To the Mountains!

Short Version:
We meet Ganga and Uzir, and leave Kathmandu in a van full of people and stuff.

Long Version:
We were in more than two minds when it came to deciding how we should manage our trekking; every source we consulted had their own opinion, from "go by yourselves, you'll be fine" to "go in an organised group, they know best" and all points between. In the end, we opted for somewhere in the middle, borrowing a Kathmandu-based friend-of-a-friend senior guide's knowledge and contacts to arrange a guide, insurances, permits, transport, and pretty much everything else that needed arranging. Including, in the end, a porter. We'd been reluctant to succumb to the luxury of having our gear carried; self-sufficiency is something we feel like we're supposed to uphold as a NZ cultural standard, as well as a personal fundamental. However, between the expert advice and anecdotal evidence about altitude impact, the ongoing effects of Delhi Belly, and the comparative low cost of porter hire, we decided that we might as well. And, as it turned out, we were we glad we did.

We'd spent a couple of days exploring Kathmandu with our trekking guide, Ganga, who arrived at our hotel on trek day 1, bright and early, in a tiny van. We somehow managed to fit the three of us and all our gear (plus driver) into the tiny van, and set off into the madness. Not very far though - pretty soon we halted at a fairly scruffy open area the size of half a football field, chock-full of people and normal-sized vans. Ganga did some people-wrangling, we loaded our gear onto the roof of our chosen/allocated van, and... we waited. And waited. And waited. People burned tyres. Others played badminton. We met Uzir, our porter. Someone sold us flowers for our hair. And then, finally, the dodgy-looking van guy herded his passengers into their seats, and we were off! Not very far though - before we knew it we were stopped again, cramming in more passengers. Not sure where they were being put, as all seats looked already full, but they got in. Apart from the ones who climbed on the roof, who got on. And then the driver handed the wheel (and, more importantly, the horn button) to a younger and less-dodgy-looking guy, and we were off! And this time, we went very far.

We started by driving up. And then up some more. Still, it was somewhat surprising when we rounded a bend and found ourselves peering over the edge of a bloody great big cliff that dropped away into a steep-sided narrow valley that stretched away into the distance. Terraces covered the hills on both sides, with crops of some kind growing under the bright sun. A steady stream of more-or-less crazy-looking vehicles powered up the hill towards us, throwing up rooster-tails of dust in places where road (re)construction was in progress. We wound our way down the hill for what felt like hours, and might have been. And then we stopped. For a wee. At a rickety cliffside stall selling potato chips and cans of fizzy sugar liquid. With black polythene stretched vertically along a wooden frame, for weeing on. For the so-called ladies, the polythene urine wall was a ceilingless polythene room, with an area of more-or-less flat ground in the middle, for weeing on.

And then we were back in the van, back on the road, heading downhill. The hours trickled by. We stopped for lunch. The toilet was awesome. The trashfall on the other side of the road - down the bank and into the river - even more so. We passed a cable car that takes worshippers to a hilltop Hindu temple, we read a sign that said "Hearty Welcome to Open Defecation Free Zone," we saw a tractor perched on a rock in the middle of a river, and a truck being hauled by hand back up the cliff it had been driven over. We got sore legs from being squished into a van seat for too long. Then it rained, and the bags were removed from the roof and piled into the van, which meant a reshuffle that led to four in the front, but then we started to offload passengers at various waystops, and then we reached Besisahar, and the van vanished, and it was time to start walking.