Email Updates English
Following is the full text of all English email updates we sent during this trip. The texts are original copies, shown here as sent: typos, errors, warts and all (the same in French).
- Mail from 22 Aug 2016: Nepal
- Mail from 01 Sep 2016: Kathmandu
- Mail from 13 Oct 2016: Manaslu, Annapurna circuits, Pokhara
- Mail from 22 Oct 2016: Manaslu trek, KTM
- Mail from 13 Nov 2016: Everest foothills, Janakpur, Pokhara
- Mail from 05 Dec 2016: Nepal -- end of a love affair?
Subject: Nepal
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2016
Dear friends, as many of you already know this coming Friday we'll be leaving for another visit to Nepal. Despite our many visits to that fascinating place this will a special occasion, for two reasons: we have never before been in Nepal (or India for that matter) during the monsoon, so we will see how that feels (wet, in all probability). However, friends of ours in Kathmandu and also in the Khumbu have always told us that we should really visit Nepal during this period… when we now look at the weather forecast for Kathmandu we're not 100% sure this was a wise decision:-) Well, let's wait and see. Second and more importantly, we have not been to the country since the terrible earthquake of last year and we really want to see for ourselves what has changed, how people have coped and are still coping. Perhaps we can also do something while we're there as we have a full three months, we will see. Actually, even going to Nepal does help: we hear that the number of tourists is not at all back to pre-earthquake levels. We know that many of you are interested to hear about our impressions and experiences re post-earthquake Nepal, so we will definitely send a lengthy email from Kathmandu with first-hand information, trying to distill what we learn and find on the ground into a hopefully broader picture. We will also buttonhole locals while on trek, so even after the first days in Kathmandu, there should be more details about that matter. Do not expect as many mails as we normally send from India or other places: though the infrastructure in Nepal gets better and better, it is still not a place with internet everywhere, especially if one does trek to remote places (as we will do). We'll also be able to tell you more about our plans once we have had time to talk to our Kathmandu friends and acquaintances. One idea is to walk around Manaslu (including the remote Tsum valley) and then continue along the Annapurna circuit. We have already done the Manaslu region once in 2001, so if we do that it'll be interesting to see what has changed in the last 15 years. (The Annapurnas we know already quite well, although even there we will see many changes as roads have eaten and are eating their way ever deeper into the countryside. We'll report.) Another possibility is Makalu Base Camp: we already had that on the radar in 2013 but couldn't make it because there was way too much snow on the trails. We hope that later in October this will be doable. OK, so much for today, more will follow sometime next week from Kathmandu. Thomas + Vero
Subject: Kathmandu
Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2016
Dear friends, we have now spent five days in Kathmandu and surroundings and so we thought we might share some of our impressions. So far, the monsoon has been kind with us: almost no rain during the day. But we're not out of the woods yet and when we start our trek in a few days' time, all bets are off! Well, the earthquake of 25 April 2015. Surprisingly, there are very few actual traces left on the ground, excepting of course the great collections of temples in the old city centres, the Durbar Squares. Even there, it is a very mixed picture, with some rickety-looking temples still standing strong and others next to them heaps of rubble. In Kathmandu Durbar Square we think that about a third of all structures have been severely damaged (but we're talking about temples many centuries old and often built without any mortar, just bricks on top of other bricks). The Patan Durbar Square temples were not hit as hard, although even there some significant damage can be seen. The Patan temples are already in the process of being rebuilt/restored (with Japanese support) whereas in Kathmandu nothing much seems to be happening. We think that about a quarter of all temples have been destroyed, with the rest looking relatively good. Now there is also a temple or two in every neighbourhood and of these, again perhaps one in four has been damaged beyond repair. All in all, we were surprised that there was not more destruction, after the awful news reports we have seen in the western media. The same is true for residential buildings: here perhaps one in ten is severely damaged but practically all modern buildings with concrete frames have survived unscathed (give or take the odd small crack