NEPAL 040812 Trek Day # 3 Banthanti to Ghorepani

Dear Friends,

            After filtering water, eating breakfast, completing our personal ablutions, we handed our daypacks and Dick’s 10-pound tripod to our team of helpers and were off at 7:30 AM.  Our destination was the Nice View [Now there’s a real understatement!] Lodge, at the end of a 2000 ft. ascent to upper Ghorepani.  The oak and rhododendron forest was cool, and the streams we walked along invited Donna to try her rock balancing skills, so she added a few artful stacks to the dozens left by other trekkers with steady hands.

Dorje watches from the trail as Donna balances rocks.  He fashionably wears my bright red daypack on his chest.

NEPAL 040812 Question: When is a hike a trek?

Answer: When you take that hike in the Himalayas. 

“Trekking is simply another name for hiking. The term, which is from Afrikaans and originally meant a journey by ox cart across South Africa, was first applied to hiking in Nepal in the early 1960's [other sources say 1964] by retired Ghurka [Regiment] [Lieutenant] Col. Jimmy Roberts. Roberts was the first person to take paying clients on guided hikes in Nepal and patterned his treks after early Nepal [Himalayan] mountaineering expeditions. His trips had basically everything the big expeditions had -- guides, Sherpa porters, cooks, and kitchen boys. Clients didn't scale the peaks; but they came close and that was what they wanted. Today, camping treks are still done the way Col. Roberts pioneered them.”*

AND,  if you go hiking along the Milford Track in New Zealand, you are “tramping.”   If you hike in Australia, you are “bushwalking,” in Scotland you are “hill walking,” but if you had accompanied Bill Bryson along the Appalachian Trail, you were just taking A WALK IN THE WOODS.

*World Vision Travels & Tours (P) Ltd., Thamel, Kathmandu, Nepal.”

http://www.worldvisiontours.com/trekking_in_nepal.php

NEPAL 040712 Trek Day # 2 Hille to Banthanti

Hello Dear Friends

Today we headed up the famous "unrelenting" Ulleri steps, pictured above passing next to the Super View Guest House in the prosperous village of Ulleri on our way to Banthanti.

In bright sunshine under clear, cool skies we left Hille (elev. 5000 ft.) at 7:30 AM to climb the “unrelenting staircase” to Ulleri for lunch and continue to Banthanti (7,400 ft.) for overnight at the Heaven View Guest House, where, as you will see, we were truly given the “‘Heartly’ Welcome” announced by the sign gracing the friendly red front of the lodge. 

NEPAL 040612 Trek Day #1: Naya Pul to Hille

Hello Everyone

We bundled into our van at the hotel in Pokara at 8:00 AM and drove to Naya Pul where the trail starts.  Karma and Donna were remembering that on their trek in this same area, the WALK started near Pokara and there was no road to Naya Pul.  As we were to learn, roads are a mixed blessing to the communities along the trekking routes in the Annapurna area – making access easier in emergencies, but reducing the work opportunities for porters and the number of visitors to trail-side lodges.

Here is the "wilderness trail head" at the Hotel Buddha at the bus stop in Naya Pul where our van left us = 6 Trekkers, 3 porters, 2 helpers, and Jawane, our guide and "Chief Operations Officer." 

Hotel Buddha, Naya Pul, Nepal

NEPAL 040512 Kathmandu to Pokara

Dear Everyone

Today we made a most interesting drive from Kathmandu to Pokara, the epicenter of trekking in the Annapurna Himalaya.  We left our hotel in Boudha at 8:00 AM with our guide Jawane, his 15-year-old son, our four porters, and the driver and his brother.  Our vehicle was a Toyota van that holds 12 passengers and lots of luggage.  We arrived at our hotel in Pokara at 2:45 in the afternoon with two stops, one that included having milk tea, McVittie's Digestive Biscuits (yet another vestige of the British Empire in this part of the world), and Peanut M&M's, and the other to deal with the liquid vestiges of the metabolism of the tea from the first stop.

My first picture for you for today shows some of the traffic in Boudha that we encountered near the stupa as we were leaving our neighborhood. The stupa was teeming with people there for a special celebration.  Never a dull moment in KTM!

Traffic in Boudha

The light tan smudges on the lower right side of the picture are my fingers covering part of the lens on my iPhone as I held it out the window of the van in a death grip.  I love the smile on the guy driving the scooter, so I'm particularly sad about the smudges, but I didn't drop my precious phone cum camera.

NEPAL 040412 Gifts for the Rinpoche and Dancers at Pashupatinath

Dear All

This was our last day in "KTM" before our trek.  Yesterday evening we had dinner with Karma's daughter Maisie, his son-in-law Sky, and first wife Arlene at our favorite restaurant, Flavors which is next to the stupa here in Boudha.  It was a warm occasion repeated tonight at the Kathmandu Guest House in the heart of Tamel, the tourist district in the old part of downtown Kathmandu.  We are glad to have stayed in Boudha at the Rinpoche's quiet guesthouse away from the intense shopping and busy huckstering of Thamel.

Today was our last day of teaching.  After the last talk there was a ceremony to thank the teachers, translators, and assistants.  Then the students had a chance to offer a donation to the Rinpoche and his translator.  Donations – such as  made on our behalf by our Friendly Helper Monk before we went to Chitwan -- are placed in envelopes and then wrapped in a kadha and presented. Below is a somewhat blurry image of Donna wrapping her donation.  When a donation is made, while the donor is bowing before him, the Rinpoche drapes an acknowledging kadha over their shoulders.  Quite an elegant ceremony.

After lunch in the manicured gardens of Sechen Monastery and a little shopping, we went back to our room and sorted out what we would leave at our hotel in Pokara and what the porter would carry for us on the trek.

NEPAL 040312 Monks Can Dance and "Rainy Day Schedule"

Monks Can Dance

This is an account by Donna Barnett of the lama dancing at the Sechen Monastery :-) 

"I often think of monks practicing meditation most of the day.  Nothing is what is seems in Nepal and that proved true for my perception of monks.  We attended a series of ritualized dances performed by the monks of Sechen monastery. Each dance was unique in costumes but similar in style.  At one end of the courtyard was a raised platform where the musicians sat playing very strange looking instruments -- Long brass horns, drums and cymbals.  All of which when played together created a loud rhythmic beat.  A chanter with a deep resonate voice blended with the cacophony of sounds.  Fifteen monks walked down 10 steps on the opposite side of the musicians.  They were helped by 2 monks who were needed to hold up the heavy, colorful, and most elaborate costumes I've ever seen.