others who were carrying the kitchen equipment were carrying great baskets full of potatoes and onions, or the metal tables and chairs that we sit around on - forty-five or fifty kilograms being toted up these hills is really something to behold.
This also seems to be the home of the canna. I have a recollection that they might otherwise be known as the Indian lily. Wrong! The canna indicais native to the tropical regions of the Americas. Many garden plots have them; glorious colours. And they grow quite a bit taller than they do back home......as do many plants. We've seen some sweet corn crops where the central stalk would be about ten feet tall. The marigold seems to be the favourite flower, but they're not a low bedding flower as they are back home. They grow tall like a dahlia. They have some religious significance, I think; we've come across a couple of dogs with collars made of marigolds. Plenty of dahlias too. They grow tall. Anne's been thrilled to see the mauve open flowers that she calls the "windflower". Down at the level of the weeds I'm standing on a patch that's covered in turnip weed - just the sort of thing we dig out of the back lawn - and there's some rather nasty looking ground-hugging thistles here that I'm sure are a proclaimed noxious weed back home. Otherwise, in these hills there are dozens of little creeping plants, lots of flowers even though this is autumn, and many types of tree that we can't identify; and the higher up we go the trees tend to have parasitic ferns hanging from under their branches.
Although Nepal has a massive deforestation problem it's not been apparent to us so far. Most of the hillsides have been covered with pine trees of some sort or another, at least that's the hillsides where the terracing isn't present. Most of them, I think, are radiata pine, although there are some other species. Right on the tops of the hills there are some magnificent firs, specimens of which I'm sure I've seen in botanical gardens back home. Very tall, with fine feathery leaves. I suspect these are indigenous and that the radiata are not. Pinus radiata, known as Monterey pine, is native to North America. The radiata are difficult for me to identify because they're mostly high pruned. High pruning in our part of the world is a technique to allow sunlight to get into grazing land, so it's used only where pine-growing is carried on in conjunction with grazing. Here, I think, the high pruning has been done simply for firewood. It's hard to tell because, as I said, there is plenty of timber in these lower reaches; and in fact houses and settlements don't seem to have large wood piles. I get the impression that they gather wood on a regular basis and live rather more like grasshoppers than ants. Any wood we've seen burning has been small sticks about an inch to an inch-and-a-half diameter. So maybe that's proof that they're not cutting down the big trees, and are foraging firewood from low branches.
The stream is crystal clear, very tempting, but there's no way any of us will drink from it. It's a sad commentary on Nepal - almost a motto - that no matter how high up you go there's always someone higher. Given their personal habits, even the clearest of mountain streams will be polluted - certainly containing the sort of germs that visitors like us will succumb to. Doesn't deter the porters though.
Four of us have had tummy troubles so far. Andrew was actually sick after our first night in Kathmandu. We had some sort of banquet - I use the word advisedly - at the hotel. They turned on a sort of floorshow with some ethnic dancing which we couldn't see, and which was not music to our ears, and accompanied that with a smorgasbord. Clearly Nepal didn't yet have me in its thrall, and I was being a touristic grouch. It was something that Andrew ate there, we believe, that gave him the collywobbles for the next day. And the first night out of Jiri Geoff was very ill..........having been to the toilet tent for the umpteenth time he came and sat in the mess rent, and turned ghastly white. So his wasn't just a tummy problem but a general malaise. And then all day yesterday Ray had the trots and generally didn't feel too good, although not bilious. And then last night yours truly developed the trots. Had a couple of quick dashes through the night. Standard treatment is to eat no food, simply water or flat lemonade, for twenty-four hours, and that usually fixes it; if not then some medication is called for. I'm crossing my fingers that the problem has gone away because I've had no discomfort today and I really feel very fit. They say everybody gets ill, so those of us who've had our bout already are hoping that that's it and the worst is behind us. Unintended pun.
This really is an odd spot where we're perched at the moment. They've spread a tarpaulin on the only flat area and half-a-dozen of our number are stretched out on that. The rest of us are just wandering around, or sitting on nearby rocks.
