London weekends: 25 & 26 April 2015

Not strictly London, but the earthquake in Nepal became the focus this weekend, with emails to/from/about Val.

In other news….

Saturday

  • Breakfast at Trade, near Spitalfields Market – excellent. Tasty menu, and lovely relaxed service. We’ll be back.
  • Home via Leyden St Cotswold Outdoor for a crampon-friendly-yet-trekkable boot mooch. Maybe the Women’s Rebel Lite GTX, the spec and fit are spot on…. but pink?!?! Am I supposed to dress up as a sugar plum fairy before I don crampons for the Cordillera Blanca Traverse? And ‘Rebel’ – really?
  • Curzon Mondrian (in the former Sea Containers House) for While We’re Young – 1.10pm showing ticket cost £8 in contrast to the new Curzon Bloomsbury (Renoir as was)’s £18 ticket for the same film, same(ish – still afternoon) time. Each. What on earth? Meanwhile, in the Mondrian we were the only people in their brand new cinema. Comfy seats. Decidedly non kid – perfect.
  • Across the Thames and into Covent Garden to visit Cotswold Outdoor branch there. Boots purchased. Superb service from Ca’tia.
  • Home to follow news of the awful earthquake in Nepal. Twitter #NepalEarthquake provided an invaluable source.

Sunday

  • Coffee at Bar Italia – by Boris Barclays Bike Santander Cycles (Ah, the alliteration is strong in this one)
  • Back to base for Waitrose shop and a day at the computer.
  • Marathon? What marathon?

Nepal Earthquake

The earthquake in Nepal has become the focus this weekend. Twitter’s #NepalEarthquake is providing an invaluable source of news and I had my first experience of a Google Public Alert.

But whilst there is lots of news about the avalanche on Everest, and the destruction in KTM, I fear we’re going to see and hear worse from the Gorkha region where the epicentre was.

I’ve been thinking of Val‘s friends in Nepal, and especially the people we met in Manaslu and Tsum over Easter. These areas are very close to the ‪epicentre of the main earthquake, yet so far there’s been no mention of them in the news reports or even on Google. #Gorkha on Twitter has proved the most informative today.

This Google map shows Barpak village (left), Manaslu and the villages I visited on my Tsum Valley trek over Easter (right) – Barpak is 14km NW of Soti Khola where we started our trek (pin 3):

Tsum Valley Trek: Complete

Back from my Easter fortnight trekking in Nepal in the company of solar lantern engineer Anthony, Hazel and Val.

Lots of LED solar lights distributed in the remote villages of the Tsum Valley, fuelled by Tibetan butter tea, tsampa and stir fried greens (ranging from sort-of spinach to nettle tips to fiddle head ferns). Humbling to see how grateful people are for the gift of light, and how hard their lives are – particularly in the farms and villages off the tourist/trek route where farming is subsistence level.

Despite my assurances to Hazel to the contrary, we did get snow … and our first experience of camping in snow … at Mu Gompa, which was the high point of our trek in multiple ways. Not so welcome for the Tsumba though – the monsoon starts in 6 weeks-ish, and there are still avalanche snow fields cluttering up gullies and lingering in shady places, stopping wildlife and yaks, naks, cows, sheep and goats from feeding. Avalanches and landslides also wiped out a couple of the HEP stations and transmission lines that have been provided by NGOs and charities to bring electricity to the valley – built in locations where locals knew would be high risk.

Tsum is “the finger of Nepal jutting out into Tibet“, lying under the majestic Ganesh Himal (गणेश हिमाल) and Sringi Himal – and up at Mu Gompa we did get amazing views of those freshly snow capped peaks. For the first / last few days of the trek, we shared the trail with people on the Manaslu Ciruit, but our early morning departures (to avoid the afternoon rain at the start, and the heat at the end – 39C on the last 2 days of trekking and that was before midday) minimised the number of times our path crossed with both people and, more problematically, donkey trains. You definitely need a head for heights. Spring flowers provided some distraction from the vertiginous drops from path to river.

All in all a fantastically well organised trip from Val, and lovely to meet her Nepalese support team including sirdar Chering and cook Krishna – with Tsumba translation and cultural information supplied by Namgyl. Food-wise we tucked into porridge and eggs for breakfast, daily dal bhat for lunch and a range of tasty carbo-loading treats for dinner. Pizza and chips were a particular favourite….

I shall be returning to Tsum, to trek further on and up from Mu Gompa (ie towards Tibet) and to tack on the Manaslu Circuit, maybe even the Rupina La.

