Lukla, June 27

Although the connection is erratic, it is nice to be able to tell you I'm still alive. I can't upload any pictures so they will follow later. I'm in Lukla, after 7 days of the roughest trekking I've ever done. There are no roads in this part of Nepal, so all traffic and transport still goes on foot or by mule. And no wonder, cause the Himalayan valleys are deep and the passes are exhaustively high. First you climb thousands of meters up, just to go down all the way again the next day. Add the monsoon, and you have the additional discomfort of never ending rain, clouds and mist. It can rain for days in the lower mountains here, non ending. The track turns into a slippery mud pool (not nice when it runs next to a terrible chasm). Your clothes are soaked (a rain coat only holds out so long). Then there are the leeches; they crawl out of the ground as soon as the wetness starts.

From Kathmandu it took 11 hours to reach Jiri by bus, in other words: a whole day. From Jiri a dirt track continues to Shivalaya. The monsoon had made the track to Shivalaya impossible to navigate, so my first day of walking was to Shivalaya, a small outpost in an alpine valley at 1700 m above sea level. It was only 4 hours walking, according to the guide, but it took me a day. The flue had made me very unfit! It took me 3 hours to climb just 500 m! I hoped it would go over by itself, but no. The next day the walk continued over Deurali (another village of that name, at 2750 m) to Bhandar, where I slept in a farm. The kids were so excited by my visit that they couldn't leave me alone. My bag was thoroughly searched and they begged me to have them keep every object. In the end, I found my pencil was missing, so that must have found its way into a schoolbag.
From Bhandar the track leads a long way down to Kinja (1640 m) and then up again to the Lamjura La (3530 m). I slept my fourth night in the small village of Sete on the way to that pass (2670 m, all clothes were soaked). From Sete the trail goes over the pass to the village of Junbesi (20 houses, two monasteries, and 15 lodges), where I wanted to take a day off. Instead, I spent a day in bed with fever and head ache. The same flue that made me so tired on the way to Shivalaya came back with a vengeance.

Since I felt better the next day I walked on to Ringmu, where I tasted local apple cider and met an interesting Tasmanian volunteer. His organization is constructing sanitary blocks at the local schools, in order to prevent the large fall-out of girls after they turn 12. Thing is, Nepal is still a very traditional society and menstruation is considered something unclean and shameful. The poor girls don't go to school any longer because they feel ashamed! Providing a place to wash and clean themselves can prevent the fall-out.

After Ringmu there was a last pass (Takshidu La, 3071 m, mist and rain) before the village of Nunthala, where I slept in another lodge without heating, so no chance of drying any clothes there either. After Nunthala the trail drops into the valley of the Dudh Kosi, the river that drains the Everest region. Following the river upstream you finally reach the destination. The river, though, made a deep gorge and it took two more days following a slippery trail far above the chasm to reach Lukla.

Lukla is something of an outpost in the wilderness. Perched like an eagle's nest above the gorge, it has a small airport, constructed with aid from Sir Edmund Hillary's fund. The air strip plunges straight into the chasm, so it's a rather dangerous airport. Only very small planes can navigate the short runway. Due to this airport, goods can be flown in and sold. The stuff (rice, food, cement, gas, etc) is then transported to the outlying villages on the back of mules or yaks. So in short, it feels like a frontier town in the wilderness. From here the trail leads on to Namche Bazar at 3500 m, the last major village and starting point of the trails to Gokyo, Everest Base Camp and Cho Oyu Base Camp in the Sagarmatha National Park. I'll hope to be there next time I write.