in the wall that is easily repaired). There are whole streets with dozens and dozens of buildings which look exactly as before save the occasional gaping hole or fallen-in roof. So on the face of it, things do not look too bad. However, buildings are not the only victims. The already straining infrastructure has taken a very hard hit as well, many roads look terrible and sometimes, the unusable part of the rubble has not been removed but just lies around (by the way, along many roads there are now long high walls of used, but salvaged bricks to be re-used for the eventual rebuilding work). The biggest damage, however, is with the Nepalese people. Their customary optimism and cheerfulness in the face of adversity, although not completely gone, has taken a very hard hit as well. It is in fact amazing that they keep up as well as they actually do: after the death of the king and his family in 2001, with the civil war and the Maoists, things have steadily grown worse… and when everybody thought it could not possibly get any worse… the earthquake struck. We talked to quite a few Nepalese and many, if not most, are, even more than a year after the quake, in an almost shell-shocked, traumatised state. Some talk about a nightmare from which they have not yet woken, others have had extreme trouble to move back into their houses (we talked to a man, a singing-bowl master, who lived with his family for months in a tent… not because his house was destroyed, not at all: the house was perfectly fine and he was even proud of that fact. However, he was utterly terrified by the idea to move back indoors because when the earthquake struck, he was elsewhere in town in his shop and a big part of the building collapsed over him, burying him in the rubble). And there are many similar stories… the real hardship is less visible in the buildings and the infrastructure, beaten as it is, but in the lined faces and the sad, wary smiles of the Nepalese people. The death of the king and his family and this earthquake have been two disasters which have impacted and changed the national psyche like no other, have left deep scars with almost everybody. And from the two we think the earthquake has had the more profound effect on the Nepalese people. We will start our trek next Sunday, and will be incommunicado for a while. There should be internet in Manang, about ten days into the trek, so perhaps we can send a quick update from there. All the best Thomas + Vero
Subject: Manaslu, Annapurna circuits, Pokhara
Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2016
Dear friends, sorry for the really long silence… we have been on trek for almost 40 days and along the way there were NO internet cafes at all. There was sporadic wifi but writing emails on our smartphone is not really feasible (all the more since Google Mail on a smartphone is badly broken). OK, back in KTM we had resigned ourselves to a long trek around the Annapurnas because organising Manaslu was not obvious. However at the literally 11th hour a Nepalese friend of ours with a travel agency returned from Tibet and arranged everything within 90 minutes. Amazing. So in the end, on 4th Sept we were in Arughat, starting the Manaslu circuit! There are those who think we are crazy because we trek for so long and at such altitudes. Not true… the real pinnacle of craziness is to do all that during the monsoon. Supposedly the Manaslu circuit is mostly in the rain shadow of the mountain… if so, the rain shadow doesn't know that. Actually, it rained mostly during late afternoon and in the night but it was almost all the time cloudy with 0 (ZERO) mountain views. During the 15 days of Manaslu trekking we saw the actual mountain exactly once, for about 15 minutes at dawn. However, the trek was still very interesting, because this is one of the more remote locations w/o many tourists and some really rugged, hard, even dangerous landscapes. (About 2 weeks after we had been there, a group of Spanish trekkers and their guides and porters walked right into a big landslide of which there are many in that region. Five died.) We will later write a long, separate mail about the details of that part of the trek because there is quite a lot to say and it is much less well reported than the better known Annapurna circuit. After 15 days we met the Annapurna trail in Dharapani and what a difference! Big fancy lodges, many people (if we saw 10 tourists during the whole Manaslu trek, we saw as many within one hour on the Annapurna circuit). We took our time, did some detours (eg Tilicho Lake) and amazingly the weather turned better! So we actually SAW some mountains and did some great shots. (Photos will be on our website later.) The one thing that can make the Annapurna a bit problematic is the road. On the Manang side it's not too bad as there's not a lot of traffic and we were actually glad for a while to walk on