Trekking ABC in Summer

Gambu asked me to write about my trip on his blog, and I was glad to!

I had heard about Gambu through a friend, so when my girlfriend and I decided to travel to Nepal, we sent him and email and was able to hire him for 10 days for the Annapurna Base Camp trek.

I've been hiking plenty of times in the French Alps, and had also spent months in India, and figured this would be similar, while my girlfriend had never hiked or been to a country like Nepal before.

The whole trip was amazing, both the hiking and the city/touristy bits. Our favorite city was Phokara. Kathmandu is OK, but the pollution, traffic, noise, etc wears you down quickly - get out quickly to Phokara.

Our trip was the middle of August, and Gambu warned us this was going to be very very rainy, and full of leeches. He was right! I was amazed at how much it rained and how many leeches there were - as he said, the best times to visit are just before or just after summer, but the advantage of going then was that we had was that everything was very quiet, all the tea houses had space, the trails weren't crowded with tourists.

I think what I liked best about the trekking was the ever changing terrain. We went through so much, from dense jungle to dry mountain side, to village paths, and even stopped at Hot Springs! We never saw the Base Camp as my knee started acting up, so Gambu took us on a short cut back and took us on a tour of Phokara, including cave temples and the International Mountain Museum (which is a bit cheesy, but worth a few hours).

The food in the tea houses was great, though their version of Western dishes was funny at times. Pizza isn't quite pizza - but luckily the Dhal Bat (rice and lentils with a side dish of veggies) was great. I had an amazing Dhal Bat with smoked water buffalo at the last guest house we stayed in, and that meal rivaled any of the hundreds of Indian-stlye meals I've had in my life.

Gambu was great the whole time, had boundless energy, was always attentive and smiling, and double checked the rooms each morning to make sure I hadn't left anything (and it was a good thing he did!). His knowledge of the terrain was incredible, and even took us on a short cut through local rice paddies to skip half a day of hiking on the way back. His English is great, and we had no issue communicating (my 7th grade teacher might shake her head if she ever read his grammar, but that was about it!)

My girlfriend had such a great time she wants to go back in a year or two and try the Everest Base Camp trek, and we'll definitely hire Gambu again.

Some of our pictures are below.

This is Gambu and Kinga (my girlfriend), loading up their packs after breakfast.

And this is them 5 minutes later walking down the mountain. Most of the trail is either packed earth on the flat bits or well constructed stairs on the angled bits. As they say in Nepal, a little up, and little down!

This is walking along the river above a gorge, looking at the other side. It was rainy and misty, and the vertical cliff / forest had tons of little waterfalls.

South Annpurnna mountain at dusk - we had great views from one Tea House called

Nepali leeches aren't like the movie "The African Queen" where leeches are huge and swim at you. Nepali leeches are pretty small. You can pick them up in the walking through grass. They are small and fairly harmless, this one made it up to my sock and is trying to get through the sock (they often will) and you can see a bit of blood on my shin where another leech bit me. This is only an issue in the wet summer in the lowlands, not in the dry higher areas ever, and not in the low areas when it's dry (not summer).

If you aren't eating Dhal Bat, you'll be eating Momos. More or less like tortellini. Gambu took us to a restaurant where he knew the owner/cook, and she let me try to make a few. The pretty ones are hers, the deformed ones are mine.