Exploring Kathmandu

date: Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 4:59 AM
subject: trekking

Hey all,

Things have been pretty excellent in kathmandu. Been going around seeing the sights and enjoying some of the cool places. Overall it is pretty crazy. The town is just bursting with people. Incredibly dirty. So smoggy I find myself coughing a lot. And so hazy you cant see the himalayas from here. Still, some of the historical and religious sights that we have seen are pretty amazing. Lots of history. No city planning means narrow side streets with random temples built in to the over crowded cityscape. Its pretty cool though. Ethan and Ashley have been great in showing us around and getting us prepared for our trek.

We leave for our trek tomorrow. We will be taking a bus to Dunche and then heading out from there. We have discovered some complications with the permiting for climbing a big peak so we are leaving all the climbing gear here and just doing the trek. We are planning to leave the main trekking route a bit to get up to some smaller non-technical peaks and also visit some smaller villages that have not been affected by the tourism/trekking. So we have brought a little bit of camping gear but will have lighter packs since we wont be carrying ropes and crampons.

Its a bit disappointing to not be climbing something big but that is the way it is. There are some smaller peaks that will give us some good views of shishapagma in tibet. Very exciting. Will take lots of pictures.

In any case we plan on being back in Kathmandu on the 21st though coming back on the 22nd or 23rd is not unreasonable either. We are trying to keep our schedule as open as possible. As long as we have a day to buy billions of prayer flags and visit the monkey temple when we get back it will be good. Otherwise I dont think I need to spend too much time in Kathmandu.

Ethan wants his computer back so thats all I have for now. With only 4 hours of power a day computer time is valuable. Will write when I return.