solid, dry ground (most of the Manaslu trails were complete mudbaths mixed with copious amounts of mule shit from the mule trains of which there are many because this is the time to climb Manaslu). The road doesn't change the character of the villages too much and ends behind Manang anyway. From there it is trails over Thorung La (5416m) to Muktinath on the Jomsom side. Alas, from there the road is a complete disaster: loads of traffic and it really eats into the landscape. There are alternative trails but they feel artificial (well, they are!) and they are not that well maintained as many people take the first opportunity to take a jeep or bus to Pokhara. Also, on the Jomsom side the road cuts through many villages, destroying their character and any remaining bits of atmosphere. (To be fair, most locals believe the road to be a good thing, as it brings them a lot more day tourism… which is true for the time being. But as has happened in other places, the whole thing may end up to be a victim of its own success.) Starting Oct we joined the foothills south of the Annapurnas and were really shocked by the incredible amount of tourists there -- if we thought the Annapurna circuit was already touristy the foothills taught us a lesson. A new addition to the scene are the Chinese trekkers who come in BIG groups and invade two, three, four lodges in one go. We were lucky as we always go to small, basic lodges (and were on our way down while they went up) but we heard from other trekkers that to share a lodge with them is an interesting cultural experience. (For the benefit of truth, big Israeli groups, especially the young post-army crowd, can easily match the Chinese in the culture stakes as we witnessed in Thorung Phedi, at 4460m.) Now we're down in Pokhara (where it was also not easy to find an internet cafe, the days of Cyber Cafes are clearly numbered). We'll stay a few days, investigate the “fleshpots” of Pokhara, and then return leisurely to KTM through Tansen, Butwal and Daman. From KTM we'll post another update. So far all is well, we had no problems whatsoever on the trails (other than the weather, of course) and we are fighting fit. Next mail in about 10 days. All the best Thomas + Vero
Subject: Manaslu trek, KTM
Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2016
Dear friends, we are now back in KTM. We spent a few days in Pokhara, lazy and eating those things we could or would not eat on trek. Then we went to Tansen, a small market town half-way to the Terai, which we found less charming than in the past, mostly because it is now a local transport hub with many new roads and dirt roads and loads of buses and jeeps: the old charm of walking the surrounds is almost gone and even the nice walk down to the Kali Gandaki river is now completely spoilt by a new dirt road that has destroyed the old footpath. From Tansen we went via Butwal and Hetauda to the tiny hill-station of Daman, 2350m altitude. From there one can see, on a good day, the whole Nepalese Himalaya chain, from Dhaulagiri in the west to Kanchenjunga in the east. We stayed two days and had, on the second day, some really impressive views, from Dhaulagiri via the Annapurnas and Manaslu to Ganesh and Langtang Himal. Further east the rising sun and the haze made the mountains appear just as silhouettes. By the way, the road from Hetauda to KTM is one of the most impressive mountain roads in Nepal and probably Asia. It was the first road built (by Indian soldiers in the mid 1950s) to connect KTM to the Terai and India. Nowadays it is not used a lot because it's such a winding, small road. We will stay for a couple of days in KTM and then continue our trekking with medium level Everest walks (ie no high altitude because we have done that so often and there are some things we want to see in the lower hills, mostly between 2500 and 4500m. A few words about the Manaslu trek. This region is not really remote in the sense the west of Nepal is remote but given its central location it is pretty isolated and sees very few tourists. The Buri Gandaki river has cut a very deep valley into the rocks with extremely steep and impressive walls which have always been prone to big landslides (there are a few every monsoon and we went through 2 or 3 fresh landslides, one of which looked really dangerous to us). Most of the people living in the few small villages are extremely poor (there are many isolated farmsteads). The government and even the Manaslu Conservation Area Project seem to do very little (IOW nothing) to help the people living there (by contrast, the Annapurna Conservation Area Project is much more active and visible on the ground). We felt that the fees we paid to government and MCAP are vanishing in some deep pockets but never reach the actual population of that region. One instance among many: school buildings are often still under reconstruction after