Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: a Route and Planning Guide

FREE NEPAL TREKKING & THE GREAT HIMALAYA TRAIL: A ROUTE AND PLANNING GUIDE FOR ORGANISING A TREK IN NEPAL PDF

Great Himalaya Trails. About Nepal Contact Us. GHT Trailers. GHT Blog: Our most popular blog posts GHT Destinations Far West Nepal The sight of a white-turbaned Dhami, a shaman, with silver bangles on his arms and gold rings in his ears, will indicate just how far west you are of the modern world. Yet Hinduism and Buddhism blends with animism in local devotions, the most famous objec Humla Humla is the most remote district in Nepal, and one of the poorest. There are few tourists, and those you meet will most likely be headed to the border town of Hilsa, a stepping-stone to Mount Kailash in Tibet. Yet the largest lake in Nepal, ensconced within its smallest national park, Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal only three hours walk from an airstrip. Dolpa Until recently, what little the outside world knew of Dolpa was gleaned from artistic and spiritual accounts from early visitors. Here you will find everything the Himalayas have to offer, accessible along a selection of well-maintained trails that snake in and around the kilometre Annapurna massif, separated from the g Go off the beaten track in Ganesh Himal and Camp under the stars! Immerse yourself in the beauty and serenity of the Gosainkunda Lake or walk in the footsteps of explorer Bill Tilman across the challenging Tilman Pass. Makalu Barun Catch breathtaking views of Makalu, Everest and Lhotse; walk beneath towering granite cliffs and colossal crystal glaciers; test your limits on the gruelling 'three cols' trek from Makalu to Everest and camp in the pristine wilderness of the Makalu Barun Kanchenjunga Circling the Kathmandu Valley on the descent to the capital, you may well catch a sight of Everest. Cast your eyes yet further to the east, and on a clear day you will see the hazy outline of a hulking white massif, an entire range unto itself. Attractions Experience Nepal. Everest Naturally Nepal. Trekking Nepal is one of the world's premier destinations for first-time and experienced trekkers. Cultural Tours There are few other places in the world with such a harmonious blend of cultures as Nepal. Connect with us on. Nepal's Great Himalaya Trail: the Ultimate Guide to a Self-Supported Trek - Mountains with Megan

It goes through remote villages and across dangerous mountain passes. Inmyself and my hiking partner went to Nepal to do a self-supported hike of the Great Himalaya Trail. Over the course of four and a half months we hiked miles across Nepal. Check my Nepal archives for the posts I wrote during my thru-hike. Everything is a challenge from logistics, food resupplies, navigation, cultural and language barriers, local transportation to the trail, and personal health. Thru-hiking in the USA is often about hiking a lot of miles in a short amount of time. Not everyone has this philosophy, but I think we generally have an efficiency-minded culture. In Nepal, you have to go slow. The altitude slows you down, as well as the difficulties in navigating. In Nepal, if you try to force yourself to hike for the entire day you are going to be draining your body. Like I said before, you simply cannot consume enough calories from local food to be able to push for hour hiking days in a healthy way. But would I do it again? Hell no. It was unimaginably hard. However, I do find solace that I can continue my thru-hiking career knowing that the most difficult hike is behind me. Regardless, if the idea of hiking the Great Himalaya Trail has taken hold of you as it once took hold of me, read on. Or hire a trekking agency to take you. The guidebooks by Boustead and Bezemer are for the high route and the low route. So sometimes the information is not helpful. As far as having two forms of GPS maps, you also need both of them. Sometimes maps. Sometimes the GPS is useless. You can order the paper maps on Amazon or buy them for cheaper at Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal bookstore in Kathmandu. You can take a look at the maps online here for free. While you will need paper copies for your hike, you can use these while planning from home. A lot of our navigation process was simply asking locals which way to go. Or sometimes they send you on the local shortcut trail, and you end up lost. These are things to be aware of. Most people in mountain villages will not speak English. Simply say the name of the next village and point. They will point to the direction you need to go. I already wrote an entirely different article on this topic. This list is good for both the high route and low route for spring and summer. On the high route there are several guide mandatory regions: Kanchenjunga, the three technical passes after Makalu Base Camp, Manaslu, and Upper Dolpa. In more remote regions like Kanchenjunga expect them to charge more. For mountaineering guides, their rate goes up too. First of all, I met a handful of thru-hikers who hired an entire team to help them hike the Great Himalaya Trail. They had guides, a cook, and porters. One lady had a team of seven Nepalis helping her. If you are hiring guides, make sure you ask lots of questions. Read trekking agency reviews online. Make sure they have their certified guide credentials. The least awful of which the guide just