Off on another expedition. Going on two treks into the Himalayas. It’s really three as we are tacking the Annapurna circuit on to the end of the Manaslu circuit. And because we will be acclimatised to the altitude we are doing the Gokyo Trek as well.
There are 14 peaks in the world over 8000m. We will get to see seven of them in these two treks 🙂
Mount Everest – 8,848 m (Nepal/China)
Lhotse – 8,516 m (Nepal/China)
Makalu – 8,463 m (Nepal/China)
Cho Oyu – 8,201 m (Nepal/China)
Dhaulagiri I – 8,167 m (Nepal)
Manaslu – 8,163 m (Nepal)
Annapurna I – 8,091 m (Nepal)
11-Oct
Most of our crew has arrived. Trish and Marienne had to get a taxi from the airport. We got picked up at 1am. Our flight from Singapore was delayed. And getting a visa was a drawn out process.
After a few hours sleep we went for a wander around Thamel and to exchange some money. It’s Saturday today, most of the locals have the day off. So relatively quite for Thamel. Lots of shops selling hiking gear and tourist stuff.
12 Oct
Today the Trekking company has organised a tour around some of Kathmandu’s attractions. We all jumped into a minibus and headed off to the Monkey Temple.
The temple is a very busy place. Lots of tourists, worshippers. Along with an overload of shops and touts.
The local Mandela Art school did and excellent presentation on how the Mandelas are created. Lots of examples of student work all the way to grand master painters. You really can see the difference once it’s shown to you. The basic Mandela takes a week to paint. The top end can take up to a month. The price varies as well with student work around us$60 all the way up to the grand master work at us$1000. We are all set now if we ever need to buy one.
We also had a tour around Durbar Square. They have repaired a lot of the earthquake damage that we saw on our last visit seven years ago.
Then it was off into the mayhem of the Bazzar. Wall to wall stalls, people, motorbikes and cars.
Lots of tourist stuff as well as food.
Finally we wandered back through. Thamel to the hotel.
The crew had a briefing from the Trekking company this afternoon about the trek and a final gear check. Turns out we needed boot chains with spikes in case we struck a lot of ice. We had bought chains with us but they don’t have any spikes.
The outfitters just down the street were very happy to give us a good discount on five sets. At 3500 rupee each (about au$35) they were a quarter the price of set in Australia.
Tomorrow we are off on the Trek. The company arranged a dinner at the excellent restaurant around the corner. We got to pig out on salads and other food we aren’t likely to see for a few weeks.
Tomorrow is a 6am start for the 13 hour bus ride to Barpak. Getting up early is easy as we are all still adjusting to the 5.25 hr time zone change.