Hiking & Biking throughout India & Nepal

Namastee Miro Sati, topai lai sam-tse tsa?? :-)

I hope you're all doing well! From my hotel room in New Delhi, and about one and a half months after my last message, let me give you another update! At the time of my previous update, I was still only dreaming about the Mt. Everest Base Camp Trek, which was about to start. Now, Base Camp has been conquered (later on, more about that!), Nepal is already left behind, loads of tea have been bought in Darjeeling and many hours and even more kilometres on the road and rail have been traveled...

Every adventure has a beginning and there I was: in the heart of Kathmandu's tourist area Thamel, going in-and-out of Outdoor-shops to get all my gear ready (walking-sticks, down-jacket, down-trousers, sunglasses, gloves, etc...) and to find a suitable and experienced guide who could get us safely to the Base Camp of the highest mountain in the world: Mt. Everest! Three days later, being both confident and nervous about the next three weeks on the trail, my porter-guide: Dil Sherpa (the Sherpa people have a very good reputation as hiking and mountaineering guides) and me were on an over-crowded mini-bus driving way too fast on a road way too small to drop us off at the last village reachable by car, the start of our journey: Jiri. Whereas most people - and there are quite some of them giving it a shot on the Everest-trail - start their trekking by flying into a place called Lukla, I chose to start mine from a lower altitude and quite a bit further away. From here, a trail with almost no other travellers, leading through magnificent green valleys and some remote villages of Nepal brought us within seven long days of walking at the Airstrip of Lukla where we would pick up Gijs, who would be the third and final member of our team :-) The first week turned out to be both very beautiful and a good warming-up for the remaining two weeks, since there was a lot of ascending and decending.

Now our team was complete and from this point, we would walk in about 8 days from an altitude of about 2.850 metres to Everest Base Camp, situated at the foot of the Everest-glacier at about 5.400 metres. In 3 more days we would walk the same way (but this time a lot faster) back and fly out to Kathmandu. Not worrying too much about the physical challenges of the trekking itself, we all knew that it would come down to one thing: altitude! Walking days wouldn't be too long and when done at sea level, it would be quite easy, but getting higher and higher up the mountain would start to work on our bodies. Every day we moved up about 400 - 500 metres and from an altitude of about 4.000 metres, your body gets a hard time with the lack of oxygen at higher altitudes, possibly resulting in headaches (also caused by de-hydration), dizziness, vommitting or worse... In fact, the only thing you can possibly do to minimise the effects of this so-called 'altitude sickness' is to 'acclimatise' well, meaning: going up as slowly as possible, drinking plenty (ridiculously much-) water and to take some days of rest. As it turned out during our trip, I was the one suffering most from being at an unusual high altitude and it got quite though from an altitude of about 4.800 metres. At the end of the day, I felt as if I had been drinking way too much alcohol and my head was feeling quite heavy. Fortunately, the next morning, when our bodies got some rest and they got the chance to adapt to the higher altitude, I was most of the time feeling a lot better and ready to go again. After a couple of these days our goal finally became within our reach and early morning on the 22nd of September, we put on our warmest cloths, filled our backpacks with enough water and started out for the final push... The last part of the trail took us through the famous Khumbu (Everest) Glacier, an enormous mass of ice moving slowly down, which we carefully crossed to reach our final destination: Mt. Everest Base Camp!!! Day 15..., 15 days of walking through the most beautiful landscape, meeting friendly locals in remote sherpa-villages, most of the time with a big smile on our faces, but sometimes, especially during the last days, wondering why we wanted to do this again.... Now, standing at the foot of the world's highest mountain, at the point where the trekking stops for 'normal' human beings and where professionals would take out their crampons and ice axes to push for the summit: this was a climax: it was simply breath-taking :-D

About seven days later, Gijs and I were back in Kathmandu, about 6kgs lighter, still feeling the adrenaline in our bodies and being content about how things worked out on the mountain. Gijs had another two weeks before heading back home and we decided not to waste too much time and to head as soon as possible for North-East India. Easier said than done, the 20-hour bus-trip to get there was quite something... Not only where the roads still very bad and the buses still over-crowded, during the night first one of the tires broke down (which got surprisingly replaced in only 20 minutes: F1-style!) and later on the left half of the front-window got knocked out (better said: 'knocked-in', people in the front-seats were covered with pieces of glass flying around... the bus-driver didn't seem to care though and just drove on...).

