A Mini-Trek

Well I couldn't spend the entire time here in Kathmandu.  It's such a beautiful country it would be a shame to spend the whole time in a congested city.  However, we've been reluctant to look into hiking because Melissa is working and we don't want to be too out of touch.  But today I worked something out that allowed me to see some nature and we were still both comfortable with it.  

Certainly I didn't want to go alone, so I asked if one of the other guys here was interested.  Bruce, a Canadian literature student and croupier has been here for weeks and not left Kathmandu, and so he was excited to join me.  Bruce knows a taxi driver that he trusts (he calls him "my driver") and Pujan, the hotel owner, told us where to go for a good 1/2-day trip nearby and sent someone he knows with us as a guide.  So we were off.

If you look at Kathmandu on Google maps, just to the northwest of the city is a large nature preserve called Nagarjun, I think.  It was a 20 minute cab ride to get to the entrance of the park, where we paid a small entrance fee.  The cab driver waited at the entrance 3 hours for us.  The guide led us up a steep hillside, and very soon the sound of honking cars faded, and we were in nature.  I had forgotten my bug spray at the hotel.  Stupid.  It was mosquito country, but our guide used branches to keep the mosquitoes away the old fashioned way of fanning.  What bothered me more was the heat.  It was very hot and humid.  

The hike was rigorous, but not terrible long.  It was a well-traveled path, and much of it had steps cut into the dirt of the hillside.  Soon it leveled out and we were on a ridge.   We followed the ridge for 4km or so, flat in some places and steep in others, until we came to a buddhist shrine at the top of a high hill.  I was quite winded the whole time, as was Bruce.  Kathmandu is at about 1,300 meters, and we hiked up to 2,200.  Much of Colorado is that high, so we were by no means at Himalayan altitudes, but I was winded anyway.  Our guide does treks for a living--he said he's been to Everest base camp over 50 times.  He was not winded.

Luckily it was a fairly clear day and we were treated to great views of Kathmandu.  At the top was small metal tower, and as we climbed it the peak of one of the Himalayas, Langtang, showed itself above the clouds.  The clouds quickly hid it again, but we briefly was a 7,000+ meter peak from the ground.  From the hill we could see the entire ridge we'd walked up and the entire Kathmandu valley.  As planes came in they were below us before they landed (obviously, but it was still cool), and we could see the hill with the monkey temple and the general vicinity of our hotel.  

At the top there were a few Buddhists conducting worship.  They sat and prayed and chanted, reading from a book that looked just like the one Melissa had bought yesterday!  So I now have a vague idea of that item's actual usage.  

I've saved the most memorable part of the trip for last: the leeches.  When we first got on the path the mosquitoes were bad, but as we climbed, the guide warned us of the leeches.  My only experience to this point with leeches was in the lakes at summer camp in the Adirondacks.  There the leeches live in the water and look like slugs.  These leeches are much more active, living on the ground and sticking their front ends up and moving around.  In the photo above, the leech is the thing that looks like a curved stick sitting on the leaf.  They were everywhere on the ground, and they stick to the bottoms of shoes then inch their way up to the skin like big inchworms.  We had to stop every ten minutes or so to clean them off our shoes.  At each stop we'd each have two or three leeches on our shoes, and some made it to our socks and ankles, so at the top of the hill we took off our shoes to really clean them off.  Bruce's sock was totally bloody, as a couple leeches had bitten him through his sneakers and socks!  It's not painful, though--you don't even know you have a bloodsucker on you if you don't look.  When we returned to the hotel I removed a couple more, took a shower, washed, got all cleaned up, and came to the lobby of the hotel to write this blog entry.  Halfway through it, I noticed I had blood running down my leg.  I asked the receptionist for some paper towels, and when she asked what happened I said "leech" she was rather disgusted.  So I bled on the hotel lobby floor a bit, which I felt bad about, but I cleaned it up and I think I'm now leech-free.  They're really nothing more than a nuisance--no actual medical danger as far as I know.  But we decided they must have an anticoagulant in them because a tiny little dot continues to bleed for some time.  I'm fine though, mom--don't worry!

A couple other comments on the above pictures.  The pictures of clouds has the peak of Langtang in the middle--it just looks like a cloud.  In one photo you can see the ridge we hiked up.  There is also a photo of Bruce in his Sabres jersey and me in my Sabres hat.  At the games they show people in Sabres garb at locations around the world, so if I don't get a better one, I might label that as Nepal and try to get on the big screen at a Sabres game.  I'm a nerd.