Langtang and Helambu, Nepal - January 2017 - Trip Report

I knew December wasn’t the best time for kayaking in Nepal. I’d come out here for 4 months to fill a gap in my year off. It wasn’t exactly prime tourist season but I still assumed it would be easy enough to find people to paddle with.

After a couple of weeks of not achieving very much I decided to go on a trek with a couple of people I’d met in Alobar, one of the more ‘westernised’ hostels in the bustling capital of Nepal that is Kathmandu. I left most of the planning in their hands, relieved for once to be free of the organisation.

Within a few days we hopped on a bus and arrived at the hotel where we would spend the night before starting the trek the following day. I’d already been planning a possible Nepal traverse and was excited when I realised our hotel was on the Bhote Kosi, the river from which I’d been planning to start this trip. This first section was supposedly the hardest part of the expedition and so I lept at at the charge to scout it. I walked up river for about 90 minutes and was pleasantly surprised to see that everything looked completely manageable. Satisfied, and more confident now that my later expedition would be a success, I headed back to the hotel. It was only a few weeks later that I realised Bhote Kosi is a generic name given to rivers originating from Tibet – I’d scouted the wrong river! As it turns the river I had scouted started easy and then fed into Na Ramro (No Good) gorge – from which the only reports speak of taking 6 days to complete 30km. A lucky, but late, realisation then…

Our trekking team was Luke Clarke, a chap coincidentally from my home town of Bristol, and Rosie Brewster from Australia. These two were planning to stay in the teahouses along the way but I’d elected, for the most part, to bring a tent and camp. My bag was heavy, and I wondered if I’d be able to keep up with my young fit team, but I was game for the challenge.

We were doing the Langtang and Helambu treks. The village of Langtang itself was completely wiped out in a landslide during the 2015 earthquake and along the entire trail there was devastation everywhere. Even 3 years on significant rebuilding work was still in progress.

Over several days we climbed to the end of the trail. I scouted the river  as we went and can see why it’s never been kayaked! Rosie had been suffering from an illness the entire trek and so once we arrived at the final tea house she elected to take a couple of days rest while Luke and I went off exploring.

Our route then returned the way it had come, back to our starting village and hotel, before we began the Helambu trek.

Helambu was far more varied in terms of scenery and trekking style. Whereas for Langtang you were confined within an impressively steeply sided mountain valley, with Helambu you walked over rolling farmland, through villages, along cuts cut into the side of the cliff and over mountain passes. On one day we even had significant snow; my experience came in handy then in keeping people safe and we even ended up picking up another group!

On around the second day of the Helambu trek we lost Luke. We were staying at a particularly nice teahouse and he decided to rest up there for a couple of days with some guys he’d just met. Rosie and I wanted to press on, so undeterred we continue as a pair.

The highlight for me was our penultimate night. We descended down to a road and crossed a river. I was keen to see if there was a beach side camp and so went to scout whilst Rosie waited. Some local fisherman looked very confused to see a western man leaping from rock to rock along the sides of the banks of a very turbulent (grade 5) river. Eventually, after traversing a narrow ledge and crawling through a short cave, I found a beach. I returned for Rosie, very worried she’d fall into the river, and we carefully made our way to the beach I’d found. We were in a mystical mini-gorge, vines hang above us and water poured in from the top of the cliffs above. We were completely secluded – it was a magical setting.

All too soon the morning came and the sun rose. Another delicate traverse back to the road and onto our final stop. All the more too soon we’d finished, and we were back on the bus for the very long, hot, dusty and bouncy ride back to Kathmandu. At least on this journey the bus only broke down once.