Our 1st holidays: Langtang valley

We finally started our 1st holidays after more than 7 months in Nepal… although on the 1st day, Simon still had to go to the office to help the "Thulo manche" (big boss) to finish a report.

On Saturday we overslept a bit (that's a first for Simon), but that made no difference because when we arrived to the bus station, all buses were fully booked for at least the following 4 days. It was the beginning of Dashain festival where all families get together, so transport is more than busy and the number of passenger in the buses exceed by quite a lot the safe number, including people travelling on the roof…

A travel agent managed to get us a jeep for the following morning… and thank God we missed the bus and we had to take a jeep!!!! Half of the 120 km road was not paved and in a few points the path had been partially washed away... I am not too sure a bus would have made it. It took us 7 hours to arrive to the destination (Syabru Bensi), a small village where the Langtang river meets the Trisuli river and very near the Tibetan border. On the way, we crossed lots of Tibetan goats/sheep herds going towards Kathmandu to be slaughtered for the Dashain festivity.

After 7 hours seating in a jeep we felt like moving a bit so we started our walk up the Langtang valley for about 2 hours, where a very simple "tea house" hosted us. We took a shower (hot water in a bucket) before the sun disappeared and it became very cold, and into the dinning room where a wood burner kept us warm. By 7:30 pm we were ready to go to bed.

Next morning at 6am we started our 1,800 meters climb to Langtang village (3,400 meters). We initially walked through a narrow valley within the forest but when the valley started to widen and the forest to clear at about Ghora Tabela at around 2,900 meters, some snowed peaks were at sight.

Guesthouses could be found every 1-2 hours, and we decided to stop at Langtang village, in the very clean Eco Guest House with a very small room with a beautiful view, an impressive solar hot water shower and a very nice lady running it and cooking delicious potato soup and anything else you needed.

Next day started very cloudy and since we were a bit tired and the guest house was nice, we decided to remain the day in Langtang… and it turned up being a good choice because it became very windy and rainy (snow a few meters higher up) by early morning.

We spent the day looking at the village life from the warm living room while eating, reading and talking to the lady owner - she speaks good basic English (thank God for it), Nepali and Tibetan. Most people living in the valley have Tibetan origin and they still talk to each other using this language.

That specific day was the one day of the week when people could collect grass from the government land. "Bush men" kept going by in front of the guesthouse – men, women or children carrying huge amount of grass on their backs. The grass is critical for the animals to survive during the cold winter when the snow forces people and animals to live indoors for about 2 months.

The lady explained to us that her husband went to Kathmandu to fetch their 4 kids where they study because the Langtang school teacher is more worried about working the field and taking care of his animals than teaching. Her family arrived on the 2nd evening, together with 11 other French tourists (and their guides and porters).

Next morning we set of to the highest village of the valley (Kiangjing at about 3,800 meters). The bright blue ski allowed us to fully appreciate the landscape that unfolded in front of us when we arrived in the snowed Kiangjing, surrounded by mountains up to 7,000 meter high. The wall of Gangchenpo peak is extraordinary… Overall, fantastic.

We spent a couple of days in Kiangjing discovering the valley further up (to Langshisa) and the couple of peaks right by the village.

The initial plan was to walk back to Kathmandu, over the Gosainkund lakes and the Helambu valley. But we decided to retrace our steps back down the valley and take a jeep back home… and have a more relaxed break.

Kathmandu was very quiet since every body went to meet their families in their villages. It was very pleasant.

That's all for now. Regards,

Laura