Bikes for Boots!

The first few days in Kathmandu went by in a bit of a haze, being looked after by our amazing host Aabash and his family. We rested tired legs and ate great home cooked food again. We even managed to give our bikes one last clean, such trusty old steeds! Aabash is another incredible character we've been lucky enough to meet. At only 34 he's a shining example of how a boy, many years ago, had to take on the role of man of the house.

Since then, he somehow managed to work full time through school and university, established a small business designing websites and moved his whole family (6 adults and 3 children) into a house out of the city, which he designed and built with no previous experience, following an unimaginably traumatic ordeal after the earthquake where they spent days sheltering in huge concrete drain pipes. Unbelievably, he still managed to find time to help us settle in and have long fire side chats under the stars on New Years Eve while putting the world to rights! He also deserves a medal for his in-depth knowledge of Kathamndu's Customs department and its strange workings. To cut a very long storey short, it took me a whole day, 6000 rupees, some slightly dodgy deals and secret handshakes to finally pick up a parcel our Expedition Manager had kindly sent out to us. It was definitely an insight into the inner workings of Nepal's main airport. All the while, Kat sat at the entrance gate, silently weeping at the beating the bikes had just received while strapped on the roof of a taxi the size of Ford Ka. Finally, I escaped victorious, our parcel aloft on my shoulder only to find Kat in a state of great agitation, bladder close to rupture! After emergency wees, we found our little apartment in Samakosi, a small district of Kathmandu, which was to be home for the next 10 days.

It felt good to stop still for more than a few days. We were still pinching ourselves that we'd actually made it to Kathmandu. The flat was a little one bedroom studio apartment with a hot shower, sunny balcony and a perfect little kitchen for us to hone our chai making and paratha cooking skills. Our AirBnB host Raju, could not have been more attentive and quickly had us over at his house eating chicken and drinking cold beers! We practiced our limited but essential Nepali phrases with our local shopkeepers and became regulars, getting smiles and discounts (5 rupees... just less than a penny!) left, right and centre! I spent my time pottering around the museum like streets and endless shops of Kathmandu while Ed attempted to revise for his GP application exam. After 3 months of living in each other's panniers, he left for Dubai for a two day city break to ludicrously sit his exam, leaving me to explore the old city. I was a little lonely looser and followed the two walking tours in the guidebook to discover some of the secret squares, ancient shrines, temples and streets. Sadly, I often  came across the aftermath of the earthquake. Whole streets were in ruins, temples raized to the ground with huge cracks running up the sides of buildings but life continued busily among the rubble, as only life in Kathmandu can.

Dubai was certainly a contrast to both India and Nepal but a day spent looking at the World's tallest building and plodding around a soulless shopping centre eating frozen yoghurt was enough to know that this was not the place form me! With my exam done, I was happy to be heading back to Kathmandu and a country where I felt much more at home rather than a city devoted to making money in a desert where four millions human beings shouldn't really be. I did manage to test out my acquired knowledge on the flight home as a friendly Nepali collapsed in front of me on the plane! Remembering that I was actually a doctor after 3 months of playing cycling, I hauled him onto some empty seats and he slowly came to. Keen to get home and happy he was OK, I told the pilot we didn't need an emergency landing and happily drank free Starbucks coffee all the way to Kathmandu while tending the patient!

Can't help but admire a perfectly stacked wood pile!

Once Kat and I were reunited in Kathmandu, we made arrangements to meet up with Murari, who is the Head of the Kathmandu Community Action Nepal (CAN) office, the small British charity we will be working with while we're here. CAN was founded in the mid 90's by Doug Scott, a famous British mountaineer. It was initially set up to protect Sherpa welfare, many of whom helped him summit some of the tallest mountains Nepal has to offer including Everest, where he spent the highest recorded bivouac after summitting late in the evening with no oxygen! CAN has now grown into an organisation that supports 40 projects in the remote mountainous areas of Nepal including schools and health posts. Sadly many of these were completely destroyed during the earthquakes in 2015. 

We met with Murari and talked about how we might fit into CAN's projects and planned the next phase of our adventure. He suggested heading into the Helambu region of Nepal, 70km north of Kathmandu in the Langtang National Park, an area close to the epicentre of the earthquakes and utterly devastated as a result. Trying to keep on our theme of minimising motors, we planned a four day trek to reach Melamchi Ghyang where we'd base ourselves for the next 7 weeks, aiming to visit two other CAN health posts nearby.

With Nepal in the midst of winter, our shorts and flipflops seemed a little inadequate. What followed was an outrageous shopping spree in Thamel's innumerable outdoor clothing shops. Each one, a cavern of bootleg climbing gear, down jackets, sleeping bags and shiny action trousers all with wonky North Face labels and even wonkier seams! We went town in the only ethical shop we could find, Sherpa, appeasing Kat's conscience for supporting horrible big brands. After buying their entire range we were a bit upset not to be offered sponsorship... maybe it was Ed's ridiculous attempt at a tragic gap year top knot that put them off!

Well aware I'm not going to live this down!

Snugly warm clothes packed and bikes safely stored (we hope!), we set off on foot into the mountains with our guide and friend Kami.

Setting off from Melamchi Bazaar, we crossed our first rickety suspension bridge, hanging worryingly high over the valley, to begin a steep four day climb up the Helambu valley into the Langtang National Park. 

It took a full day of sweating, moans and groans and hard breathing before our legs realised they were going to have to swap from cycling to walking. We were so used to our bikes working so efficiently, swapping panniers for rucksacks was a rude awakening. The practically unused juggling balls Ed insists on bringing everywhere seemed a little heavier!

