We did in fact find an internet cafe in Nepalgunj, the first overnight stop on the way to our trek. Nepalgunj is a hot, flat city near the Indian border that serves as a transit hub for all flights to western Nepal. This cafe boasts the “fastest internet in the city” which is pretty pathetic if true. The keyboard is so worn that I have to fix one or two letters per sentence.
Last night was a very late night, because we found out at 6pm that we would be leaving at 7 the next morning. We have way too much stuff because we couldn’t ship certain things such as medicines from Tokyo, and we just brought too much stuff period. I finally got to sleep about 4am after filling two bags to leave in Kathmandu.
Kathmandu’s domestic terminal was actually the whole airport until they built the relatively modern international terminal about 30 years ago. It’s what an airport would have been like in the middle ages if they had been flying back then – a single big room with tables for check-in desks, piles of luggage everywhere and locals and tourists mingling with porters jockeying for tips. We were thankful for our guide and cook, who managed moving our caravan’s 10 or so bags, including our backpacks, sacks of cooking equipment, and all their own stuff. The last time we passed through here we were on our own, and it was up to me to navigate the gauntlet.
It was raining all morning in Kathmandu. The locals blame global warming for extending the monsoon, but our guide Kinna Sherpa observed that this was the second year in a row that it had rained the day after the Dasain festival, a fifteen day event marked with animal sacrifices. Kinna is Buddhist like most sherpas, and he seemed to feel the gods wanted to wash the blood off the streets.
Whatever the explanation, it was sunny when we landed in Nepalgunj, and we could actually see the tops of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri. Our plan is to walk for a few weeks in the high valleys to the west of Dhaulagiri, then cross several high passes to the north of that massive mountain and then come out at Jomosom in the Kali Gandaki valley, one of the most visited places in Nepal. It will be people shock for us then, because the previous weeks will be spent on the edge of the Tibetan plateau where only nomads and a few crazy trekkers go. In the past, traders used to bring loads of salt down from Tibet, but political changes and dropping prices have cut that to a trickle (see Eric Valli’s great 1999 movie titled Himalaya – also sometimes Caravan – if you want to know more about life in this area).
Anyway, first we have to get to Dolpo. The only airport there is a short-takeoff-and-landing airstrip with bumps like a roller coaster, and the airlines tend to cancel flights and move airplanes to the more lucrative tourist routes in the high season. Despite our confirmed reservations, there is a good chance this will happen to us tomorrow and we will be back in the internet cafe until we get on a flight. And our cook says there is internet in the next city too, though if it’s any slower than this I may not bother.
Anyway, that’s all for now. If you don’t see any more posts, it means we got on a flight and we are off on the trail. We’ll be back online when we can, probably early November.