Helambu Trek

Well I just arrived back late last night from  the Helambu trek in Nepal.  It was amazing, beautiful, hard, hot, cold, fun, exhausting, long and short!  I have a million things to do today so I have to make this entry short, but I wote this entry on my iPhone while I was on the trek so I thought I would post it now.  I will tell you more about it later.  Glad to be safe and sound back in Patan, sad and happy to be leaving tomorrow for home.

Trekking in Nepal

Helambu with Bishnu, Daniel and Cheta

April 18-20, 2011

Sitting in Thetapati tea house after the 2nd day of trekking. We walked for 6.5 hours today. We left Kutumsang at 7:30am after a great night's sleep. We were SO tired!!!  The day started off very tough. A lot of uphill and I felt very iron deficient. My legs felt like lead and I was a little worried. We walked for a while to a tea house and rested for a while. I needed it. Then we headed off for our lunch stop-Mangingot. That was at about 2500 m. It had started to rain about 20 minutes before we got there and even a bit of snow!  But when we walked in the door it started pouring. Like monsoon rain!  So of course we stayed inside by the fire and warmed up and waited it out. It didn't take too long before it completely cleared up!  We could see fresh snow on some amazing and close mountains. Unreal.

I have to mention that just before we got to the lunch stop we ran into a little girl who was so adorable. She reminded me so much of Ruby!!!  It was unreal. This past summer I was at my Dad's cottage with Amy, my Dad and the kids. Olivia and I were goofing around and I was taking photos while Olivia modeled her "polare". When Ruby saw us she started copying us and pulling her arm out of her shirt and I have the photos. It was so cute. Well this little girl was doing that!  I couldn't stop thinking about Ruby!  Then I saw a horse on the trail (which is actually insane...) and then I started thinking about Olivia. And then I couldn't stop thinking about Liam and the lizard and turtle!  I miss you all!!

So we arrived here at Thetapati just as the rains started again!  We have had some great luck!  This is a nice place and warm. I have a bad feeling that Bishnu and Cheta do not have a room though and that makes me sad...

I should also talk about our first day. We met with Bishnu, Cheta and the driver Ram at Patan Hospital at 7am. They came and picked our stuff up and we headed out. We took the jeep for a few hours to just past Chisopsani where we started our trekking. We got started at about 11:30 am. We stopped for lunch where we ran into a guy from Spain trekking and traveling in Nepal and India for 3 months on his own. We trekked for almost 7 hours that day!  It was amazing that I felt okay after being sick for 5 days.

Anyway, it has been a fantastic time so far and I'm sad it had to be shortened. Bishnu is fantastic!   I will definitely trek with him again and recommend him! 

I have eaten SO much rice it is hard to believe. The food has been great!  I have had a Mars bar deep fried into a spring roll and as a momo!  Delicious! 

I am so glad that all decided to do this despite my fear that I was not going to feel better.

We have seen quite a few other Western Trekkers. Most of them French. Likely from France. But a guy from Quebec gave me a flower just as we were leaving our lunch tea house yesterday and he was heading in. I shouldn't be surprised to run into a Canadian but I was. Right now there are 2 other groups here. Both with 3 trekkers. One group are German and the other group seems to be a mix of people from Germany, England and Australia?  It's a full house!

This has been a beautiful trek so far. It is truly amazing being in the mountains like this. I cannot believe how close we are to them. Right now we are so close it's hard to believe.

We will head down tomorrow and get picked up by the jeep that will drive us back to Kathmandu.

Anyway, I wanted to make sure that I wrote some of this down before I forgot it all.

It is REALLY really cold here. It's going to be a cold night!  So glad I brought my Down sweater!

Bye for now!