got drunk for the entire trek and had all of his clients money. The worst was the trekkers who hired a guide to take them over the technical passes after Makalu Base Camp. The trekkers were basically on their own to figure it out and could have all easily died. Generally, I stuck to the low route when there were guide mandatory regions. Except we hired a guide for Manaslu. I started my hike in late-March and ended in August. Generally, the spring and autumn are the best times to hike in Nepal. Summer is monsoon season and winter in the Himalaya is a dangerous time for trekking. When we started on the low route in March it was already hot and humid. Some people do start their thru-hike in the autumn. If you do this, you have to move fast to avoid dealing with winter weather. I met one guy who was hiking half in spring and half in autumn. He probably had the most ideal weather. I have an entire post about the High Route vs. It seems like a lot of people get attached to the idea of hiking the entire high route. The best advice I can give you is to let go of that. The parts of the Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal route I hiked were harder than the parts of the high route I hiked. Plus, you have to be flexible with your hiking plans. Sometimes the weather does not allow you to hike the high route. There are four technical passes on the high route. Three of them are between Makalu Base Camp and the Everest region. If you want to do the technical passes, you need guides and mountaineering equipment. I met two different GHT hikers who had guides, and still had to turn back on Tashi Labsta because weather was so bad. One porter even had to be helicoptered out due to frost bite. You can easily avoid the technical passes and take the low route. We hiked up to Makalu Base Camp just for the fun of it, then took the low route towards the Everest region. You can get a day visa on arrival at the airport. I needed to say longer than 90 days, so I had to extend Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal visa at the immigration office. Do check the visa requirements on the official government website. Nepal visas have always been easy for me to get upon arrival, but requirements do change. Check the most up to date information before going. These costs are per person. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the permits, you can hire a trekking agency to organize them for you. For example, our TIMS permits were organized by a trekking agency thus Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal blue to indicate that we were with guides. Green permits are for independent trekkers. One police officer tried to give us trouble because our permit was the wrong color for independent trekkers. Additionally, dates must be close to exact. If you try to leave a region after your permit is expired, the police are going to want more money. Organize what you need during your resupply trips to the city. For more information on permits, follow this link to Great Himalaya Trails. I would encourage you to stay in local guest houses as often as possible. In most villages along the Great Himalaya Trail, you can expect typical Nepali meals of dal bhat. Sometimes you can get fried noodles and vegetables. Meat will be available sometimes, typically chicken, yak, or buffalo. Breakfast will likely be eggs, tea, and roti. This is not the place for coffee lovers. There will be menus with lots of options. At times you can even get pizza and pies. Backpacking food is simply not available in Nepal. Bring an extra backpack loaded with your resupply food, and store it at your guest house in Kathmandu. Time your trips to the city for when you reach larger towns along the Great Himalaya Trail that have lots of buses or small airports. Every morning we made breakfast shakes in a water bottle. We basically mixed together a bunch of stuff and sipped it while we hiked. Our breakfast items included:. Instead we relied on what was available in Nepal. I often made trail mix for us from nuts, raisins, and dried fruits I found at the grocery store. They also have granola bars and chocolate bars. Nepal Trekking and the Great Himalaya Trail, 3rd Edition - Great Himalaya Trail

Day 45, West Col, eastern Nepal: I was hanging on a rope, the front spikes of both crampons rammed into a wall of blue ice. I had already descended more than feet from the pass, but the conditions were forcing us to retreat. I had to climb back up. Nothing is easy at 20, feet, but this seemed Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal. My calves trembled like a sewing machine, while snow swirled around my goggles. I had no ice axe, just a jumar to grip the rope as I hauled myself up, kicking one foot after another into the ice. I had been moving for 11 hours straight at this point, and I had never been more exhausted or more focused. But lower down on the mountain, a member of our expedition had just been killed by rockfall, and safety was above, not below. W hen I started this 1,mile trek across Nepal on the Great Himalaya Trailin earlyit was my dream come true. I was about one third of the way to joining them, crossing from the Makalu Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal into the Everest region, when I found myself inching back up that wall of ice. Climbing in the Himalaya, crossing glaciers and high passes, and depending on the weather