Langtang Trek - Day 1

From Kathmandu to Syabrubesi

So then the first farewell from Kathmandu, the next eight days are a leap into the unknown. This has a noticeable effect on my sleep. Every few minutes, so it seems to me, I wake up, thoughts racing. Did I pack everything I need on the trek? Isn't the rucksack too heavy? (it is!) Do I have enough energy for the strenuous trek? (Well, well).

All this is new to me. Normally I sleep like a stone before important events, this time it seems that other factors have an influence on me. Is it the age? Doubts about my performance?

Disturbing.

Anyway, I'm definitely not in a well-rested, fit state when I take a (warm) shower at 5 with glued eyes, maybe the last one before none or ice-cold ones. Let's see …

 

Night watch in the reception

A familiar picture that annoys me every time: arriving at the reception of the hotel, I wake up two guys rising from their uncomfortable sleeping positions on the short visitor sofa or on the floor.

They have to spend the night here, the poor guys, because there are simply no other overnight accommodations available. But this is only one of the observations that will bother me in the next few days.

 

A few minutes early ...

The walk through the slowly waking Thamel is finally without risk of driven over. There are only a few motorcycles and cars on the road, in some places people yawn extensively and stretch. The rucksack feels good, my fears disappear into thin air.

I'm a few minutes early, the office is still closed. Let's see if the bad reputation of the Nepalese regarding punctuality comes true.

This gives me the opportunity to watch some workers transporting old bricks in their baskets attached to their foreheads from a construction site in the backyard to a waiting truck. All of them are young, sinewy guys with stoic faces who fetch, carry and empty the heavy loads. I wonder what they'll get paid for it.

Maybe I don't want to know.

 

The bus station

Sitaram, my guide, helper and friend for the next eight days, shows up just a few minutes later. We take the road to the end of Thamel and look for a taxi to the "bus station".

There's a huge crowd there. Along the road, numerous buses are ready for departure. Around a ticket booth, which offers the appropriate tickets, a cluster of wildly gesticulating men has formed. It gives the impression that half of Kathmandu wants to go traveling this morning.

 

But Sitaram has taken care of everything, my rucksack is tied up on the roof due to lack of space in the luggage room. I hope, however, that the clouds in the sky are not an announcement for rain. Backpack and sleeping bag wet? An unpleasant image.

A few metres away, farmers from the surrounding area sell their products at the vegetable market. One believes to smell the fresh vegetables even through the stench of exhaust fumes. Loud cries, discussions, laughter mix with the honking of the passing vehicles.

There is already a lot going on at seven o'clock in the morning.

 

The bus

The bus that will take us to Syabrubesi, the starting point of the trek, can be described with some good will as run-down, old and ugly. With less good will one would have to take it out of circulation as soon as possible. I assume that in the best case it would find a scrap dealer in Switzerland.

 

We have two reasonably comfortable looking seats, but there is no room to stretch the legs (because the person in front has filled the space under his seat with bottles). And the bus is full to bursting. Every seat is occupied (and as it will turn out later, every free space in the aisle and elsewhere).

The driver's cabin, separated from the rest of the bus by dirty windows and a rusty, mostly swinging door, also seems to offer more comfortable seating for special guests. However, I never find out which passengers are allowed access and which are not. That belongs to the chapter of Nepalese logic.

 

 

Chinese guest workers

In front of us are a couple of very Chinese-looking passengers, all poorly dressed, all permanently chatting in Mandarin and, if there is a possibility, smoking every spare minute. These are evidently guest workers who work for a period of time in Nepal and then return to Tibet.

My thoughts go back to those days in Yunnan, the warm, friendly people who do not correspond to the usual cliché at all. Then I see these workers in front of me, in their worn clothes, their luggage, which probably contains a lot of things that could lead to problems at customs. But that's another story.

 

The traffic jam(s)

We are on the main east-west road, the Prithvi Highway from Kathmandu to Pokhara. It also means that traffic in Kathmandu becomes a never-ending stream of stinking and honking participants.

And it also means that we need more than an hour until we can finally leave the capital city, which lies under a thick (smog) fog, from traffic jam to traffic jam. Then we descend, on the other side of the valley we can see the dense rows of vehicles, which we have to follow.

The results of the waking night are noticeable, my head sinks forward again and again, but I don't miss too much. We are permanently in an armada of trucks, buses, cars and motorcycles that try to win a few meters by high-risk overtaking manoeuvres.

However – if you get used to it and rationally consider – it becomes clear that – as strange as it sounds – these death-defying maneuvers are needed. Otherwise you'd starve to death behind a truck that's driving at just under 10 kilometers per hour.

So you just overtake where you assume that no one will meet you at this second. So also in front of curves and in places where the road borders the abyss. The fact that in most cases a bus, a truck, a motorbike packed with a whole family comes along, is taken into account. What do you have brakes for?

 

Piss-Stop

After just under two hours a piss-stop, the description of the corresponding facilities I leave to the imagination of the readers (but as it turns out, far from the worst).

A little later the planned lunch stop in a gloomy restaurant. A menu card doesn't exist, and what is offered at the bar doesn't seem to be appetite-stimulating. Nevertheless, I decide in favour of Daal Bhat, the Nepalese national dish, which is a good decision.

However, I would have done better without the mineral water, because after another hour my bladder signals and causes a state of progressive distress. With the kind help of Sitaram, I can use a stop to overcome organic despair and witness a further increase in terrible toilets.

 

Lottery balls

At some point we leave the main road and turn right. Now it's getting really hard. The road is partly in a condition that can only be described as pathetic. Is it still a road or a streambed that is used as a road?

In any case we are twirled around, it is advisable to hold on somewhere. Just imagine the balls in the lottery draw: the way the balls must feel, we feel now.

But the view through the window shows exciting pictures. The area becomes rougher, the rivers wilder, the abysses deeper. Something that corresponds to my preferences, but I secretly fear that the next few hours could also be a general escalation of these pictures. What might actually turn out to be true.

 

Memories of Ladakh

Anyone who remembers my description of the highly dangerous route from Leh to Manali knows about the dangers. The chasms are not so deep, but unlike Ladakh we are not sitting in a modern minibus with a talented driver, but in an overcrowded, run-down bus, whose brakes were possibly last serviced in the Sixties.

 

Anyway, I'm sitting in the first row so to speak, so I can constantly see into the dizzying chasms as the bus turns its curves, sometimes even overtaking, and occasionally has to dodge to the last centimetre of the chasm when passing a truck or bus.

You close your eyes and try to think of something else ...

 

Syabrubesi - In the shadow of the mountains

But even the worst rides will eventually come to an end, and after about 7 hours, we reach the small village of Syabrubensi, where we will spend the night. My room is okay, but my groaning and creaking knees do not find the Asian toilet funny at all.

 

The menu promises delicacies that my growling stomach likes to try out. But who could resist the temptations of Mo: Mos: in all its variations (that's how you obviously write it)?

 

 

Hot Springs

There are numerous trekkers in the village, some (drawn) on the way back, others (hopefully) before leaving.

In order to loosen my somewhat tense muscles – the bus ride took over seven hours – I take a walk through the village, discover a hot spring at the rushing river, in whose dirty basin I wouldn't even put my big toe.

 

I crawl rather early into my sleeping bag, hoping for a few hours of better sleep ...

 

P.S. Matching Song:  Faith Evans - Mesmerized

And here the journey continues ...