A Hike in Nepal.

This year the Thai government finally eased their entry restrictions and introduced a scheme called "Test & Go", whereby travellers could do a single PCR test at the airport and then one night quarantine while waiting the results. Then you would be free to travel. This meant that suddenly overseas holidays were something those of us that live here could entertain.

I love hiking in the mountains of Nepal so I quickly booked a three week trip to Nepal to visit the Everest region known as Khumbu. Then Omicron arrived and the Thai authorities immediately stopped the test & go entry protocols in an effort to stem the spread of the new covid strain - to be honest I ws not surprised and I was able to negotiate with the airline to postpone my tickets indefinitely hoping to be able to fulfil the trip sometime in the next 12 months.

So sadly I don't have any pics or videos to post from Nepal this year but I have some great images from the last trip to Nepal where I re-visited the first trek I ever did. The first time I trekked in Nepal was in 1992 - the images below are from that trip - I found some old prints and ran thru my scanner....

I was only 19 at that time and hiking through the Himalaya for a week had a profound effect on me. I have since then hiked mountains all over the world, from The Andes to the Rockies, multiple times back to Nepal and India and the low altitude ranges of Africa and South East Asia. I love the mountains and every year I'm drawn back to them.

My last trip to Nepal was three years ago - I went with a girlfriend that claimed she really wanted to go trekking in Nepal. I remember thinking there was no way she would be able to handle it - the cold, the discomfort, the toilets and the unsavoury food at 4000m in a stone hut......;)

Well to my surprise and relief she loved every minute of it and for the most part was well ahead of me on every day. I insisted she carry her own backpack and no guide required. We trekked the original route that I had taken as a teenager in 1992. I only remembered two key sections - the beginning and the pass at 4500m. I suspect the trails had changed and we were possibly on slightly different routes. Many of the villages we passed through had been terribly affected by the earth Quake several years earlier and there were still ruined and some building dangerously close to toppling over but left standing after everything of value stripped.

Here are some pics from that last trip. It was the Helambu route that then looped over to the Gosaikunda Lakes and down to Syphru Besi at the start of the Langtang Valley.