The Hand that Feeds

It's the weekend, time to loosen up the legs. Nowadays the idea of being just lazy and waking up late during weekend is becoming far from every one's mind. When I started my run this morning at Bukit Shahbandar at 6.20 am, I saw several people were already coming out of the hills.....boy...were they early!

This week I could only trudge the hills slowly, may be the body is still feeling the strain after donating blood last week. That was my 25th. I was given a restraining order - to stop any form of heavy exercise for the next immediate period. A week passed I wasn't conforming to say the least, I did five rounds on the hills.

I must say living in Bumi Bertuah is a real blessing for everyones. Rich in its natural beauty and resources, people in this land are luckier than most part of the world. However we need to be cautious and be prepared for the future. Lately there are increasing occasions in Bumi Bertuah where social welfare has blown to a different level, that the nation is now like running a big charity organisation. To the point that many only know what's next to receive than to give. However, as Bumi Bertuah is in a critical stage of nation and infrastructure building, its capacity to deliver all these social services and maintain its welfare status is unsustainable in the long run. You should never bite the hand that feeds you.

Tears in My Eyes

Almost a week has gone. One thing that still reverberate in my head is the image of a little boy we met on the way to Ghandruk. It was the encounter that still has deep impact on yours truly and saddens the heart. The boy living only with his mother in a small shack, without any of the modern amenities that we take for granted nowadays, feeling contented with his fate, born poor, and is living on what ever the day and night will bring little food and comfort to him and his mother. That little shack is his home, his bed, his kitchen and precious little space to protect the family from the element.

Quite different from the have-nots in our country who could still seek help from the caring system and the various organisations that are presence here. Let alone us who never felt such hardship and helplessness. The little boy must have felt trapped in a hopeless despairing situation. If anything that I learnt from the journey is the need to always bring myself back down-to-earth, to be contented with whatever I have and to show more humility, compassion and care for our fellow human race.

NEPAL - Never Ending Peace And Love

We will be flying out from Kathmandu airport tomorrow to finally close the final chapter of our adventure. We set off a couple of weeks ago on a journey to an unknown. We followed a well-proven trekking route to see and appreciate mother's nature and its beauty at its best, to breath fresh mountain air, to feel and be freshen up by the cold water from gushing streams and waterfalls, to feel like a small boy when crossing the many suspension bridges, to feel like a real man when climbing up thousands of steps up the mountain, but above all to feel humble and human again when walking in the shadows of the Annapurna mountains. We learnt a lot about the Nepalese people and their culture, indeed they are very respectful people. Even though life is definitely hard here but the people are still willing to break into a smile to us.

The trekking itself was quite hard and very challenging. But we managed to push ourselves up to 8 hours on certain days to reach our destinations. The end was quite satisfying, to be on top of the Poon Hill, to view the two great Himalayan mountain ranges of Anapurna and Dhaulagri in a cloudless morning on the 8th October 2010. That will remain a great memory and satisfaction to the three of us, on achieving something that is really special in our life.

Places to stay in Kathmandu

The Kathmandu Resort Hotel is

located in the western part of Thamel, an area we have not been before. We were quite surprised to see that this place has much better looking shops and buildings and more tourists. However the small roads are still chaotic and congested with cars, motorbikes, trickshaws and people.

We moved to Vaishali Hotel (photos) today for our final night in Kathmandu. Vaishali is one of the proper hotels here with large lobby and its own yard. However it does need some upgrading to keep pace with other newer and more modern hotels.

The average hotel rate in Kathmandu ranges from US$30 to $60 for double room. Obviously those like Radisson are much more expensive.

In the afternoon we went around to tour the Thamel area again. At one point we came across a mosque, possibly one of the few in Kathmandu. The worship place is quite small but seemed to be well used. I was told there are about 30,000 Muslims in Kathmandu.

Nepalese Cuisines

One of the worry we had before embarking on this trip is what food to eat whilst in Nepal . Fortunately most of the Nepalese diets are vegetarian. So it was quite easy to find food. The foods are quite simple. During trekking, rice and mixed vegetable curry are the standard meals. Other foods are like the Tibetan bread, aloo gobi, pratha, nan and so on.