The cook boys are up a rise some thirty metres away and they'll be bringing our food to us course by course. We've already had the lukewarm cordial, very pleasant it is too, and we're wondering what comes next. Not for me, of course. They're a happy and delightful bunch. The utensils we use are all aluminium. So we have aluminium plates and.......no, correction, the mugs are stainless steel. The plates are aluminium. There are big cooking pots, and a couple of very large aluminium dishes that they do the washing up in. The kettles......every meal they give us a kettle of tea and a kettle of boiling water and a kettle of hot milk and a large tin of Nescafe. Surprisingly (to me) most people are drinking the tea. It's very good. Somewhat weak. Not aromatic. The locals drink it with milk. There are cows around here, so it's cow milk, but later on we could be getting yak milk. Except it isn't correct to call it yak milk because the yaks are the males and the females are called narks, would you believe? So we'll have tea with nark milk and sugar. They all have lots of sugar, so the tea is very sweet. Most of us are preferring to have it black.
World Expeditions, the organisers of the tour, adopted a policy some time ago of abandoning wood fires - that's in deference to the wood shortage that exists - so the cooking is all done with portagas. The sad thing from our point of view is that this means we can't have campfires, and that one of the more pleasant aspects of a group trek is lost to us. World Expeditions: Nepal's environment is extremely fragile. Its rapidly increasing population is putting Immeasurable pressures on the country's environment and resources and it is our responsibility as visitors to minimise the impact of our presence. Deforestation is Nepal's greatest environmental problem and World Expeditions pioneered the use of kerosene as an alternative to wood on all expeditions. We do not have campfires and we strongly discourage trekkers from buying wood-fuelled hot showers in lodges along the trail. We recommend that each trekker keeps a small plastic bag in their daypack, and in camp, to collect personal rubbish during the day. Each morning a small fire will be made for burnable rubbish. Any non-burnable or non-biodegradables - e.g. batteries and plastic bottles - should be kept, and taken back to Kathmandu.
The campsite consists of a number of two-man tents with flies. The flies are very necessary because, quite apart from rain, the clear skies produce rather dewy nights, and every morning - there have been two so far! - every morning the flies are drenched. They're packed up in that condition, and I guess we all hope when we pitch camp at the end of the day that it's nice and sunny so that the tents can dry out before we climb into them. There's a cooking tent; and there's a dining tent that's made up of a single large (almost seven feet by seven feet) table comprised of a couple of collapsible units that knit together, and we all have small folding aluminium camp stools; and it's just the right size. We are thirteen in number, plus Mohandra our leader - he eats with us - so the fourteen of us can sit around this quite comfortably. The food is such (so far, anyway) that we don't use a knife and fork in the usual fashion, thus we're not needing to use the table to eat off. The evening meal has been a long drawn-out affair with the arrival first of - as in every meal - the arrival of the three dishes with soap and treated water and fresh water and a kettle of hot water: and we all must wash our hands before we touch food. Water is treated with iodine. Iodine is the standard purifying ingredient in this part of the world. Anne came equipped with Puritabs but we've been told that they don't work here because they're not strong enough to kill the amoebae that produce the dysentery. Even with the iodine it needs to be left in the water for half-an-hour, I think, before
Tape 1 - Side 2
the water can be drunk. The problem is that water boils at a much lower temperature in higher altitudes and the germs simply aren't killed. So it's iodine for us. It's all to do with atmospheric pressure. At "normal" atmospheric pressure (sea level) water boils at 100 degrees celsius. At 10,000 feet, water boils at 90 degrees celsius; and at the top of Everest - if you wanted to boil the billy - the water would boil at around 75 degrees.
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Later, on the trail. Yes, in case you've been wondering, iodine tastes just like iodine, so when we get to that stage the water will be laced with cordial or Staminade. Everybody has been told to bring something to add to the water for reasons of flavour.
The final tent for the campsite is the loo tent, simply three fixed sides and a zippered front, and inside the porters have dug a small pit.
The depth of the pit, we're told, varies according to the amount of rock they strike. The first night at Jiri it was very shallow indeed. Last night it was adequate to the task, and we had a touch of luxury in that they've placed two flat stones on either side for us to perch on. Diarrhoea is a blessing in a way because you don't get to stay long enough for your knees to seize. We've each been issued with a roll of toilet paper, and there's one hanging in the toilet tent. But with fourteen of us, including five females, it doesn't necessarily last the night, so the rule is BYO. Geoff found this out last night and raised a cry of "help", until someone brought him some paper. The toilet pit is filled in each morning, and each morning the cook staff make a small pile, we throw any trash on it, and after dousing in petrol we have a little bonfire to clean up our mess. World Expeditions: At each night's camp a hole will be dug and a small toilet tent erected over it. You must always use the toilet tent when it is available. During the day ensure that toilet stops are made far off the trail and that all toilet paper is burnt or buried. We recommend that you bring a cigarette lighter for this purpose. Sanitary napkins and tampons should be kept in a plastic bag during the day andonlydisposed of in the toilet tent at night.