the 2015 earthquake… the money if it comes at all, trickles by very slowly. OTOH there are many lodge building projects, but this is of course private enterprise although some of those lodge projects have received significant foreign aid -- one wonders why? And given the relatively low number of tourists we really ask ourselves who will stay there. Children either go to a KTM school if the parents can afford it or they are educated in a local monastery (not always to high standards) or they receive no education at all. The landscape is very rough and rugged and perfect for experienced trekkers, the one fly in the ointment for us being the weather. Nevertheless, it was a worthwhile trip, even if the photo opps were sometimes thin on the ground… this was balanced by the ability to really participate in the daily lives of the people in the Buri Gandaki valley. We trekked in parallel with some mule and yak trains and observing their way of life was quite illuminating. There is also a lot of trade with China via high Tibetan passes (cement, of all things, being the main product imported). Most high villages are strongly influenced by Tibetan culture and way of life: in this respect the Upper Manaslu is not unlike the Upper Khumbu region was in the past… in a sense Samagaon, the main village, today probably looks a little like Namche Bazaar did in the early 1960s. The old part of Samagaon is still completely preserved and fully lived-in: the lodges are in a separate area. By contrast Namche today is just one giant shopping-centre-cum-hotel-complex and despite efforts by some Sherpas to conserve their culture, business and money-making is the main driver of development (to say it politely). We saw four or five small Manaslu expeditions but the season seems to have been hampered by the weather and the prolonged monsoon. In comparison to the giant trek that snakes up to Everest Base Camp every year in April this was minuscule. Given the scarcity of Internet cafes (even in KTM we had to search for a while) the next mail may only come after the 20 days or so of our Everest trek. All is well and we are in very good shape, though quite thin by now:-) The Dr-Lauer diet works wonders! All the best Thomas + Vero
Subject: Everest foothills, Janakpur, Pokhara
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2016
Dear friends, we are now back in the warmth of Pokhara's Lakeside, after about 14 days in the foothills of the Everest region. The trekking there was as usual quiet and relatively basic, all the more so as part of this region has been hit really hard by the Apr 2015 earthquake. In fact, we have not seen as much damage and destruction anywhere in the country: in Bhandar, one of our places to stay, all lodges (around 10) save one have been destroyed and still lie in ruins (although some are now being rebuilt). For some lodges we stayed in in the past we could not even find any remains… incredible. Further up towards Lamjura La, Kenja and Sete are also very badly affected with only two or three lodges remaining. Needless to say that also “normal” houses have been badly affected (normally lodges, being substantial buildings, tend to survive in better shape) and many families have either fled the region (for KTM or other centres) or are living in shacks next to their ruined home. It was such a devastating picture, after the relative non-events of KTM and even the Manaslu region. Behind Lamjura La the situation improves somewhat, although even in Junbesi there is significant damage. While or after crossing the Lamjura La (~ 3500m altitude) we both caught a really nasty cold (we normally know how to avoid those… somehow we slipped up) which meant that we stayed not only two days as planned in Junbesi but three. In Thomas' case the cold went from bad to worse so we very slowly moved on to a place where we always wanted to stay but never did: the point on the trek where you have the first real view of Mt Everest. Often this is obscured by 10am so spending a night there is the best way to see the mountain chains further up north: Everest, Thamserku, Kang Tega, Kusum Kanguru and Mera Peak. We stayed there for another three days, doing daytrips and slowly recuperating. The cold there (it is about 3000m high) is already very palpable and we decided that the warmth of the plains, the Terai, would be much nicer than sitting for hours in a smoky, cold kitchen, waiting for Dal Bhat. So we walked to Phaplu/Salleri (the district headquarter), took a succession of buses which brought us in two days to the Terai town of Janakpur with its wedding-cake temple, dedicated to Sita, the faithful wife of Rama (of Ramayana fame). The town is “India light”, and we stayed for two enjoyable days before taking a nightbus to Pokhara and the lake, to further help our recuperation:-) (Interesting side note: in Nov 2008, when Obama was elected president we were