Trekking Langtang trail with Nepal Spirit Adventure. www.Nepalspiritadventure.com
Not many travelers visit Nepal's Himalayan Mountains during the winter season. Esper and I did, and simultaneously avoided large groups of other travelers so that we could experience the quiet, wild mountain landscapes in all their unique beauty. In 3.5 days we went from 1,400 elevation to 3,850 meters on the Langtang trail. The round trip was almost 80 km, and we managed the descent in 2 days at 23 km and 17 km per day. We felt very lucky that the owner of Nepal Spirit Adventure, Ram Thapa Magar came along for the trip—a very nice experience. We are soon up where trees are rare and signs of 21st-century civilization are even rarer. There is no water but ice on the bathroom floor in the morning. The accommodation is Spartan but clean and adequate, and when it's freezing outside, it's freezing inside. Here there are no ringing phones, no humming TV, and Wi-Fi rarely works. The power is obtained from a small solar cell unit on the tin roof. An old car battery keeps the power going after sunset.
The toilet is the hygienic Squatting Pan Toilet, which is a challenge for tired knees. But I quickly mastered the technique of using the ladle in the right hand and washing with the left. And I am sending a thought to India and their total ban on eating with the left hand and all their hand washing with soap before eating. The icy water here in the mountains of Nepal gives an extra twist to the "toilet visit without toilet paper" method. However, what the small teahouses lack in modern facilities, they more than make up for, with sky-high views on all sides.
The 7,234-meter-high mountain, Langtang Lirung, with snow a few thousand meters up, towers high in front of us. We sit and cling our cold hands to a cup of scalding tea and look at the peaks that are only some kilometers away - and relatively close to Tibet and the Chinese border. You are never more than an hour's walk from a simmering kitchen, a warm hearth, and a bed for the night. Altogether it was 5 nights, and in Langtang Village, we also commemorate the earthquake in 2015 at the Memorial Monument. The highest place we stayed was Kyanjin Gompa at 3,870m. At the altitude of 3,500 meters, the air will only contain 66% of the oxygen, it does at sea level. So I had a rough night.
We were combined with the annoyances from burning Yak shit smoke on the fireplace last night and Altitude sickness. But our super guide Ram took good care of us. Suban, our porter carried my backpack with the bulk of our luggage. Interesting that we carry the weight on our hips where they carry the weight on the head and shoulder. They don't use the hip belt at all. The Nepalese cuisine. The typical local food consists of dal bhat, which is rice, lentils, and vegetables. Among the mountain people, it is also common to eat flat bread, roti, noodles, oatmeal, and yak meat. The people here have close cultural ties to Tibet, and the last day we are in the mountains, starts Losar, the Tibetan New Year. So we got breakfast supplemented with special cakes. Losar is also experienced on our last day in Kathmandu after a 7-hour bus ride back.