In Pokhara, there are two vegetarian restaurants located along the main street and they specialise in Indian food. The foods are quite good.

Back to Kathmandu

Admittedly 5 days to cover the same trekking distance was really pushing our strength. But on top of that shortening our trekking from 7 to 5 days has resulted in a logistic nightmare. It resulted in us trying to find places to stay for the additional two nights in Pokhara and Kathmandu right at the peak of the tourist season. At the end after much trolling and trying we managed to get the additional night in the same hotel in Pokhara but a different hotel in Kathmandu.

We set off early for Kathmandu. The drive was quite smooth until we reached the last 20 km. This was where the traffic has to climb and zigzag along the slope of a big hill to get to Kathmandu Valley. With road in poor condition and heavy laden trucks and busses struggling to ascend, combined they resulted in a massive traffic jam. This is probably the lowlight of our whole journey in Nepal. After travelling for 5 hours to be stuck in a traffic jam, in a dusty, hot and at the same time breathing heavily fumed air is not a nice place to be. We finally reached our hotel 7.5 hours after we left Pokhara. What a big relief!

We are staying at Kathmandu Resort Hotel for a night.

Pokhara – a Paradise on Earth

Pokhara is the second largest city in Nepal after Kathmandu. The place is a lot cleaner and better managed than Kathmandu. The city is always associated with its famous lake and awesome mountainous backdrop.

Today when we made a walk along the main street, it was literally full of tourists. The place is a lot more relaxing, offering many good restaurants. Along that same street, I was told that there are around 58 shops selling outdoor cloth and gears like in Kathmandu but at slightly lower prices. Famous brands like Northface and Mammut dominate the market here. Much of these are made in Nepal apart from China and Bangladesh before being exported to Europe. They sell at a third to a tenth of the retail price in Europe.

The trekking and tour companies are also plenty in Nepal. Budi told us there are more than 600 companies and so competition is quite fierce. In fact one could literally walk in to arrange a trek more or less on the spot. Budi makes 2 or 3 treks per season – that’s the autumn and the spring trekking seasons. After our trip he will be making the Annapurna circuit trip with a group of Belgium and Dutch trekkers.

At Pokhara, we are staying at Hotel Stupa.

The Long Journey

From Ghroepani down, we met herds of goats being shepherded down to Pokhara. Apparently these goats, literally tens of thousands in a seaso

n were being brought from Tibet by foot, a distance of 200 to 300 km to Pokhara for sale. Each herd is being accompanied by 6 to 10 young men and takes about four to six weeks to reach down to Pokhara. Along the way some of the goats would have died or gone astray. I really have utter respect for the shepherds for their patience and hard work in doing such a long and arduous journey to send the goats to the market. This to me is reminiscence of the middle ages where human endeavours and old traditional way is still to be seen with our own eyes.

Ghroepani to Pokhara

8^th October, day 5 of trekking.

Our trekking was supposed to last for 7 days. Today we combined the 6^th and 7^th day trekking into one. The guide must be thinking that we were real crazy trekkers. The final walk was mainly downhill and passed through a number of villages like Ulleri and Hile before reaching Nayapul, a distance of over 20 km. That took us about 8 hours and most of the time under the hot sun. The HRM reader showed about 4000 calories were burnt.

From Nayapul, we took a taxi to Pokhara to stay a few nights there. In all we have walked a total of 26 hours in 5 days covering a distance of almost 100km. There are other interesting trekking routes in Annapurna. A slightly longer trekking route is to continue from Poon Hill to the North to reach Jomsom or even further up to Muktinath. This trip would take 2 to 3 weeks in total. There is also the Annapurna circuit trek, which normally takes 3 weeks to make an almost full circle of the Annapurna mountain range. Other trekking routes are to a number of Base Camps further up in the mountain. The famous one is the Annapurna Base Camp or simply called ABC which is located at about 4000 metres high.

For this trip, I am quite glad that it happened so quickly. I got interested to go to NepaI when I accidentally bumped to a person who just came back from that place whilst I was climbing Mount Kinabalu back in April. Then my fellow Bruneian trekkers invited me if I am interested to join them. From there the motion was set.

On Top of the World at Poon Hill

8^th October, day 5 of trekking – early morning.