in the Everest region and it took us more than a week after the actual election to find out who'd won it… only when we arrived in Namche we found some Nepalese who knew or cared. Fast forward 2016: this time, we could follow the final stages of the drama in our hotel room in Janakpur “live” on our smartphone (even basic hotels these days have to have wifi) and we knew that the US have been trumpified in real time.) The weather, even end of Oct and beginning of Nov is still disappointing. It doesn't rain anymore, but the air is dusty and hazy and there are clouds early in the day. Actually we've had better days in some March/April seasons than this time in Oct/Nov. The air is not crispy clear, clouds bubble up and all mountain views are gone. Even the Annapurnas from Pokhara look “dirty brownish” not brilliant white. Here it is warm during the day (26C) but surprisingly cool in the evenings (18C and lower). Still it's a far cry from the coldness of high lodges and we are quite happy to be staying in a warmer climate for now (in fact, doing a second trek after a really long first one is, in our experience, often not the best idea). So we will stay here for another few days and then take a bus to KTM where we will spend the final four or five days. More from there. The colds are now gone and we are fine again. Thomas continues his Dal Bhat diet, but Vero has switched to Veg Burgers and various Spaghetti dishes. All the best Thomas + Vero
Subject: Nepal -- end of a love affair?
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2016
Dear friends, we are now back in cold though sunny England. All is well and we thought we would write something about that latest trip to Nepal and the country itself. As this email's title suggests, it is not all rosy. There are three areas we want to highlight: 1. Nepal as a country Nepal is a failing state and may become a failed state. While we knew this for more than a decade, our recent trip has brought this fact home with a vengeance. Look at the dismal state of school repairs in the Manaslu region, look at the faces of people in Bhandar who still wait for permission (and money) to rebuild their homes, look at the state of almost any bit of infrastructure, whether it's roads or water pipes or sewage canals (and most of these problems have nothing to do with the April 2015 earthquake)… The Nepalese government, whoever is currently in control, massively fails its people -- and this has been going on for many decades. This is not because of a shortage of money, there are billions doing the rounds. It is because the Nepalese elite is (and has been for centuries) utterly uninterested in their fellow countrymen and has installed a kleptocracy beyond belief. To call the Nepalese regime corrupt is an insult to all merely corrupt regimes, say in India -- while corruption is endemic there, it is also a way of life for practically everybody. The Nepalese elite is different… they steal on a monumental scale and a significant part of that happens with the connivance of at least some Western donor agencies. For Nepalese politicians, the April 2015 earthquake was a very good thing to happen. (For a few donor agencies this is true as well… but that's a different can of worms.) What makes this mess much worse than it is anyway, is the ingrained Nepalese habit of shrugging and saying “Ke garne?” What to do? The Nepalese people, after decades of mismanagement, are now so good at accepting hardship and “unacceptable” circumstances that there is no real discourse in the country as to whether and how things could be made better. Everybody accepts that things are as bad as they are, bound to get worse and that there's nothing that can be done. If you will, this is taking the two British mottoes of “Mustn't grumble!” and “Can't be bothered!” and blow them up to their ultimate logical conclusion. There's a lot more we could write here but it would all turn around the same thing: Nepal is a failing state. There are two things which may, over time, change this bleak assessment: the growing number of well-educated young Nepalis not willing to accept what their parents have so far accepted and the emergence of a real, substantial middle class. 