sevistravel: in die berg bin i gern...

...jo do gfreit si mei gmiat!

yesterday we came back to kathmandu after 10 days in the mountains and it was amazing!!

the first thing to do on this trip was to get a bus to siabru besi, the start of our tour. since a big festival just started when we wanted to leave (and everybody goes home for this festival) the buses were crowded and we could not get a ticket for that bus. so we went to trishuli, which is half way, and hoped to be able to catch the other bus there!
the first part to trishuli we sat on the roof of the bus. thats a bit scary, and you have to watch out for branches of the trees! but in case something happens you can jump off the bus!!


on top of the bus

after some time i was looking around too long and a branch hit me in the face... then i looked more like the nepalis, since many of them have also one of these dots in red on their forehead!

with my dot!

in trishuli we were able to get into the other bus, the roof was full so we went inside. it was so full, unbelivible. we did of course not have a seat and so we stood there for hours,and you really could not move, like really NOT! and the bus always stopped and more people got on the bus, and luggage, and chicken, and goats...! we counted 28 seats, but there were about 40 people inside and another 30 on the roof (guessing of a local, on the in his words "very dangerous road"). the road got worse and worse and it became the worst road i saw in my life! in very steep mountains it was not a good feeling to be in this old bus, and with such a bad road... sometimes the road was very fresh because landslide took away the old one...and always rocks and deep holes (schlagloecher, unglaublich tief!) on the road.

thats a bus in the middle...but thats not the road

we safely arrived in siabru besi after about 12 hours on and in the bus...and we made 117 kilometers!! but we were constantly driving - the road was really bad!

next day we went into langtang valley, and we slept the first night in rimche. its very beautiful, you can look up the valley as well as down.

down the valley...mountains look exactly like we learned to draw them in school!!

...the shower...

like the day before we went up another 1.000 m. and stayed the 2nd night just before langtang. we preferred to stay not at the places that are recommended in lonely planet and so on but rather at less touristic places - and that to recommend! where we stayed the 2nd night there were no guests for days because everybody goes to langtang because of lonely planet or because they have guides and they get a commission from the hotels when they bring tourists. the place was nice, but very easy going. no electricity in the room, a hot bowl with water as shower...but great food and nice people.

our second guesthouse "ever view point"

two of their children

a few impressions on the way to kyajin gumpa

in langtang

transportation in the mountains

nepal vs. germany in: "around the waterfall"

tea break

snow on the horizon, not clouds...!

cows and yaks live there. and the cow reminded me on a cow we saw 4 nights before...

...in kathmandu. remember: cows are holy here...holy sh...

down there is kyanjin gumpa (3.870 m.)

its a difference of about 2.400 meters to siabru besi, where we started 3 days before. we both had a little bit of headdache, but it was ok. some people could not stay up there and had to go down immediately.

on the 2nd day we planned to walk up tserko ri, 4.984 meters high. the last 3 numbers are great (a good year ends with these numbers!!), but its a pity its not 5.000. some nepalis actually said its higher than 5.000, and the maps here are not really good...but i will not do it like an other austrian earlier this year and pretend to have done something "amazing" (was it K2?) on the mountains, so i will not say i was up at 5.000 - even if i did my best!

as close to 5.000 as possible!!

looking direction tibet

quite cold up there...and the air is thin, its true!! the last few hundred meters were more and more exhausting.

its was great up there, fortunately the clouds disappeared a bit and the view was amazing. its just one of these things which can on a picture never look only a little bit close to reality.
we stayed one more night in kyajin gumpa in our guesthouse (on the one sid "evening iew", on the other side "evining viwe", both written with big letters on the wall of the house!), and then went down to do another trek, the "tamang heritage trek", just on the other side of siabru besi and with hardly any tourists!!

on this trek we were really an attraction, and it seems that children know better what to do. the grown ups often just looked at us (but ALL are very friendly) ahile the children greeted us mostely with "hello chocolate" in the hope of something sweet. we bought many candies and gave them "as chocolate"...which will not make them speak better english if they now think THIS is chocolate! here it was difficult to speak to the people, they hardly know english. once we ordered "veg. fried rice", it took ages and then we got it. but we only got vegetables, they forgot the rice!! but on the bill it was again!!! mostely we have to rite the bill ourselves, write down what we had and then calculate and pay. another time we wanted to order some food, but the lady told us the cook is in kathmandu and she has no idea what food this should be. in our last guesthouse flo gave like an english lesson to the owner who really can not speak english. e.g. flo asked if he can buy chocolate, it was not possible, but then he gave chocolate to us as a present for english lesson. from his shop... it was nice, he was so happy to learn a bit and wanted to give back something!
it was all great, see a few pictures...

a funny menu


view back to gatlang

somewhere on the way

"old man of village" and me - gegenseitig fasziniert!!

child in the first restaurant without toilet "...into the fields"

view from thuman

left valley is langtang, our first trekking area. second was just behind the mountain on the right side

we went back with the bus yesterday, the road was really scary again, it took again almost 12 hours for 117 km! once we had to change the tire, and see our reserve tire...