Realising a boyhood dream...trekking the Himalayas

Extracts from my journal...from a trek in the Himalayas earlier this month...with my dad!

I’ve been preparing for this trek for 3 years and first spoke to our guide in 2010 about the idea taking my dad on a trek to realise his boyhood dream – walking amongst the Himalayas.  Dad first became obsessed with the Himalayas when Everest was conquered in the 1950s and he was a teenager.  Now, aged 73 he had so far spent a good part of his seventies discussing the best time to go (it had to fit in with a research project I was running in Kathmandu), our fitness levels, equipment, length of trek, location of trek (Everest or Annapurna?) whether we could eat local food, at what height altitude sickness kicks in...  Over the past 6 months dad had also been in training, taking on longer and longer walks and carrying 20kg packs.  Although I’d managed one or two walks recently my knees had suffered for days when we climbed Ben Nevis two years ago (and dad was fine!!) which had made me nervous about a Himalayan trek…we were both a bit anxious about whether we could cope, and hoped we wouldn’t get injured or sick and ruin it for each other.

We started our trek at Nyapul, a scrappy place by the river about an hour's jeep ride from Pokhara, the path was lined with small shacks selling everything from rucksacks to digestive biscuits.  Our guide is Prem, recommended by a friend of a friend. He’s a lithe, slight man with a ponytail and gravelly voice.  He talked politics for the first hour or so, enthusiastically critiquing democracy in Nepal, the influence of China and India, the cultural devastation caused by road building in the foothills, the uselessness of most Nepali men (drinking and playing cards) – in fact the whole day was punctuated with political discussion.  Not your average guide I think (well he is studying for a PhD in cultural trauma)!  We walked up all day, first along a road (or 'motor' way as Prem called it) that snaked through villages rather choked with tea houses, then after we stopped for lunch at the ‘Don’t Pass Us’ tea shop and I bought this diary, and we started going seriously up along a stepped path.

We saw a snake before lunch – a tiny worm-like creature with an inflated yellow head – venomous apparently.  As for other wildlife we saw red headed vulture, step eagles, black kites and pack ponies along the trail (not really wild animals though!).  The funniest was seeing pack ponies with their heavy loads and antiquated harnesses like something out of the 13^th century alongside their driver on his 21^st century mobile phone nonchalantly chatting away. At our lunch stop there was a sign saying 4525 steps to Gandruk – our final destination for the night, just a little daunting!  It started to cool down a bit through cloud cover after lunch which was a relief for dad – I found out later he’d had a bit of a dicky tummy all morning (such an English phrase!) and he’s never been a huge fan of the heat so I think he found the morning hard. We stopped quite regularly - Kailash our porter usually determining when.  Kailash is in training to be a guide, we aren’t able to talk much as his English isn’t great yet and he’s a shy, quiet lad. He sings as he walks though which is lovely and, for me, gives him a depth somehow that doesn’t require intellectual conversation.  

We reached Gandruk at 3pm, quite exhausted.  We’d been buoyed on by the increasingly rural and beautiful surroundings, the path in shadow from moss covered cliffs, the rubbish strewn at the side of the ‘motor’ way replaced with ferns and small shrubs.  We are staying in a beautiful old traditional tea house with wobbly clay walls.  Dad soon struck up conversation with a number of the guests – one of whom met his wife in Nepal in the ‘70s and couldn’t believe how much it had changed in terms of pollution, urban sprawl and general ugliness.  I saw a step eagle when dad was having a shower and he was miffed so I teased him about missing it and he teased me about my eyesight but we watched the sky and chatted until it was too cold to sit out.  After dinner (lasagna for dad, the local ‘dal baht’ for me) we went to bed at 9.00 in preparation for the big, worrysome ‘down’ tomorrow.

Day 1 The 'motor' way

Dad the Explorer!

Tea House at Gandruk