The old boy tutted and walked off down the Ghats at Varanasi, mumbling "Too many steps!"
Now it doesn't take much to confuse me but, I was confused at this point as we picked our way to the beautiful Ganesh temple. I was confused because Derek had assured me that the route we were taking was the "old" trekking route and therefore much better than flying into Namsche Bazarre as most trekkers do from Kathmandu. Namsche Bazarre is at a height of about 11,000 feet and trekkers would aclimetize there before going on to Gorok Shep and base camp. Jiri, where we started, was much lower so Derek told me, we would get aclimetized better.
Like a berk...I believed him!!
The bus ride to the small Nepalese town of Jiri was almost 12 hours from our last stop for supplies. These were emergency supplies of chocolate and tinned ham and other packets of trekkers dried food a bit like pot noodles, which when added with boiling water would give you a supposed meal!! I say supposed because they were god-awfull, and indeed made the traditional pot noodle seem like a sunday roast in comparison!! Now at this stage I had never done any "serious" trekking in my life....Derek and I had done "training" treks in Derbyshire and Yorkshire before undertaking this expedition and infact when I had first tried on my fully loaded backpack back home at my pub, I almost toppled over backwards!! I was much more used to hiking and therefore having only a 20 litre day pack. My backpack (the one I am wearing to the right in my banner) was a whacking, great 65 litres and weighed about 20lbs!! just under a quarter of my total body weight at that time. During the trek I was to off-load some of the contence of my pack to Derek as it was just too knackering to lug about..Now let me explain about the trails from Jiri. They are indeed stone steps!! Very steep stone steps, and they are not level or safe and often slippery with mud, slush and snow! By as soon as day too on the trek I was begining to wonder just what I had left myself in for!...Also because our route was transveresing the Himalaya. In other words every day was "climb, decend, climb, decend" and it was totally exhausting! I had read some sound advice about trekking in Nepal about a year before we left and it said "when you look, stop and look. When you trek, Trek! This proved to be true, several times over when I lost my footing. We were in February and a good time to watch the beautiful rhodendrons out in bloom. Derek is a big chap and his legs are far longer than mine so he was leaping about like a mountain goat. I, however, would be transfixed by the awesome scenery, while trying to keep up with him, with my rock scrabbling, slipping and sliding everywhere! It was awful!! and we provided much entertainment for the locals!!
The night before the snow storm...we were lost!!
Derek had, had the map and I the compass but his map reading skills are not the best. We spent the day climbing to a snowy ridge called Lamjhura pass at 10,000 feet and appeared to be going around in circles as when we stopped at some villages for tea, I would ask my usual "Yo ghar unkho nhame keho?" translated means "what is the name of this village?" at 3 seperat villages I had got the same reply "GOYEM!" This was amazingly confusing but we concluded we were, indeed, on the right track and there must be a lower Goyem, middle Goyem and and upper Goyem...all of which were not on our map. Many villages wern't on the map either, but I had read to expect this, so we carried on to the upper of the three, where we were to make camp for the night. There were a couple of bhatti's (tiny cafe's) and a small school. It was a pleasent enough place and I was very relived to be stopping for the night, as our cold fingers worked on erecting our small, mountain tent. With the tent up and sorted we made our way to a bhatti for supper, much rakshi drinking and my journal writing. I remember I had been quite tipsy, when I was accosted by the village school teacher who appeared to be equally drunk. (drinking in Nepal is a national obsession!) with sign language and my crap Nepalese I gathered she wanted to take me to meet her school children!! This was to be the most delightful part of the evening! She led me to her small wooden walled school and quite suddenly I felt like some kind of movie star as I was greeted by 40 or so squeeling, excited kids aged about 7!! I was invited to sit cross legged in front of the school room and groups of children thrust their school books under my nose for me to write some "Engerishhh" in them!! The teacher was delighted!! and with our session ended she took me back to the bhatti and even bought me a "special" Yak butter raksi!! By now I was quite drunk! and our supper of Dhal Baht Takari (a kind of lentil stew and rice) had arrived...To wards the end of our supper, our landlord came rushing over with a red face and very flustered.....
"Snow storm come, Snow storm come!!" he yelled!!
We looked at each other and hastily finished our supper and thanked the landlord as we hurridley left!
The landlord was not joking either!!
When we got out side there was a really nasty blizzard that had suddenly blown up, and we could hardly see our way back to the tent! In the mountains this often happens! It can be quite warm and sunny one second and the next you get a blizzard!!
Somehow we got back to our tent and bungled our selves up for the night. I remember I squeezed myself into my mountain sleeping bag and was even wearing 4 pairs of socks!! But I was still frozen as the blizzard slammed into our tent. Derek had a small bottle of rum and a small flask of boiling water borrowed from the bhatti, and this warmed us as we drifted to sleep, somehow!
"SCHEEEKET!"
This odd sound woke me in the middle of the night, and to my relife the wind seemed to have calmed!!
"SCHEEKET!"
The sound came again, and my newly woke brain began to process this new noise!
It was coming from the tents outer cover, and sounded like razor sharp claws, were scraping down the cover of the tent!!!
The noise came again and much closer to my ear this time. I shook Derek awake and in a paniced voice, stage whispered!
" There is a f*****g YETI out side the tent!!!"
Derek fround at me and was just about to say "don't be bloody stupid" when the noise came again!! He paused and looked to the area of the tent from where the sound had come...slowly and quietly he moved to unzip the tent and have a peak outside!
"be carefull, I hissed!!"
The next thing I heard was his giggling!
"Wha.....!"
"Your yeti is just lumps of snow falling off the outside of the tent!" he said, cheerfully!!
....its amazing what altitude sickness can do to the mind!!
Ok that's all for today folks...but there is more to come!! "oh noooooooooo!" I hear you moan!! "not more travel waffle!" hehehehe, yeah sorry!!
I will wright part two of this very soon!
*lights ciggie and makes tea*
This is me at Goyen...