for a little bit of luck invites danger that no expertise, no team of accomplished guides, no high-tech gear, and no level of fitness can ever totally eliminate. While I was heading downward just minutes before, eight of our group had already reached the bottom of the pass ahead of the main party. There, the weather changed fast, causing avalanches of rock and snow. A boulder tumbled down the slope, gathering speed, and no one had time to react. The others in his party were OK, but conditions below the pass were deteriorating. And since most of our team and equipment were still up on West Col, our guide decided it was safest Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal everyone to spend the night together on top, at an elevation above 20, feet. On the pass, we took shelter from the wind in the kitchen tent, and I cried when I saw the shock and watery eyes of our assistant cook Ramesh, who had worked alongside Khem for 15 years. I helped clean the wound of a porter with a minor injury and poured hot tea for others who were shivering. The idea of being in the mountains for five months—trekking every day, crossing the highest ridges in Nepal, and sleeping in a tent every night— ignited something in me. That year, I also met Satish, an accomplished mountaineer and the owner of Nireka Adventuresan outfitter based in Kathmandu. We stayed in touch, talking about the Great Himalaya Trail, and after Satish summited Everest inhe agreed that guiding the GHT would be his next big challenge. All he needed was clients. I signed up without hesitation. We launched our journey in Marchtraveling east to west. The route is divided Nepal Trekking & the Great Himalaya Trail: A Route and Planning Guide for Organising a Trek in Nepal seven sections; some require technical mountaineering and some are so remote that only local guides know the way across the glaciers and through the forests. Though I would end up being the only trekker to do the whole five-month journey, 20 people from five countries joined us on different sections at various times. The whole endeavor involved crossing 22 passes, including 15 above 16, feet and two above 20, feet. Every time we traversed a high pass, we prayed to the gods and left prayer flags behind. We visited monasteries and received blessings from the lamas for the climbs ahead. But there was no suggestion of ending the journey. I had spent enough time with Nepalis to know that they take the biggest hardships in stride. No river is too wide to cross, no mountain pass too high to climb, no school too far to walk to. DayRara Lake, western Nepal: Our mules ran away. Just two weeks from the finish and the expedition came to a halt because of the wayward animals. Kale, the strongest of the mules and a bit of a rebel, disappeared first. Then two others followed. All thanks to Kale. Rara Lake is surrounded by dense pine forests, with pocket meadows spread throughout. The mules were his livelihood, his pride, and his future. It took two days and at least 50 miles of walking, but he finally found the rogue animals. The journey continued, and the great mule mutiny became part of our story. Throughout those five months, we faced small and big challenges, heart-warming and heart-wrenching ones. We felt lucky when we happened upon a traditional Tibetan wedding in a village at the foot of the Kanchenjunga glacial valley in eastern Nepal. When leeches attacked us in the jungle, we suffered itchy, bloody legs for days afterward. We enjoyed views of glaciers in the morning light, of alpenglow on the peaks, of langur monkeys watching our every move. I learned a lot about technical alpine travel and Himalayan geography, but more than anything else, I learned about the Nepali people. Over a thousand miles, I walked through countless villages clinging to the steepest slopes, with terraced grain fields carved into the mountainsides. I saw the effort that goes into cultivating these vertical crops: the plowing, sowing, weeding, and harvesting. Nepalis are people who can envision the impossible and then tackle it. It will remind me that life is an adventure, and adventure is never perfectly safe. Wiebke Nedel lives in South Africa, but has spent much of the last four years in Nepal. She is a guide herself, and uses the wilderness as both tool and teacher. Getting there Fly to Kathmandu. Logistics will vary depending on your route. Route The 1,mile journey connects Kanchenjunga in the east with Hilsa in the west. Survivors of the Bataan death march overcame one of history's most grueling walks. What kept them on their feet? Nepal's Annapurna Circuit can't compete with the world's best treks for lavish huts, extreme solitude, and sumptuous cuisine. So why is it still number one? Let us count the reasons. The Annapurna Circuit is your path to the rooftop of the world. We've traveled to 10 countries and uncovered the best adventures you never knew existed. Half a world away, you'll find exotic highs while hiking in Tasmania. Take a hikers-only route to one of the world's best archeological sites. No, not the famously wind-whipped peaks in New Hampshire. Explore some of the country's lesser-known Whites with these accessible spring summits in Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska. Join Basecamp. Access Member Benefits. Home Trips Adventure Travel. Lhonak Camp in the Kanchenjunga Valley, section 1. Adventure Travel.