NEPAL 041512: Trekking is not backpacking – it’s better

Dear Friends,

Now  we are back in Kathmandu and the trek is over, I found myself thinking about the contrasts between backpacking and our "tea house" trek . . . 

My experience with hikes of many days duration has been from backpacking mainly California and Oregon.  These trips taught me to love the mountains, its broad vistas, snow and glaciers, lakes and streams, plant and animal life, but it did not prepare me for the things I came to appreciate on our short trek.  I'll explain.

First is being with the Nepali people -- meeting and greeting them on the trail with a "Namaste," staying lodges run by families, being cared for by our guide and porters and helpers, and living in and wandering about their long-established mountain villages.

This woman was the accountant and maybe a manager at the Grand View Lodge in Tadapani.  

The farming villages in Nepal's mountains have existed for centuries, as have the trade route trails that connect them.  Their economies are largely based on a subsistence agriculture that we were able to witness and admire first hand, and everything -- except mobile phone calls and text messages -- that comes or goes from such a village arrives on the back of a person or animal. Buildings are of stone and roofed with slabs of dark grey slate.  The best trails in and from/to the villages are paved with a similar, thicker slate. Farmers and their animals often live in close proximity -- just behind a row of guest rooms at the Breeze Inn in Ghandruk lived a Jersey cow and her calf.

Some of the agricultural activities we saw that popped our eyes open were:  In Ghandruk, a team of four women harvesting wheat with sickles by cutting off one head at a time and putting it into a bamboo basket behind them -- while chatting and smoking cigarettes -- and the next day they returned to cut the straw; in Syauli Bazaar, a woman threshing the seeds off mustard plants dried (on a bright blue tarp in a warm slate patio) by whacking the plants with a bamboo pole about four feet long and then winnowing the seeds in a shallow basket about two feet in diameter. 

Threshing in Syauli Bazaar

 Winnowing in Syauli Bazaar

also in Ghandruk, women collecting cow dung to dump into the family compost pile; everywhere women wielding hoes with three foot long handles to weed small terraced plots of corn or vegetables; in the warmer areas, women transplanting rice seedlings by hand. Many of the farmed terraces were no bigger than our front yard.

At the lodges ("tea houses") we met some friendly, spirited women innkeepers who did not hesitate to welcome Jawane and his team with friendly teasing.  At the Heaven View Lodge in Banthanti they welcomed us into their kitchen to watch or help cook our meal -- teaching Donna to make momos and letting the rest of us hang out to sip rashki and chat.  Karma's skills in speaking Nepali opened doors for us as did Donna's irrepressible friendliness and curiosity.

The kitchen stove at the Heaven View Lodge

 At the Grand View Lodge in Tadapani when I went down to the dining room at about 6:30 AM to put my phone on the charger, I discovered that the communal dining room where we had celebrated Karma's birthday the night before had become a "family bunkhouse" with children sleeping on the benches and men on the tables or tucked under the stairway to the rooms above.  One young boy got up when he saw me and went to the second floor deck to help Dick with his photography.  It was fun to be able to interact with the children so easily.

Being pampered would be next.  When you get tired of carrying your backpack on a trip to the mountains back home, that's just plain too bad, you keep carrying it.  BUT ON OUR TREK, after watching me sweat through the first day's uphill walk from Naya Pul to Hille, one of our helpers (extra men that Jawane hires in case someone needs, well, uh, help :-I) offered to carry my day pack.  Being an independent sort of gal, I hesitated for one nanosecond before turning my burden of treated drinking water and a warm jacket over to Dorje for the rest of the trip.  I have to say that he looked simply smashing wearing my red day pack on his chest over his sky blue fleece.  Dick and Karma also succumbed to being helped with a tripod and a day-pack-full-of-lenses.  Thanks to Dorje I was happily able to remain upright during a challenging steep descent on hail-covered ground and among protruding roots as well as enjoy luxurious pack-free hikes in less daunting circumstances.

