We flew into Kathmandu on the 25th March, a 7 hour flight from HCMC. As we boarded the flight I realised I was one of only 3 females on the flight. It felt like the longest flight in the world. Not feeling great after our dinner the night before in HCMC, I sat on the plane trying not to be sick.
Once we arrived we made our way to our hotel in thamel. The next day was my birthday. I was so excited to be spending my 27th birthday in Nepal, I had been imagining all the amazing things we would see and do for it, but after a long night my whole birthday was spent sick in bed. The best part of the day was the block of chocolate brett bought back for me after he ventured out and explored. I was envious of his day when he got back and told me all the strange and interesting things he saw while I slept. One being a decapitated cow in the street, the head being used to worship.
After a day of rest I woke up the next morning ready to see Nepal. Brett organised a birthday dinner for me. Definitely a birthday to remember. He booked us in for dinner at a local Nepalese restaurant called Kayas kitchen in Thamel. The owners went out of their way to make it a special dinner. The food was amazing but the hospitality was what really made it special. They hung balloons from the ceiling, blessed me with a tika and organised a cake. Such an amazing evening!
The next week was spent organising our trek. We met with a few companies and tried to decide whether to trek on our own or take a guide/porter with us. In the end we decided to do only part of the trek (the cho la pass) with a porter guide.
Buying trekking equipment in kathmandu was a breeze! We got almost everything from a shop called shonas. They told us exactly what we needed to ensure we didn’t over pack! In the end our packs weighed approx 10kg each, Brett’s weighing slightly more. A lot of the weight was our much needed chocolate and snacks ☺️
The trek we decided on was 21 days. We would walk in from shivalaya ( the last place you can catch a bus to) then hike 6 days in to Namche Bazaar, from there meet our guide and hike to gokyo over the cho la pass and to everest base camp and back down to lukla to catch a flight out.
We jumped on the so called express bus at 7 in the morning on the 31/3/15. There were a German couple sitting up the back that we got chatting to and realised we were planning on doing the same trek. Once the bus finally left at 9 am we were excited to be on our way. Feeling lucky to have 2 seats to ourselves we settled in for the 8 hour bus ride. We soon realised that the express bus was not exactly what we would call express, stopping every 20 mins or so to pick up more people from the side of the road. Soon the 20 seat bus would house more than 50 people. At one point we had a 3 year old child thrown across our laps while he slept soundly and his mother squeezed herself next to me on our two seats, squishing brett up against the window and forcing me to basically sit on bretts lap. 10 long, uncomfortable hours later we arrived in shivalaya.
A tiny town in the middle of the snow capped mountainside views that took our breath away. Views that would become the norm for the next three weeks but never get less amazing!
5 westerners left on the bus! Brett and I, 2 Germans (hanna and timo) and Tom from Poland! We all stuck together and would all end up trekking the whole way together. We checked in to our first tea house, the shivalaya Hilton! A basic tea house with an outdoor toilet, similar to what we would spend the next 3 weeks in, grabbed some dhal bhat for dinner and snuggled in for an early night to start the next days 10 hour trek!
Leaving shivalaya
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