Saturday 20 September 2014

A new adventure starting in Kathmandu

Brooke and I (Nico) are very excited to meet our new group and start another epic adventure with Odyssey and Calypso. A week ago we said a sad goodbye to our Istanbul to Singapore guys in Kolkata, India, leaving them in the capable hands of Teresa & Mikkel and started heading back north to Kathmandu. We had lots to think about and lots to do in preparation for our new expedition, and little did we know what was waiting for us in Nepal! It is two days before meeting our new group, and Mother Nature is proving that there is nothing certain in life.

After massive monsoon rains against the Himalayas, there was a big landslide in the north of Nepal, taking out a 4km stretch of the only road we can take to get Calypso into China and Tibet!
What can we do, except keep calm and carry on? We will spend the next few days fixing Calypso up, gathering information, and speculating about the personalities of our new travellers.

Kathmandu
We spent a very busy five nights in Kathmandu, getting Calypso ready, meeting our new group, and waiting anxiously for news about the landslide that took out the road we want to use to get to Tibet. After a lot of talking to locals and Pete and Kirsten in the office, we decided to wait a week longer and see if the Nepal government could live up to the promises of fixing the road before our Tibetan permit starts to run out. The challenges of travelling never end!
Our new group members all got acquainted with each other quickly (10 girls and only 2 boys!) and went on shopping sprees to stock up on warm sleeping bags and cheap North Fake products. Kathmandu is also known as a place where local cultures meet (and international - hundreds of tourists everywhere!), and this makes city tours to all the different temples and Durbar Squares very easy and a lot of fun.
As you might think, we do not like to sit still for too long, so to kill some time we'll head off to Chitwan National Park and Pokhara.

Lisa
Karen
Morgan
John
Danni
Liz
Zoe
Marjo
Nicole
Michelle
Monkey Temple
Monkey
Prayer wheels
Prayer flags
Zoe & Nicole
Hannah, Brooke & Liz at the Monkey Temple
Monkey Temple
Monkeys in Kathmandu
Kathmandu
Chitwan
Chitwan is a big national park in Nepal to protect what remains of their wild animals. We were hoping to see some one-horned rhinos, elephants, and tigers. Our first surprise was two resident elephants coming home after the day's work, strolling right by next to Calypso as we were unpacking the truck! These two live right behind our lodge and woke us up every morning with their friendly trumpeting.
The girls went on a canoe ride, a bush walk, and an elephant back safari.
Lisa had an ice bucket challenge, so we decided to turn it into a group challenge and challenge the other Odyssey truck on its way to Istanbul from Beijing.
In the evenings we enjoyed drinks on the Rapti riverbank and watched the sun set and the bats wake up.
We are all happy for the bonus to see Chitwan.
Tomorrow we head to Pokhara.

Resident ellie
Canoe at Chitwan
Bushwalk in Chitwan
Annapurna Mountains, from Chitwan
Embarking station
Marjo on her ellie
Annapurna Mountains again
Nico & Brooke getting ready for the ice bucket challenge
Sundowners by the river
Ellie shower
Loading up
Ellie's are good for everything

Pokhara
The last time Brooke and I were in Pokhara, we walked up Sarangkot to get a good view of the Annapurna Mountains. It is a hill on the side of Lake Phewa, 800 meters higher than Pokhara. This time we got some of the girls together to pack a bag and hike up for an overnight visit and early morning clear view of the mountain range. We made quick work of it and sat outside on one of the very basic lodges' terrace. The other girls came up with taxis and brought the wine. We spent the evening watching a great sunset and the lights of Pokhara coming on one by one.
The next morning we got up super early and walked up to the viewpoint on top of the hill. We were rewarded with a spectacular sunrise and almost completely clear view of the Annapurna Mountains. What a great way to start the day. It was Karen's birthday. What a great view to start your birthday with! That evening we went for a big group dinner to celebrate.
Today was for relaxing, visiting the International Mountaineering Museum, and checking out the Devil's Falls.
Tomorrow we will head back to Kathmandu to get some updates on the situation with the road to Tibet.

Rivers meeting
Zoe
This boat house was wiped out by a landslide
Sundowners on Sarangkot
View of Pokhara at sunset from Sarangkot
Hannah, Liz, Lisa, Nicole, Nico, Marjo, Brooke, Karen, Morgan and Michelle
View of the Annapurna Mountains


The brave hikers - Brooke, Zoe, Morgan, Nico, Nicole & Liz 


Enjoying the view
The brave taxi passengers - Marjo and Michelle
Top of Sarangkot
The International Mountaineering Museum

The western climber
Devil's Falls
Marjo & Nico at Devil's Falls
Karen's birthday dinner


Kathmandu
Yesterday we got back to Kathmandu in good time. There were lots of small landslides to dodge along the way. The monsoon rains are definitely taking their toll on Nepal's roads and villages, and we cannot help but feel sorry for the locals trying to make a subsistence living. Brooke and I had a dinner date with our local agent and go-to-guy and two guides we know that crossed the landslide area a day before. We were hoping to get some good news from our friends, but our hopes of getting Calypso to Tibet were slowly fading. The meeting confirmed our fears - the road is still only passable by foot. It meant quite a big change for our expedition. Plan B came into effect. The plan that excludes Calypso.
Luckily things like this do not get us down at Odyssey. We have all been working hard to make arrangements and keep things going. A landslide will not stop us. We will walk across it. Not having Calypso will also not stop us. We will take trains and hire buses. The show will go on. We see new unchartered adventure!
This morning we broke the news to our group, and everyone got busy to lighten their loads. We will now have to carry our luggage between 4x4s and buses and hotels and trains and taxis (and over landslides!). We all had some things to send home, making us think about how much you actually need. Tonight we went to Sam's bar for our last drink in Kathmandu.
Tomorrow we will start our new adventure into the unknown. Exciting!

The Last Resort
We took a bus from Kathmandu to the edge of the landslide. When we stopped we couldn't see it yet. We were all curious and excited and anxious at the same time. We were venturing into the unknown. We organized some porters to help us with the heavy bags on the uncertain terrain. These people astonished us. They are the people that lost everything in the landslide - houses, farms, family, neighbors - everything. The only way to make a living now is to carry trucks' cargo and tourists' luggage over what used to be their homes. Again, it made us think about what we really needed to carry with us, and how much we have.
We walked over a small hill and saw something that Lisa explained as a movie set for Indiana Jones. It was something else. Destruction of epic proportion. The landslide came down a big mountainside into the valley. It completely dammed up the river, forming a big lake above it. Lines of porters were weaving up and down on small single-track lanes above working bulldozers and digger-loaders. We took some pictures and got to walking. It was 4km over the site of destruction, through rice paddies, and on a new muddy road they are constructing. It started raining and we picked up the pace to get to our new bus waiting on the other side. We all got there in about two and a half hours. A short bus ride later we arrived at The Last Resort, where we had to cross a suspension bridge 160m above a raging white water river. We had enough excitement for one day. We had a wonderful buffet dinner and everybody crashed early and went off to bed.
Today some of the girls went canyoning, some went for a hike, some went for a massage, and some went for a session in the sauna.
Outside the rain is drizzling and the lighting is thundering. We are all in the lounge chatting about nothing and everything. Soon we will enjoy another big buffet. A good last day in Nepal.
Tomorrow we cross our first border. We are going to Tibet, the autonomous state of China!

Porters waiting in line to load up
New lake
Site of destruction


Destroyed house

Long line of porters and tourists
Lisa and Zoe on the bridge to the Last Resort
Liz
John, Danni & Marjo
Morgan