Nearly everyone has been travelling in shorts and tee-shirts. Hats of course. And we have our day packs. We soon had the hang of what we should include in the day packs and what we should put into the duffle bags for the porters to carry. Our water flasks are absolutely necessary. If we're travelling in summer gear we need to have something to keep us warm later in the day - poncho or jumper, parka, something that we can put on when we reach the campsite; because the porters might be an hour or two or three hours behind us, and it'll be a long time before we can get into our duffle bags and find something more substantial. In our daypacks we're carrying our cameras, and our sunburn cream, and spare film, a pocket knife (which each of us doesn't need - we could get by with one knife between the lot of us), and a book to read. I think only Ian has been reading so far; the rest of us have just been mooching around.
Coming up today's pretty steep hills it dawned on me that I've got in my daypack a large notepad and a file to do with the trip, neither of which I'm going to be using, and tomorrow they're certainly going into the duffle bag. And a couple of hip flask-sized bottles of rum which we bought in Jiri. We went into a small tea shop there and not only does it sell tea but soft drink and rum. Very nice in black tea it is too.
As we get further up the mountains we won't be allowed to have alcohol, so for the next few nights those who've bought some rum will be sharing it around the group and adding to the conviviality. It's locally made rum, local meaning Nepal - I'm sure they don't make it up here - and costs the equivalent of two dollars for these small bottles. Amazingly cheap, but almost exactly the sum that our porters receive for their daily wage. So the rum in the tea shop is for the trekkers, and the local people drink some sort of local bombo - which Mohandra describes as very powerful. I have subsequently realised that the slang term "bombo" refers to cheap wine. The Nepalese mountain liquor is most certainly not wine.
I'm missing out on something here, because Mohandra has pulled out a map and most of the group are clustered around. I guess he's showing the route through to Everest and where we're likely to be each day. We're sticking pretty close to the schedule put out by World Expeditions but there will be one or two changes. Mohandra's idea is that we shouldn't have rest days in the lower reaches, and should confine our rest days to the very high country where we need longer time to acclimatise. None of us is going to disagree with that.
The pace so far is very leisurely. I suspect that the Sherpas and Mohandra are testing us out, looking to see if there are any weak links, anyone who needs special help during the weeks ahead. The first several days are up hill, down hill, up hill, down hill, and things become somewhat flatter later on as we reach high plain country. I don't think it's a good idea to know too much about what lies ahead, just be pleased that we reach the end of each day without mishap, and feeling good. A number of us have bought copies of the map that Mohandra's working from. It was written up in the literature and it's from a place called Lamosangu, to Everest. It starts from part way along the road where we travelled in the bus on Monday and takes us all the way on our journey. Mohandra's version of the map has the route marked in texta colour, and I'm sure we'll all be doing that at some stage. Andrew, ever resourceful, has already done it. He borrowed a texta colour back at the hotel. The rest of us will have to wait until we return there. Mohandra gave us an interesting statistic yesterday: he said that if you count all the ups and downs and the distance of the trekking that we'll be doing, we will have covered the equivalent of the height of Mount Everest - that's 29000 feet. I'll have to think about that. I think he's sold us short: I read somewhere that in linear distance we'll be covering around two hundred kilometres. Mohandra was clearly wrong......29000 feet is somewhat less than six miles.
I've mentioned our first night in Kathmandu. That's when we had the banquet. Anne and I were pretty tired, in fact, and we didn't hang around, and went to bed early. Some of them went down into town - certainly the shopping areas are open till all hours. In the afternoon, after our arrival, we'd walked down to the Thamel area, which is the major shopping area, full of small shops. Narrow streets bursting with character. We had to get one pair of snow leggings, which we did. We had intended to hire them but they were about twelve dollars equivalent to buy, and it seemed a bit silly to commit ourselves to returning them when we got back to Kathmandu. So we bought.