2. Kathmandu valley is dying When we first came to Kathmandu in 1994 the valley was already struggling. Back then there were probably around 1 million people living in the valley. Water was scarce, sewage was a problem and air pollution was killing people every day. Some things got better over the next few years, pollution for instance went down quite a bit when the tuktuks were banned and replaced by electrical vehicles. Today, 22 years later, there are 5 million or even more people living in the valley and an already strained infrastructure is now utterly broken or is breaking down. Half of all the roads are now back to being dirt roads because there's no maintenance at all. The brownish veil of dust over the valley that is generated by the ever increasing traffic is beyond description (these days, even in October after the monsoon, the snowy mountain tops to the north, if seen from the valley, are not white anymore: they are a greyish mass because of the dust in the air). Sure, life in the valley for those with money can be made bearable -- they install air filters, buy a few thousand litres of water every week and have their house running on inverters and batteries. The rest? The rest now accepts living standards that are often beyond dismal. But again (and though we feel with those people): they themselves are partly to blame because nobody ever protests, nobody ever questions whether this mess has to be as bad it is. 3. Trekking Nepal has always been THE place to trek. It's not hard to see why: the highest mountains, the friendliest people, a vast network of foot trails criss-crossing an incredible landscape. Well, things are changing. The lodge-owners these days are purely interested in money and their business: there's nothing wrong with that, every hotel chain in the West works like that. What is galling though is that they still sell themselves proudly as the most friendly, most hospitable people in the world. That is pure marketing spin. The greed of Sherpa and Gurung lodge-owners is now such that even newcomers are put off by the extremely high prices charged for the simplest thing. Then again, part of that problem is down to the modern trekkers themselves, many of whom (often young) unreasonably expect everything they have at home in a lodge at an altitude of 4500m that may be five days away from the last semi-reliable electricity source. Whether it's wifi, 24-hour running hot water, attached bathrooms, on-site German bakery (all bakeries in Nepal are “German”)… lodges these days have to be ultra fancy affairs or they will vanish. (Traditionally, lodges have always made their money with the food for dinner and breakfast, not the room charge (often rooms were/are free): this means that food these days has to subsidise the rooms on a big scale, making everything more expensive.) Many a lodge-owner has complained about that effect and a few clearly miss the good old times when lodges were basic, trekkers were happy with a simple dal bhat and wifi was unheard of. And that superb network of trails? Well, nowadays it is supplemented/replaced/destroyed by an ever growing number of new dirt roads. The locals are in two minds about that proliferation of roads:on the one hand it is good for business because there are more visitors (including a steadily growing number of domestic tourists). It is also good because it makes the towns and cities much more accessible. On the other hand they know that too much development is degrading and will ultimately destroy the very thing that brings the tourists in the first place. So they welcome the road to their village… but if another village further up wants to construct a dirt road as well, the trouble starts. Many locals we've talked with about these matters are in a similar quandary: they like the new possibilities, internet, mobiles, 24hrIndian TV shows and all that. But they also acknowledge that something has gone: the simplicity of life, the close-knit nature of local communities, the way money could almost be ignored as long as there was enough rice and dal on the table. We are not at all saying that time should stand still in Nepal. We have seen many instances where modern “stuff”, like electricity, roads, mobile phones…, has clearly benefitted the locals. The simple fact (and this is what all this boils down to) is that Nepal was once a simple but magical place and we fell in love with that place. Today's Nepal has over the years become a place like any other. Sad but inevitable. We are glad that we could follow that development for so many years but we will try to keep our memories of that magical place intact as far as we can. This does not mean that we will never again go to Nepal, far from it. But the days of three-months visas and visits are now behind us. We will concentrate on much shorter visits with a single, clear objective. And we will always have Indian visas in our passports:-) This does also not mean that other people should not go to Nepal, quite the contrary. For newcomers, Nepal can still be an amazing experience. While many complain about the pollution, the general rundown-ness of the cities and the high prices, once in the mountains they nevertheless become “victims” of the breathtaking beauty. Nepal still enchants many of its first-time visitors. We will head to France later this month and will, from there, send another installment in our Brexit series, about some recent interesting developments. All the best Thomas and Vero
$updated from: Email Updates.htxt Mon 04 Mar 2024 16:04:40 trvl2 (By Vero and Thomas Lauer)$