Drinking tea, enjoying the beautiful surroundings, doing some 'spectacular' (...) rafting and simply chilling out, we spent a couple of days in the historical, and once rich town of Darjeeling. Although our next destination would be Calcutta, the biggest city in the North-East, it proved hard to book any transport to get there because of a big hindu-festival during which the whole of India seemed to be on the move... Gijs then, whom I know as thinking only in opportunities, came up with a great idea: “if there are no trains, let's buy two scooters and make our own way South!”... After two days of shopping around the middle-sized town of Siliguri, bargaining, customising the scooters for our use, getting the paperwork done and working out a possible itinerary, the result was there: we bought two original Indian old-timer scooters: brand: Bajaj, working reasonably well, complete with the paperwork, top-speed about 80km/h, mileage of about 1l/30-40km, including spare-tires and a frame to tie our backpacks on to... these guys were ready to leave for Calcutta! In the meanwhile, we celebrated my 24th birthday in style, dancing the night away with a local friend of ours and his friends outside on a local festival organised by the University of an Indian village where nobody's ever heard of... it was just great :-)

On the road now; final destination: Kalkutta; amount of kilometres: about 1.200; amount of days: 3-4. It took us about a day to get used to our scooters (which had manual gears), the crrrazy traffic of India and above all the poor condition of the roads. However, we took it on as a challenge and the second day we were already zig-zagging through all kinds of vehicles driving on all sides of the road and trying to avoid all kinds of animals (dogs, cows, monkeys and goooaaaats, the last turning out to be the most stupid animals on the road!) and above all driving around the big pot-holes in the roads. Being free to stop wherever we wanted to and really getting to places where no public (tourist-) transport would ever get you, we both really enjoyed the experience and we got to see yet another side of India, off the beaten track. After four long days of driving, we finally reached Calcutta and made one last excursion together to the 'Sunderbans Tiger Reserve'. Although we only saw about 3 birds a monitor lizzard (varan) and a monkey, the whole trip through the dense mangrove Delta leading to the Bay of Bengal proved to be the perfect and relaxed end to our trip together.

Having said goodbye to Gijs, I first sold his scooter, then sent mine to Mumbai at the other side of the country, and I took the train myself to the holy city of Varanasi, about twelve hours to the West. When my train had a 'little' delay ('only' 10 hours... re-scheduled for early-next-morning) and when I had to spend the night at the train station (which was after all not too bad, since it had a sort of dormitory-rooms which I could share with some nice fellow travellers), I though that was it... The real shock however, only came in Varanasi itself: never have I seen something like that, it was literally a place between heaven and earth! Millions of people from all over India, mostly being Hindu travel there every year to take a bath in the Holy (but o-so-dirty, yes: toxic!) Ganges River. According to Hinduism, dying in (or around) this place will make you escape the circle of reincarnation and get you straight to their heaven, Nirvana. Just strolling around the river-front, a circus of the most amazing people would pass me by, but most shocking for me were the so-called 'Burning Ghats', places where deceased Hindus are ritually, and above all, publicly, burned on big piles of wood. The more wood and the more expansive wood is used, the better it is supposed to be for the deceased person and his or her family... Some deceased women and children though, are not being burned but thrown in the river. Watching this process for about a minute and suddenly realising in what a different world these people live, this was just about enough and I soon wandered off to my hotel room to get some peace of mind... After having spend some more days in Varanasi, avoiding the 'Burning Ghats' though, I packed my bags again to leave for Mumbai, where I just stayed for two nights to take care of my scooter and to find it a safe parking place.

Yesterday, I got back to Delhi and here I am, waiting for Josine, one of my good friends to arrive here. Together, we're planning to travel two weeks around the North of India (back in the mountains, adventure sports, Golden Temple in Amritsar, the residence of the Dalai Lama) and another two weeks around the famous Rajasthan region (Historical cities like Jaipur and Udaipur, the Great Thar Desert and of course the Taj Mahal)... One absolutely amazing part of the trip has finished, another one is just about to start!!! I'm very much looking forward to what is about to come and of course I will keep you updated! Thanks a lot for all your messages and let me know what's going on :-)

Namaskar and cheers,

Marijn