This is the ultimate destination of our journey – the world famous Poon Hill – one of the hottest destination spot for trekkers.

From Poon Hill at height of 3193 metres, one could have a spectacular view of the whole of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri Mountain ranges. The best time to see that is early in the morning. Amongst all these mountains one could see the 7th and 10th highest mountains in the world, both are over 8000 metres high.

After dawn prayer, we set off at around 5 am from our hotel in Ghroepani. It took about 45 minutes to make the 300 metres climb to the top of the Poon Hill. Temperature was a bit chilly early in the morning. We waited for a few minutes before witnessing an amazing sight –watching the Annapurna mountains at sunrise where the face of the mountains changed its colour as the sun rose. The place was literally crowded with about two hundred trekkers converging up on the hill.

Are we the first Bruneians to reach Poon Hill? – we were not sure. Whatever it is, we made sure our national flag has made its presence there.

From Ghandruk to Ghroepani

7^th October, day 4 of trekking.

Today we climbed another 900 metres higher but this time through the mountains to reach another village called Ghroepani.

The inital plan was to go to Tadapani first, about 3 hours walk from Ghandruk, and stay overnight there. But we found that we have nothing much to do if we reached the place early as like yesterday in Ghandruk. So we discussed with our guide as to what is the best thing to do to make full use of our time. On top of that Tadapani is a very small village. We were also quite desperate to get access to internet which we have not been able to do in the last 3 places. In the end we agreed to combine the 4^th and 5^th day trekking into one but that would involve real long walks.

The whole route would normally take about 8 to 10 hours. But we were confident we could do it in less than 7 hours. For that we made sure we have enough food and fluid supplies.

The walk was actually quite tough, probably the toughest I have ever done in my life. The distance was nearly 20 km. The HRM reader showed that we have burnt about 5000 calories! The easy part was the trek through the jungle where we were most of the time walking under the shade. The hardest part was when crossing valleys where we have to go down two to three hundred metres before going the same height up again.

We pushed ourselves at steady pace with just few stops here and there for rest. In the end we reached Ghroepani, another village in this part of the world. Our place of stay was quite basic but with a nice fireplace in the lobby. Ghroepani is located at 2860 metres. The temperature outside could be quite chilly especially at night.

The power supply in Ghroepani was unfortunately turned out to be unreliable with intermittent black-outs. The internet was also not working!

Annapurna Sunrise

The best time to look up the mountains is during early morning as the sky is clear with no cloud. Trekkers tend to wake up quite early, at around 5 to 6 am, to prepare themselves for the day. The normal routine would be to enjoy the mountain view during the cold morning, have breakfast and set off at 7 am.

After the morning trekking, there is normally plenty of free time in the afternoon. One could easily spend the whole time reading books or lazing around sitting outside while having some tea. The famous ones are the Chai tea which has some cinnamon in it. The other one is mint tea.

We were quite amazed when we ordered the mint tea, the lady just pluck some mint leaves in front of us to prepare for the cups. Indeed people here can easily lead a sustainable life from the land around them. Everything could be found. Although life could be pretty simple.

We met and talked with quite a number of local people during our walk. One thing which is good to carry are chocolates bars to give away to some of the poorer children. There are some donation boxes along the way which ask for donation for school maintenance or even to help sponsor building a mini hydroelectric project for the villages. Best thing is to carry small changes as gifts or donations.

Typical of many isolated areas, most of the villages are deprived of teenagers or young people. These people tend to go to the cities for further education or to find employment. So it is quite strange in a way although not surprising to see only old people and children during out trekking.

From Landruk to Ghandruk

6^th October, day 3 of trekking.

Today involved real tough climb. We descended 300 metres from Landruk into the belly of a small valley to cross a bridge before climbing up 700 metres on the valley slope to Ghandruk which is at 1940 metres in elevation. It took us two and half hours. The HRM watch indicated that we have burnt some 1500 calories during the walk. Our porters took 4 hours and apparently that’s the normal speed for easy trekking. So we were probably punishing ourselves too much!