We also bought me a colourful jumper. The woollen goods on sale are spectacular; and this quite splendid jumper was also around twelve dollars. As Anne said, if I never wear it again at home - which is likely to be the case - she'll be glad to. We left it behind for the porters! And we bought some postcards and sent them off the next day, and some stamps from the postcard seller. The postage is really quite cheap, four rupees. There are twenty-five rupees to the dollar. We had to pay the boy five rupees - as he said, four for the government and one for him. We came back from the Thamel in a rickshaw, bicycle rickshaw. Negotiated what we thought was a reasonable price of eighty rupees. The Hotel Kathmandu is quite a distance, I suppose two miles, from the Thamel area and at one part along the way the road is really quite steep. So we took pity on our rickshaw man and said we'll walk the rest of the way. As it turned out we still had about a third of the journey to go, so he would be laughing all the way. He started to laugh even more when he said it was eighty rupees each. We'd already taken pity on him and decided to give him a hundred and call it quits. So when he touched us, or tried to touch us, for a hundred and sixty we were less than amused; so we gave him the hundred and walked away. Then we ran into Pam and Ian who'd had exactly the same experience. They'd got to that very spot, taken pity on their rickshaw man, and his fee had been fifty rupees for the two of them! So a bit of local knowledge doesn't do you any harm.
We arrived back just in time, at four o'clock, for our briefing session with Mohandra. This was the first time that the whole group had been together. Brad had found his own way to Kathmandu. He'd come via Borneo. What a wonderful thing for a young man to do: not content to go trekking in Nepal, he'd taken a side excursion on the way there. And we were joined by Naomi and Geoff. They'd completed a different trek for the previous three weeks and were so enchanted by it all that they'd booked in and were joining us to go to Everest.
The instructions are not very complicated, the principal message being to be on guard against mountain sickness - and all of that's to do with not ascending too quickly. The rule of thumb seems to be that we're not to ascend overall more than three hundred metres a day. When we're at higher altitudes we can go up more than that during the day but we must come down to spend the night within three hundred meters of the altitude where we dossed down the night before. That's why the trip is such a long and extended one.
In addition to health warnings World Expeditions had previously provided us with an extensive memorandum, a warning really, on Nepalese cultural "considerations": "Nepal has been opened to the West only since 1950 and despite the veneer of westernisation if is still a very traditional and religious society. As guests we must respect this and respond sensitively. Whilst the Nepalese will never rebuke you for unknowingly offending them it is always desirable to try to respect as many of their customs and beliefs as you can. During your stay in Nepal the following, at least, should be observed:
* Women and men should not wear high cut shorts. Long, baggy shorts are acceptable to local people; and we advise women to wear lightweight skirts or trousers. Tops which expose the shoulders are similarly unacceptable.
* Nudity is totally unacceptable, so please wear a swimsuit or sarong when bathing.
* Overt public displays of affection are discouraged.
* When entering any Nepalese home, monastery or temple always remove your shoes.
* Most Hindus cannot eat food that has been touched by a foreigner.
* It is extremely offensive to throw rubbish into any cooking fire.
* For religious reasons Nepalese people are offended by being touched on the head; and, similarly, never direct the soles of your feet at a person or a religious shrine.
* Many Hindu temples may not be open to non-Hindus, so always ask permission.
* Begging is a harsh reality of life in the Third World but it is something which the Nepalese believe should not be encouraged, especially with Westerners who do not understand the occasions when it is appropriate. Giving money to street beggars should always be avoided. Handing out pens, balloons and sweets to children in the villages only decreases their respect for us and is to be strongly discouraged. Tourists, albeit with the best of intentions, have created this situation.
* Last but not least, remember that in Nepal punctuality has little meaning, and patience and a sense of humour are great assets. Leave your watch at home and take things as they come! Once you have become acclimatised to the pace of Nepal you are likely to re-asses your frantic Western schedule!"
Back to day two of the trek. There was some climbing to do after lunch, but the walking was done by about two-thirty in the afternoon. We came gradually down into a wide valley. One of the features on the landscape was a Buddhist shrine, shaped like a bell, painted white; and because there's been a local festival on for the last few days the place was garlanded with flags and prayer flags; and marigolds had been threaded into loops and were hanging on strategic spots. Through the day, in fact, marigolds were handed out by the local children to some of us as we walked along. In 1990, shortly after our visit, Nepal adopted a new constitution - under which it was recognised as a Hindu kingdom, although Hinduism was not established as the state religion. Under the present constitution (from 2015) Nepal is a secular state. The dominant religions are Hinduism (82% of the populace) and Buddhism (9%).
Our camp spot was a square between the usual two or three houses, and was actually marked up as "camp site". Quite flat, and very pleasant. I still had the trots and was staying off the food. Anne hadn't slept well the night before and tried hard to get to sleep, but a bit of a party had started up, with the locals singing songs and some of our people joining in with them. So, after twenty minutes of trying, Anne got up and joined in the party. I, true to form, went straight to sleep.
To be continued...............
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