near - but not so near

Dearest friends,

We're back! In Kathmandu that is. We actually came back 2 days ago and we are terribly sorry for having let you wait that long for an update. We were busy getting cleaned up and move to a different part of town, got swept away in the streets of Thamel and are now fully recovered and ready to race.
But before you get an update on the race preparations, you'll have to read through stories from the mountains:

We started out with a killer bus ride, dusty, winding, bumpy roads, all the way up to Dunche at an elevation of 1960m or so. We did not hike that first day, our internal organs had first to be rearranged after that ride. On day 2 of the trek we hiked up the mountain to Singompa at 3300m in boiling heat.

Who would have thought that it's really hot up that high?!? We passed a military post in the middle of nowhere, where we had to sign in and had our permits checked. We arrived at our first "real" destination in light rain. The place was lovely. Day 3: Laurabina at 3900m, short, nice hike up, breathing got a little harder. But nothing could stop us from playing a round of our favourite card game and eating chocolate cake which was made for us right there on a wood fire. Delicious. Day 4: another short hike up another couple hundred metres, all the way to Gosaikunda on 4385m. It was a little chilly up there, but the beautiful landscape made up for it. We went on a little hike around the sacred lakes and built a ginormeous Inukshuk:

Great fun. Amazingly sleep came and none of us got really sick. Thanks to Tanya and her non-drowsy Ginger Gravol, we all made it over the pass on the next day at 4620m. We were at the right place at the right time. The cloud cover opened up and we had amazing views.

From there on, it was relatively easy. Mostly downhill and/or 'nepali flat'. We had to cross another pass at 3600m and then descended down to this village called Sermathang. That is the place where the Yangrima School is, which had the big reopening ceremonies while we were there. We had a day off and helped carrying benches and other things up to the school grounds - a 20 min hike up the mountain on single track.

That great and very touching event kinda marked the end of our trek. In the late afternoon, we rushed down to our 2nd last night in the mountains and more rounds of card games. Our guides and porters got pretty good at this game too and one of them teamed up with Danger Dave and got nicknamed Trouble. The very last day was again a bit exciting as when we arrived in Melamchi to catch our bus back into town, we were informed that there is a strike at the crossroads just outside Kathmandu and no buses can go through. So we hung out in this little lodge in the back alley and played some more cards. Karma, our guide managed to arrange for another bus to take a different route up to that village to come get us. We were only delayed by about 4 hours or so. Some of us got to ride on the roof of the bus, but that was only short lived fun. The bumpy roads made us beg to be let inside after about 10 minutes. The bus driver was amazing. The roads were so super narrow and sandy that it is a miracle that we did not fall off the mountain.
A big THANK YOU goes out to our guides Karma and Pemba (missing in this pictures as he was running ahead arranging for our accomodation) and our porters Urgen, Kansha and Ram. Without them we would be still somewhere up there.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading. And always remember: Don't fight the liner.

Mads - from Raju's internet place.