Ghandruk is a big village. There are a lot more choices of accommodations, about 30 hotels in total. Each ones are small containing 10 to 30 rooms. We stayed at one of the better looking hotel called the Annapurna Guest house which got 24 rooms. Today there was no electricity as the small hydroelectric unit that supply the village was being repaired. We hope tonight we will have electricity. If there is then this entry will be loaded!

One thing that we found strange about Nepal is the time zone. It is set at +5.45 GMT. This time zone is like no other. So the time difference compared to back home is 2 hours and 15 minutes.

Land of the Gurkhas

Our guide is from the Gurkha tribe. The word Gurkha is a misnomer, the actual name of the tribe is Gurung.

Our guide was quite keen to tell us about his tribe. According to him, the Gurkhas are descendents of Mongol, characterised by their small eyes, rounded face and short built. They live in the mountains, are generally hill farmers and hunters and so are very fit. They are quite different from the Brahma or brown people of Nepal who lives in the lowlands. The Brahma has more Indian looks. They normally work as teachers as they are more educated.

The Gurkhas have been traditionally working as soldiers for the Indian and British army. Apparently the other big recruitment is for the Singapore Police. Nowadays the recruitments are much less in numbers. About 500 are recruited every year and the selection process is among the toughest where tens of thousands would apply for the job. In the end these Gurkhas are sent to some of hot spots of the world such as Afghanistan for the British army and Kashmir and Sri Lanka for the Indian army. According to our guide, for the British army the Gurkha’s salary starts at US$1200 per month and about US$ 2500 if they go to war. They would retire after 16 years in service where they will get pension. So in general they retire at 40. Some would come back to their villages and set up a small business or build a small hotel to cater for the trekkers.

Walking in the Valleys

The real nice thing about our trip is to see the nature and awesome sceneries. Our walks so far brought us to cross a number of suspension bridges, reminding me again about Indiana Jones!

One could find numerous small waterfalls or gently flowing streams with cool and refreshing cool water. The people here are also very friendly. When meeting people here, the greeting to say is “namastee” which means hello.

We met a number of other trekkers. A group of Korean trekkers were walking together with us for awhile before they moved on very quickly. These fit Koreans were hoping to do at least 8 hours walk to reach a village further down. They were planning to reach the Annapurna Base Camp or simply called ABC in 3 more days. This base camp is sitting at altitude of some 4000 metres and quite challenging although is still doable for fit people. And yet it is only half way in height compare to the real Annapurna peaks.

Other trekkers included British, Australian, Japanese, French and Dutch. We were wondering whether we are the first Bruneian to go to Annapurna. We were not sure. But so far from what we experienced so far this is really an amazing place to go.

The cost is quite reasonable, about US$700 to 800 each, for our trip. That is for the 11 days in Nepal, which includes three night accommodation in Kathmandu, 1 night accommodation in Pokhara, 7 days trekking which included accommodation and food, guide, porters, climbing permit, all the transport and some sightseeing tours. Compare this with climbing Kinabalu which could easily costs the same for two nights stay in the park. So people... it is worth considering.

From Dhampus to Landruk

5^th October, day 2 of trekking.

We set off early at 7 am after taking a good breakfast. Actually we were already wide awake at 4.30 am. It was probably because we went to bed quite early the night before.

The trek was challenging in the first three hours involving climbing up one of the hilly grounds before climbing down to another valley where the next village called Landruk is located.

The guide told us that the porters will try to reach Landruk early to book for our accommodation in advance. But we seemed to be quite energetic and managed to overtake them and reached Landruk almost an hour earlier. We only made one real stop for coffee and some snacks, but most of the time was keeping our walk at constant and steady pace but reasonably fast with intermittent stops to take photos and chat with other trekkers.

In all it took us five and a half hours to reach Landruk. My two fellow trekkers have one of these modern gadgets called HRM watch or heart beat monitor which measures heartbeat and calculate calories burned. The watch indicated we have burnt about 3000 calories in the five and a half hours trekking – I find that’s really cool!

The unfortunate thing about Landruk is that there was no internet or phone signal. So for a day and a night, we felt a bit isolated from the outside world.

We were looking forward for tomorrow when we will go to another village called Dandruk which is a bigger village and much higher in altitude. We were told that there will be internet there. If that is the case then that would be the time I will be downloading this entry. We stayed at a hotel called Hungry Eyes Hotel – what a strange name!