Here’s what we did:

Thursday, 26 March 2015: Jet Airways from LHR to DEL.
Friday, 27 March 2015: Jet Airways from DEL to KTM – one of only a handful of international flights to land.
Saturday, 28 March 2015: Kathmandu (1400 m) to Arughat Bazaar (550 m) by private bus, change onto local private bus to the current road head at Soti Khola (597 m).
Sunday, 29 March 2015: Soti Khola (597 m) to Khorlabesi (970 m).
Monday, 30 March 2015: Khorlabesi (970 m) to Jagat (1330 m).
Tuesday, 31 March 2015: Jagat (1330 m) to Lokpa (2240 m) – diverging from the Manaslu Circuit where the Sardi Khola joins the Budhi Gandaki.
Wednesday, 1 April 2015: Lokpa (2240 m) to Chumling (2385 m).
Thursday, 2 April 2015: Chumling (2385 m) to Chhokang Paro (3030 m) – taking the high route via Chumchet, Yarcho, Gompa Goan, Lari, Puh before dropping down to the Sardi Khola at Domje and climbing back up to Chhokang Paro.
Friday, 3 April 2015: Chhokang Paro (3030 m) to Chhule (3350 m) .
Saturday, 4 April 2015: Chhule (3350 m) to Mu Gompa (3700 m) – afternoon stroll up to the ancient Ani Gompa at 4000 m. Snow…
Sunday, 5 April 2015: Mu Gompa (3700 m) to Chhokang Paro (3030 m).
Monday, 6 April 2015: Chhokang Paro (3030 m) to Chumling (2385 m).
Tuesday, 7 April 2015: Chumling (2385 m) to Philim (1570 m).
Wednesday, 8 April 2015: Philim (1570 m) to Dobhan (1050 m).
Thursday, 9 April 2015: Dobhan (1050 m) to Lapubesi (TBC m).
Friday, 10 April 2015: Lapubesi (TBC m) to Arughat Bazaar (550 m).
Saturday, 11 April 2015: Arughat Bazaar (550 m) to Kathmandu for an afternoon’s shopping, catching up with Mike from last summer’s Blanca trip and enjoying a couple of nice cold (Nepali Ice and Ghorka) beers….
Sunday, 12 April 2015: Jet Airways from KTM to DEL to LHR.

Articles
Tsum Valley Trek Article, 25 September 2011
The future of Tsum Valley, 15 December 2011
Home away from home in Tsum, 29 November 2012

Photos to follow….

Tsum Valley Trek Prep: News and Views

Just as countdown to Kathmandu is commencing, a Turkish Airlines aeroplane (semi)crashes at KTM’s Tribhuvan International Airport airport, blocking the runway so that nothing bigger than the smallest domestic aircraft can land or take off. Val mentioned it when we spoke on Thursday, and I spotted Mark Horrell’s tweet on the topic this morning:

Twitter Tweet - Mark Horrell - March 7, 2015
Twitter Tweet – Mark Horrell – March 7, 2015

On the other hand, Phil pointed me in the direction of this video of The Himalayas from 20,000 ft on Kottke.

OK, so it’s a heli flight from Kathmandu up into the Solu Khumbu which isn’t where we’re going this time, but it does bring back happy memories of 2011’s Three High Passes to Everest trek. Lovely views of the Dudh Kosi valley as well as the Big Peaks.

Tsum Valley Trek Prep (and Blurb BookSmart blip)

We’ll need 5 photos for our Easter trip to Nepal: one for our visa, four for trek/park permit(s). So, rather than shelling out for a official passport ones from a photo booth or Jessops, I googled diy passport photos online and found these guys, IDPhoto4You.

I’m now the proud owner of eight suitably serious looking passport size snaps. From Phil taking the photo to printing them out at home (on a standard sheet of 6″x4″ photo paper) took all of 10 mins, and I’ve got the .jpg file ready for any future reprints. Easy.

Also as part of the prep for this trek, I made a concerted effort to finish adding my photos from my last trip to Flickr, as the essential precursor to the final bit of finishing off: making the souvenir photo album using Blurb.

So yesterday I created my Peru, June/July 2014 – Highlights album, which I then use to upload that selection into Blurb’s BookSmart tool. Further progress has been slightly delayed by a message telling me that “An internet connection could not be established at this time”.

Flickr FAQs flagged the problem but without providing a fix. Given the recent pushiness of Flickr’s new ‘Create’ option, I was worried they’d blocked the Blurb integration, but Blurb’s Knowledgebase provided the answer, “Update to BookSmart fixes Flickr import issue“. One fresh BookSmart download later, I’m ready to go.