Gosaikunda Trek - The Awesome Foursome
- meganagathe
- 28 mars 2018
- 4 min de lecture
Guest Writer - Chloe Ettinger
Hello all, and welcome to the only blog post without spelling mistakes (or only just a few).
I am honoured to guest star on the Travelling Tummies blog. As someone who has recently finished her boring corporate internship I decided to join The Travelling Tummies in Nepal, a country I have never been to and have always dreamed of visiting.
I arrived in Kathmandu on the 11th of Feb and was greeted by a rather short haired and more-odd-looking-than-usual Megan. She kindly picked me up and we were off to our hostal Thamel 327 in the city centre. Kathmandu is a bustling city full of street-goers, salesmen, taxis, cars, buses, people carrying KGs and KGs of things on their backs, bicycles, mopeds, holes, rubble, and noise. And spitting, there’s a lot of spitting going on. It’s polluted, to say the least. There’s a constant smog surrounding the city, and from above it wouldn’t seem very inviting. After spending a couple days visiting and walking around the temples and streets, I would define Kathmandu as quite charming. Although it’s one of the poorest countries in the world, the Nepali are happy, chilled-out people who get on with their work and their daily lives. They are extremely welcoming, are not intrusive, and speak English really well compared to the French. There are many incredibly good food places around - we weren’t disappointed.
Wanting to find fresh air, a Nepali friend from the Work-Away farm which the two girls were staying at previously recommended trekking to Gosaikunda Lake in the Langtang Valley. We set off with Megan, Agathe, a Quebecer Steph and myself on quite a daring and dangerous 6 day trek. I wouldn’t say we weren’t prepared, but we set off quite casually with our backpacks on a local bus which took us to our starting point, Sundarijal. One thing to keep in mind is buses here run at their own time, we thought we would start early but we ended up starting the trek around lunchtime.
Day 1 - Sundarijal to Chisapani
The first day was the easiest. We walked 4h30 to a tiny place called Chisapani, our first stop.
A lot of the houses here are still completely destroyed from the 2015 quake. We walked past tilted, abandoned, and half destroyed houses until we found a small tea house which welcomed us with open arms, Masala Tea, and Dal Bhat. Dal Bhat, or ‘Lentils & Rice’ is the staple traditional meal of the country consisting of rice, lentils soup and vegetable curry. It’s very filling and very delicious. For the next 6 days this became our lunch.
We sat around the table playing cards and Yams until our bedtime at 8:30pm. In our sleeping bags we fell asleep to complete silence and fresh air coming through the cracks, tingling our cold faces.
Day 2 - Chapani to Koutoumsang
Breakfast at 7:30am consisted of Chapati (flat bread) with fried egg or omelette for the 3 girls, and porridge for myself. We set-off to our next destination 7h30 away, Koutumsang. We arrived at a lovely tea house with incredible views and a room for roughly 2 pounds (basically planks of woods and nothing else). We were happy huddling around the wood fire, eating, playing cards, and chatting to the other trekkers. One thing to point out is that we barely met anyone walking the same way as us on this trek - bizarrely people do this trek the other way, where the starting point is much higher and where there is a lot less mountains to climb.
Day 3 - Koutumsang to Terepati - 3600m
Chapatis and porridge in us we set off towards Taripati, another 7 hours away, another stop with insane views, sunset and sunrise (every evenings and mornings we were up to see them, never got tired).
Day 4 - Taripati to Phedi - 3600m
Although Phedi was at the same altitude as Taripati, it was a lot of ups and downs to get to Phedi. Nearly at our destination we walked past the 2 owners who were walking down an hour away to get reception on their phones… Luckily, one went back up with us to open the tea house and to cook us our Dal Bhat (which we were obviously dying to eat). That night it was extremely windy, hailing and snowing. But luckily it all cleared up before our final climb.
Day 5 - Phedi to Gosaikunda Lake to Cholangpati - 4650m peak
Probably the hardest day in terms of altitude, we set off at 6:30am to reach the top before noon. We were all walking at snail pace, one step at a time due the altitude and lack of oxygen. We made it earlier than anticipated (who knew we were such strong women). It was freezing at the top so we starting walking down towards the lake, about 1h30 away. The lake is a holy place, many people come to pray and pay their respects. We, however, didn’t meet a single soul when we arrived. The entire place was closed because of some festival happening and because food supplies hadn’t arrived earlier. We decided to take a nap in the sun before joining our next stop further down.
Day 6 - The way down - final destination Dunsche
The guy at this tea house told us that the last bus to Kathmandu was at 11am so we left at 6:30am to walk the 4 hours to Dunsche, a small town with bus connections to the capital. Luckily we made it in one piece, bought our bus ticket thinking 150km back to Kathmandu would take a couple hours BUT BOY WERE WE MISTAKEN. How to describe the bus ride… try to imagine a human washing machine, or a turbulence flight simulator. Now put yourself in some dodgy and old mini-bus full of people and imagine both situations. There. 8 hours of twists and turns and holes and broken down cars and loud Nepali music blaring out of the speakers.
Anyway we made it back in one piece, didn’t even bother to shower after 6 days and went to a nearby restaurant for the tastiest meal ever.
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