A Cheap Place of Sanctuary

The accommodations here are quite cheap and regulated. A room at one of the hotels costs about 200 to 300 Nepalese rupees for a double room which is equivalent US$3 to 4. Set dinner costs similar. One could also take a camping package where a camp tent set up for trekkers would only cost 50 rupees per night. Amazingly a bottle of water costs more, that will set you at 60 rupees, which is three times more compare in Pokhara. That is because it costs a lot to carry the supplies uphill. These supplies are normally carried by porters or donkeys.

One could actually do trekking for weeks or months and not costing a lot. The best trekking period is from October to November which is the dry period. December to February is the colder period. March to June is the other good period but the condition is more humid. June to September is the wet season. Wet season really means wet. It is best to avoid that period.

In the shadow of the Big Mountains

Our trekking is supported by a guide named Budi and two porters. We carried our own daily pack consisting the bare minimum to supplement the walk, about 5 to 7 kilos each. The rest are carried by the porters, each one could carry up to 60 kilos each if required.

Today is the start of the trekking. From Pokhara we drove another half an hour to reach Phedi.

At Phedi, a small village, we set our gears and the porters started to arrange the bags which they will carry. We started the ascent. It was going uphill all the time, quite punishing, intermittently interrupted by gentler climbs passing through numerous paddy fields and small villages. It was hard work. We were sweating all over as we pushed our way. We reached Dhampus, a small village, about 2 hours later. The climb brought us another 500 metres higher into the mountain.

In Dhampus, one could find many good accommodations with reasonable facilities. Our guide managed to find a room in one of those hotels, though probably more like hostels. Because they are many choices, our guide didn’t even bother to book our accommodation in advance. We could just hop from one place to another to find if there are rooms available.

The Sakura Hotel where stayed was beyond our expectation in terms of available facilities considering trekking routes like the one we are taking goes deep into the valleys and mountainous region. We were expecting real basic facilities. In Sakura Hotel, the rooms are nice, toilet and hot shower facilities were amazing considering where we were and there was even a restaurant offering almost everything one could imagine. It was quite refreshing to have a hot shower after a very long day, on the road for 8 hours, followed by 2 hours trekking.

The sights so far were amazing. From Dhampus, we could see a big part of the Annapurna mountain range. The white capped mountains dominated the backdrop. The Fish Tail Mountain is huge and easily recognisable and yet is only some 6900 metres high. The higher mountains in Annapurna are over 8000 metres.

On the Road to Pokhara

We set off at 7 am on the 4^th of October towards Pokhara, a sizable town of two hundred thousand people located in the middle of Nepal. It was supposed to be a 6-hours drive but as expected that could vary a lot. We were already stuck for almost one hour in a traffic jam just as when we were climbing out of the Kathmandu valley. The roads coming out of Kathmandu to other towns are few but heavily used. Travelling along these roads is of course part of the real package of our journey, to see the country and experience the daily challenges face by the people here.

From Kathmandu we drove along the Trishali River downstream to a town called Mogling. The river is holy to the Hindus. The winding road was full of trucks carrying materials and supplies to Kathmandu mainly from India. At Mogling we crossed a bridge that only allowed a vehicle to cross one at a time. This caused a huge traffic jam in both directions.

From Mogling, we drove upstream along another river towards Pokhara. We eventually reached Pokhara 8 hours after starting the trip.

Pokhara is a real amazing place, with the most beautiful backdrop of the Annapurna Mountains behind. These mountains, with peaks of over 8000 metres, are separated from the other main mountains of the Himalayas by deep and amazing valleys, the prime spot of some of the best trekking routes known to mankind. Pokhara is the ideal starting place for these superb trekking routes. The best one is probably the 21-day trekking called the Annapurna circuit trek which involves trekking along one of the main valley to an elevation of more than 5000m. We are not doing that though. Our trekking route is one of the easiest and shortest but is probably the most popular among casual trekkers. We will be trekking for 7 continuous days with an average of 5 to 6 hours walk each day. Each day will bring us to even higher elevations and different views of the Annapurna Mountains. Time will tell how we will cope with that.