If you are backpacking and run out of your favorite snack, you just have to wait until you hike out and drive to the nearest town to get your M&M's or Snicker's bar.  On a trek, you will never be far from your favorite "American" candy bar.  You might, however, suffer if your taste runs to dark chocolate as Snickers, Mars, and the like are all I saw on the trail.

Essential Nutrients from "The Brown Food Group" for sale in Ulleri

When backpacking, you sleep in and on whatever you can carry, which for me has meant a SMALL tent and a short Thermarest mattress.  "Tea house trekking,” means that you will sleep in a sort of "Scout camp cabin" arrangement = 2 or more single beds per simple room with a toilet and -- a possibly hot -- shower down the hall or en suite.  

Our room at the Annapurna Hotel as it appeared when we arrived.

The walls may or may not allow you to share snoring sounds with your next-door neighbors.  Thick quilts are provided or you can bring your favorite sleeping bag.  I have to say that although I have no objection to using a "squatter" style toilet, after a day of challenging my thigh muscles by hiking uphill (maybe on the estimated 3,300 infamous Ulleri Steps) a simple "European style" toilet is truly a thing of beauty. 

Rather than carry favorite gourmet selections of freeze dried food and prepare meals yourself, we ordered from a menu that had Chinese, Nepali, and "continental"(think Italian) items that were prepared for us and brought to a table that had real chairs, not logs or the ground to sit on.

Donna showing off her mixed fried rice lunch in Syauli Bazaar

 Another favorite Chinese dish was chili chicken.  If you have been reading these posts in sequence, you already know how the chicken gets to the lodge kitchens.  We saw dark red chili peppers that had been grown locally drying in shallow baskets on benches beside the trail.  If you like to eat hot, spicy foods, trekking is you culinary heaven.

Chilis dryong on a porters' rest bench just outside Ghorepani.

Chili chicken at the Nice View Lodge, a ten minute walk uphill form where the chilis were drying.

Although you DO have to treat and/or filter your drinking water, you don't have to squat next to a stream or lake balancing on a rock while pumping to do that task on a tea house trek.  Here at heaven View Lodge Jawane pumps water from a big cooking pan filled in the kitchen into our water bottles for further treatment.  Donna and Dick add aesthetic interest to the scene. :-)

Getting the day's drinking water ready before breakfast at Heaven View Lodge.

. . . and you don't have to sit on a rock to eat breakfast.

Karma adds gugar to his tea at heaven View Lodge

When you are backpacking and get a craving for a nice COLD BEER, you have to suppress your desire for that tall, cool one until . . . that's right, the hike out and drive to the nearest town.  I guess you will have been able to guess by now that on a "Tea House Trek" all you have to do is ask for an Everest or a San Miguel in the 500 ml bottle.

Now you know why I did not lose any weight on this trek :-)

Love and hugs from Kathmandu,

Marian

041412

Addendum:  Trekking vs. Backpacking

Hello All -- Yes, it's me again, this time from Chico..  

I gasped in shocked disbelief when I realized that in my April 14 blurb on Trekking vs. Backpacking I had failed to mention one of the most charming aspects [next to, of course, the fellow who carried my daypack everywhere] of trekking in the Annapurna region: "Pony Caravans," as they are romantically called in the Lonely Planet guide to Nepal. 

In the Annapurna area of the Nepal Himalayas, the pack trains' ponies or donkeys or mules wear bells around their necks, sometimes several.  As they walk or trot along -- depending on whether they are outbound with a load to or homebound unloaded from their destination --  these bells announce the animals' presence on the trail so that you can snuggle up against the uphill side of the trail to let them pass by.  They also may be caparisoned with colorful decorative patches on their foreheads, ribbons flowing from their halters, and "pompoms" bouncing between their ears.

For your viewing pleasure: Mom patiently waits while her son interrupts the laundry to water two sturdy steeds loaded with bags of cement and with bells on their necks.

Two cute donkeys wait for the rest of their "caravan.”  Each has several bells on his neck.

AND a two second video of a few horses heading unloaded, downhill for the barn.

I hope you can play it. [Well, in terms of creating this blog, I hope I can figure out how to upload it.  Stay tuned.]

Namaste, Marian

Addendum

Chico, April 23, 2012