Life on the trek (Written Day 13)
I want to write a bit about what our day to day life looks like hiking this massive 23 day trek.
Hari is our guide. He has been a mountain guide for 15 years, with previous work in Sikkim, India. His main areas of expertise now are the Manaslu region, and the Kanchenjunga region, in northeastern Nepal. He will work 3-4 jobs in the spring trekking season, and 5-6 in the fall season. Otherwise, he helps his wife with their cows and tomato farm in Kathmandu.
Shubus is our porter. He speaks broken English, and started off quite reserved. You can tell he is quite outgoing and personable in a group that all speaks Nepali though. He has never been to Manaslu before, so he is often stopping and taking photos while we hike. It’s nice to see him act as a tourist and get excitement from the region as well. He will often fall far behind the group, admiring the views on his own. He carries is own backpack of stuff, and a duffle bag for us, which contains our sleeping bags, down jackets, extra snacks, crampons, and our toiletries. Its all mostly stuff that the company provided us to ensure our comfort. Hari and Shubus don’t have sleeping bags, instead they only use blankets provided by the various hostels and hotels. We carry our clothes, jackets, hats, gloves, books, electronics, and pretty much everything else we would bring if we were doing this independently.
We get up at 6:30 every morning, and pack our belongings, vacating our room before breakfast. Breakfast is at 7 Nepali time, so it gets served at 7:15-7:30. I usually get a chapatti and curry or noodle soup (a ramen pack with veggies added). Cam varies it between noodle soup, a pancake with toppings, or musuli and hot milk. We then stretch, put on sunscreen, and take our start of day selfie, then begin hiking for the morning, sometime between 7:45 and 8.
While hiking, we take a break once every hour or so. Hari has to insist on it, or Cam will walk herself till she collapses. Lunch is generally in the first town or hotel we get to after 11, unless it’s a shorter day, where we will power through till 1. Lunch takes 1-2 hours depending on the service of the restaurant. Many places do not know if they will get visitors that day, so when we order they first have to go to the garden to pick their vegetables to cook.
In regards to food, we have gone full vegetarian for our time in Manaslu. It was recommended to us by everyone, as there are no animals raised for slaughter here. Any meat on the menu is from an animal that has died of old age, and often makes people sick due to a lack of proper storage conditions. For lunch, I almost always get dal bat, and Cam almost always gets fried veg egg noodles. The dal bat is quite good. It is a platter of rice, dal soup, curried potatoes, steamed leafy green veg, and a spicy pickle. Sometimes they are served with a crunchy roti too. Its buffet style, meaning you keep getting served until you are full. In my experience, there’s sometimes a limit of two full plates. The veg egg fried noodles are a basic stir fry, with not much for sauce. It gets the job done.
Afternoon hiking is always windy. The day to day weather is fairly predictable at the lower elevations (<4000m) that we have experienced. Sunny in the morning, and windy in the afternoon. Clouds will roll in, and it sometimes rains after we have made it to our destination. We will hike 1.5-4h in the afternoon generally.
Once we make it to our teahouse for the night, we spend some time resting and unpacking. This is when we would do our chores, like laundry, or shower, hot or cold. Much to our surprise, most tea houses had Wi-Fi, which you can access if you pay for the password. We only did this a few times, once to pay off a credit card, and once to wish family a happy birthday.
Laundry is all done by hand in the valleys. Our technique is a pre-rinse, then a soapy bath for the clothes. Then one by one, we rub our laundry bar of soap along dirty parts and stains, using rocks or concrete as a washing board. Once we are satisfied, or more realistically, too tired, we then put the clothes in a first rinse bucket. We then do two more rinses, and the water is still dirty at the end. We don’t have the energy for a proper clean.
Showering is a real get in get out type of event. It’s almost always freezing cold, so you have to go in with a plan as to what areas you are going to target for cleaning. Rarely do you ever do a full soak. Its too cold at night for that.
Editors Note: After day 14, we abandoned laundry and showers completely. Got too tired for it.
Going to the bathroom is interesting too. Every teahouse (and every home) has an outhouse for the restroom. Inside is a squatting toilet, a brush, and a bucket of water. You squat down, do your business, then scrub the stains and rinse it all down with water. Each one of these flow into a lined septic tank. About half have a light, so you need a headlamp if you go at night.
Once all the chores are done, we head to the dining hall, order some dinner, and play cards with Hari. Dinner takes 1-2 hours to prepare, as all the ingredients still have to be sourced after order. Cooking is generally done over a propane burner, with a wok or boiled water. Each teahouse has many large thermoses, keeping any excess boiled water hot for the whole day. It is illegal to chop trees in the Manaslu region, so the propane has to be carried in, generally via donkey or mule. We had crossed many herds of supply animals during the trek.
Cards are fun too. With a big group of hosts, guides and porters we will play dhumbal, the Nepali game of choice. The goal of the game is to get the lowest amount of value on your cards. This is done by trading in cards in turn. Hari really enjoys crazy 8’s when its just us three. We taught him that. And when Shubus joins, which is rare, we will play zap.
Dinner for the tourists is served first, generally between 6 and 7. Cam and I both generally go for dal bat again for dinner. There are some other options that we have tried though. There is the thenthuk, a hearty potato and thick noodle soup. It tastes like a vegetable soup, probably because it is one. Dhindo is a steamed barley dough, and it is generally paired with all the dal bat curries. And there are T momo’s which is steamed wheat dough, served with curry. It’s a good favorite when you are not too hungry.
We will play cards until Hari and Shubus get served dinner, which is an hour later or so. They always get dal bat for lunch and dinner, and either chapatti and curry or noodle soup for breakfast. When they get served is when we excuse ourselves for the night, and get ready for bed. I write a rough blog for the day, we brush our teeth, and then end up sleeping by 9:30 to 10. We generally sleep through the night on most nights.
There’s some other downtime activities as well. We bought 7 Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer and The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World by Howard C. Cutler and the Dalai Lama in Kathmandu. We figured they were good books to bring along our journey in the Himalayas. We have some offline mobile games that can take up some time. Or we just talk about our days, our thoughts, and our experiences. We are certainly leaning a lot up here.
To end, I thought it would be fun to include every one of our start of day selfies here, to document our change over the three week trek. Enjoy.