Our guide Kami grew up in Melamchi Ghyang, our final destination, and was the brother in law of our host, Purna. He knew all the twists and turns of the path as well as the deeply spiritual connection the valley has with Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava - Indian Sage often called the second Buddha, who bought Buddhism to Tibet and the Himalaya in the 8th century) and its more recent history following the earthquakes. Kami had not actually walked the route for 15 years, so each collapsed stupa and flattened monastery was new to him and the sadness of their loss was clearly visible in his eyes. However, as we've seen time and time again, those worst off following the disaster remain positive, stoic and looking resolutely forward. As is the way in most remote, mountainous regions, Kami seemed to know or be related to everyone we met and after a long days walking we spent our evenings chatting away to our hosts sitting around a wood burning stove in the temporary shelters that people now call home. Almost every building in every village we passed was destroyed. People are now living in 'temporary shelters' which were hurriedly put together with whatever timber could be rescued and what little materials came from foreign aid. People are still using canvas tents, each sporting a different NGO logo (sorry Lux, no sign of ShelterBox yet).

Tents and temporary shelters likely to remain home for many years to come

Although the outside looks cobbled together, inside they are as homely, cared for and welcoming as the old homes they replace. Shelves of perfectly polished copper pots, china tea cups and cooking essentials surround the central wood burning stove that is the heart to every home. It offers warmth, light and the perfect place to cook a yummy Daal bhat. Everything happens at ground level here and our legs, even after months of daily yoga, are taking some time to adapt to hours sitting crossed legged but it'll come!

It took some time to escape from the haze that hung in the Kathmandu Valley. Winter time, when there is very little rainfall, can be incredibly dusty. People told us that they called the city 'Dustmandu' these days! Huge road improvement projects, which look decades from ever being finished, certainly don't help this. As we climbed the steep, dusty hill from Melamchi Bazaar, the road disintegrated into a brown fine snow drift of dust as deep as your boots. Trucks and jeeps would occasionally pass in a cloud of dust so fine it would enter every crack and crevasse! Fortunately, with our local knowledge, we found a steep cut through that took us away from the road and dust. Eventually we left the road behind altogether and from then on the path led us up through ancient oak and rhododendron forests, many of the shaded valleys crunchy with frost.

Another flattened Tea House along our way

Every now and again you'd pop round a bend in the valley side or reach a clearing in the gnarled ancient forest and see snow capped mountains looming up above. Those moments even took Kami by surprise and he was taking as many photos as us! 

The scale of the valleys and mountains is hard to comprehend at times, with peaks breaking through clouds towering into the sky and valleys plunging thousands of feet below. We tried not to think about that too much as we crossed landslides and scars from the previous monsoon and earthquakes as the path clung onto the hillside at impossible angles.

Mantra painted on boulders from recent landslides following the earthquakes... Om mane padme hum

The weather gave us beautiful clear days with cobalt blue skies and the warm winter Sun had us in shorts and t-shirts but the minute the sun set or you passed into a shaded valley, the cold was intense. At night, we wore every layer of clothing available and three pairs of socks as a minimum and we were still chilly. Cups of tato pani (hot water) helped stave off the chill but there was the ever present grave concern of midnight wees in outside long drop loos that increased with every warm beverage! We often woke to find our bags and clothes frozen which wasn't really surprising given the holes and cracks between the wooden planks and tin roofing that often made our little perfect rooms. One thing we still can't understand is that once a room is finally snugly and warm someone will inevitably walk out and leave the door wide open, letting in the icy night air. While everyone sits shivering, it's inevitably one of us that stands and closes the door! Our Kathmandu purchases are definitely being put to the test!

Melamchi Ghyang village... small plateau bottom leftish!

After three days walking, we reached a village on the opposite side of the valley over looking Melamchi Ghyang. Again, every building was destroyed. Unlike some of the villages we had passed, there were no signs of organised piles of reclaimed stone and wood. Houses lay in rubble untouched since the earthquakes. We walked through the village to the site of one of the oldest schools in the valley and also found it eerily deserted. When we looked more closely the fields, normally so perfectly tended and terraced, were overgrown and no smoke was seen rising from tin chimneys. Kami explained that this sad state actually proceeded the earthquakes and local people had gradually been trickling down the mountainside to the hope of work in the overcrowded Kathmandu valley for years. Now with their homes destroyed and almost no support from the government to rebuild, there was no reason for them to return. There was a small $3000 grant for rebuilding but that was almost impossible to access and covered so little of the rebuild costs that few people have as yet  claimed it. Posters from Oxfam and other NGOs showed examples of how to rebuild your home safely but there has been no support on the ground from engineers and architects to actually enable people to translate a nice picture of a traditional house into a future proof home. Although we did pass some sign of rebuilding, its easy to imagine that without more support and guidance, people will be living in temporary shelters or building homes that are unlikely to withstand another earthquake for years to come.

Rebuilding process starts with reclamation

As night fell, we saw the twinkling lights of homes in Melamchi Ghyang, perched on small plateau at the head of the valley. From everything we'd heard, this community was fighting the trend of heading to the city with a school of 250 children, a health post, two shops, a once daily bus to Kathmandu down a twisting valley road  (only passable outside of monsoon) and the promise of patchy wifi! We woke the next day for a steep drop to the valley floor before an even steeper climb to the village that we would call home for the next 6 weeks where our hosts Purna (Headmaster, CAN chairman and all round pretty inspiring guy) and his wife Zungma (Kami's sister) awaited our arrival.

More soon!

Loads of love 

Ed and Kat xxxxx

Dawn from Melamchi Ghyang looking down towards the Kathmandu Valley