Langtang National Park Trekking

Trekking in the Himalayas was our top reason for coming to Nepal. Priscilla did a lot of research and picked Langtang National Park because it’s only moderately difficult and somewhat lower elevation, but still one of the top 3 treks in Nepal (after Everest and Annapurna). This trek was one of the hardest hit places in the 2015 Nepal earthquakes, the entire village of Langtang was buried. They’ve largely recovered, but we still saw plenty of destroyed houses and landslide evidence.

We left some extraneous stuff at our hotel and rented sleeping bags and down jackets from a store in Kathmandu.  Then woke up early to catch our bus from Kathmandu to Syabrubesi (had to actually wake an employee to unlock the door for us). You can take a jeep out there, but the bus seemed more our style.

Just standing in the bus moo. Err… queue:

The bus ride ended up being the craziest bus ride we’ve ever taken (and probably ever will take). It’s like riding a bucking bronco along a cliff side with two-way traffic, even though the road is only a single unpaved lane, for 9 hours. About half the time with blaring party music playing. About 3 people got sick on the bus ride up (and about 10 on the way down). Overall, it’s not an experience I want to repeat soon but it was actually super exciting and even fun. It was amazing to see the rural mountainous landscape. Terraced farm fields dropping down into deep valleys with rocky rivers and little houses/villages tucked into mountainous crevasses. Goats, chickens, cows, kids on bikes, storefronts, women doing laundry, people carrying loads of everything on their head, road construction…it was all there.

The trek starts at a suspension bridge in old Syabrubesi. About 75% of tourists have a porter and/or guide that treks with them for the 7-9 days, carrying most of their gear. We decided to carry our own gear and go without a guide, for better or worse.

We turned a corner from the town, and were immediately thrown into one of the most epic landscapes ever. 

Most of the time, we could see up past layers of mountains to the glaciers and snow-covered peaks that we were aiming to reach in the next few days.

As we climbed, we’d pass a tea house every hour or two. We would often stop for some tea as a break.

This is a typical room in a tea house. Plain but sufficient (especially with our sleeping bags and thick yak wool blankets). The squat toilet is usually a shared outhouse, though apparently they have some ensuite up at the top.

The roaring river is omnipresent through the trek. It’s some of the most turquoise water we’ve ever seen, since the river is glacier fed.

We ended up crossing the river back and forth 4 or 5 times on the way up.

Every single thing (except rocks and water) in the towns and tea houses is brought up on the backs of human porters or ponies. We passed countless teams ferrying around goods.

Pretty neat water-powered prayer wheel we stumbled upon.

Rhododendrons of every color were in bloom.

The alpine glow landing on the peak one evening:

I was pretty psyched when we spotted this little fellas working. I’ve only ever seen dung beetles on nature documentaries. Priscilla wasn’t as into it. I was even more psyched then when we spotted Gray Langur monkeys multiple times in the trees. The Nepali treated them like a nuisance, but they were pretty neat to us.

Unfortunately, after two days and about halfway to the top, Priscilla fell ill with a stomach bug in the small town of Ghodatabela. After a sleepless night spent making trips to the bathroom and then a day of rest, we decided it wasn’t worth risking it to keep climbing. So we descended back to the previous town, where I then caught whatever Priscilla had. After another sleepless night puking out my guts and a day of rest, we descended the rest of the way to Syabrubesi.

Re-entering Old Syabrubresi after 6 days out trekking (well, 4 days trekking, 2 being sick).

The trek, and Nepal, has been really awesome, but we seem plagued to be sick for most of our time here. Of our first 2 weeks, we only had 3 healthy days. We’re disappointed we didn’t get to the top of the Langtang trek but are really glad we got to see some of it. We definitively plan to come back to Nepal for more trekking in the future!

Highlights of Langtang National Park:

• Only one way to describe it: epic. We’ve never experienced anything like it.
• Being able to spend all day trekking, but still sleep indoors and have home cooked meals around a wood stove.
• An intense bus ride. Of course, ‘Iron-Tummy’ Pri managed to do some reading while bouncing around.

 

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