New Adventures In Backpacking

On the lead-up to my trip I was constantly told India would be the cheapest place I would ever visit and it turned out to be true! So when I decided to go to Nepal I must admit to not looking forward to the prospect of having to spend some “real money”. I knew a few people who had been there recently and they assured me it was cheap. However, people’s opinion of “cheap” differs so here is a backpacker’s guide to how cheap Nepal is.

At the time of my visit, the exchange rate of 1 GBP equaled 120 NPR. I will put the cost in both.

Accommodation

The price of budget accommodation varied from area to area. It was possible to find a room at anything around 400-600 NPR (3/5gbp). It is hard to find a single room so if you are travelling on your own it is fairly pricey. Splitting the cost with someone makes all the difference. For that price you will get a double bed, private bathroom (hot water not guaranteed) and a fan. In peak tourist season in Nepal air con is not necessary. In fact, neither was a fan as it was freezing!

Food

Like in all countries it is much cheaper to eat the local dishes in Nepal. Unless you have eaten veggie momos while you are here you have not been to Nepal as far as I am concerned. A typical meal of a main curry dish, rice and naan should cost you about 300 NPR (2.5gbp). As in India, Western food is easy enough to get but fairly expensive. A trip to the amazing Pumpernickel German bakery will set you back 150 NPR (1.5 gbp) for just a bagel and coffee, but it is worth it.

Alcohol

Unlike India, alcohol is easy to find and pretty much any type you like is available. Most beers are European and slightly expensive at 200 NPR (1.75 gbp). Cocktails tended to start at 300 NPR (2.5gbp).

Water/Soft drinks

A litre of water will cost a mere 10 NPR (15/20p gbp) and depending on where you are a soft drink with your meal costs anything from 50-70 NPR (0.4-0.6 gbp).

Travel

There are no trains in Nepal so all journeys are made via bus or shuttle taxi. Those who like me are of a scared disposition should always take the shuttle taxi!

The journey from the Indian border to Kathmandu (six hours) cost 560 rupees (4.60gbp). The local bus would have cost 400 rupees (3.3 gbp). However, if you ever see a story in your newspaper about Nepal it will normally contain the words “bus”, “mountain”, and “dead”. They don’t even bother removing the wrecked vehicles from the side of the mountain. It is probably a ploy to try to scare tourists into paying the extra 160 rupees.

A journey between the two major cities in Nepal: Kathmandu to Pohkara, takes seven hours and costs 500 rupees (4.60gbp).

That’s the basic information that you need to know for Nepal. It’s up to you what you wish to spend your money on. From trips to souvenirs there are endless ways to spend your cash in Nepal, the main cost being on trekking in the Himalayas and buying fake North Face gear. Here’s a brief insight on how I spent my money and the costs involved:

- Poon Hill Trek (six days)……………20,475 NPR / 175 GBP

- Thermal clothing for trek…………… 800 NPR / 6.6 GBP

- Flask for trek ………………… 300 NPR/ 3.3 GBP

- Thermal gloves for trek…………………………… 150 NPR/ 1.3 GBP

- Thermal socks for trek ……………………… 200 NPR/ 1.8 GBP

- Cashmere scarves……………………………… 375 NPR / 3.2 GBP

- DVD box set …………………. 500 NPR / 4.2 GBP

- Hour of internet………………… 75 NPR/0.60p

In a whole it’s fair to say that Nepal is the perfect budget backpacker location, probably more perfect that India in a lot of ways. In fact, it’s the perfect holiday location regardless of the budget. If you have it, you could spend a lot of money in Nepal and not just on trekking gear.

Day Five was a short day also. Once again downhill, but with the aid of my ipod and some of my favorite albums of this year it was a little better than the previous day. I was a little disappointed that we did not walk a little further, but understood it once Basu led me to my accommodation for the night. A bunch of log cabins all joined together, each with their own little porch and rocking chair and a small garden with all sorts of veggies and herbs. Teetering on the edge of the cliff I could look up at the blue sky, feel the heat of the daytime sun, and yet see snow covered mountains everywhere whilst looking down into the valleys and watching the river flow. I had to stop myself into breaking into ‘Doe a deer’ every time I looked around. Simply stunning scenery. I was very happy just sitting there reading my book and taking in the surroundings.

At night I found my friends staying in a guesthouse not too far from me and went up to visit them. On the way up I stopped to watch the young porters performing a dance round the bonfire. It was their tour party’s last night, which was made up of entirely elderly Japanese people, so they were keen to leave something in their memory. It was tip day the next day. To watch these teenagers bouncing all over the place showing such energy and laughter after the hard day’s work they put it in really was hard to believe, but made me smile.

Up next was the Japanese who were less sprightly, but put the effort in all the same. Easily the best Japanese version of ‘If your happy and you know it’ I’ve ever heard. I mock a little but if I am 60+ and still dancing round the fire on the last night of a Himalayan trek, I’ll be very happy.

Somehow or other I found myself dragged into it all, with all my friends there too, dancing round the fire, with Japanese grandmothers, teenage porters and drunken guides. It was the type of random evening that money could not buy.

Day six was a lovely walk down the mountain. It took a mere three hours, and could have been quicker, but I was in no rush for this trip to finish. No words or pictures I take express the beauty I saw on the walk back. One of things I struggle with is to enjoy what I have now. I’m always looking forward to the next thing, but on this occasion I wanted to soak up every last little bit of the trek. A wonderful experience that has filled me with nothing but love for Nepal and it’s breathtaking landscape.

It has also given me a taste for trekking. I really got into this trek in a big way. So hopefully there will be more of the same in New Zealand and when I return home to Scotland one day. But it will all be in preparation for my new goal that I would like to achieve in the next ten years. It would seem a little silly a few weeks ago, but my guide assures me I have the fitness for the 13 days it would take, and now that I have done this, I am determined to return to Nepal to trek up to Mount Everest.

Who’s with me?

Day four got off to a bad start. Not only an awful 4:30am start, (I didn’t even know there was a 4.30am) but I had gotten too hot during the night, slipped off my thermal trousers, then left half of my left leg out of my sleeping bag and woke up to the sensation that my upper knee was missing. It remained like that for a good two hours.

The sole purpose of getting up at that God-awful hour was to be able to watch the sunrise at the top of Poon Hill Mountain. To say the walk uphill for thirty minutes in the pitch dark was rough for me was an understatement. I’m a fit person and had breezed up the highest climb the previous day. But anyone who knows me will understand that I do not like even talking first thing in the morning till about 10am, so you can imagine how awful I felt to be climbing to 3210 meters at 5am. Several times I had to stop in fear of vomiting, and when I got to the top I lay on the ground on my stomach like a snake. I felt better when a couple, who the week previous had gone to Everest base camp, came up and were both weasing and gasping for air just as much as me.

After I finally got my breath back and assured the previous night’s noodle soup was not going to revisit me, I started to take in my surroundings. The entire Annapurna mountain range was surrounding me in perfect panorama vision. Then slowly but surely the mountains crept out of the darkness, providing me with a view that will live with me forever. I will never pretend to be a good writer and I simply could not do this sight justice in this blog. You will just have to check out my pictures but here’s a little example of how good it was.

We spent a good two hours up there taking it all in, then posing for pictures and generally having some fun whilst staring at the 10th, 8th, and 6th highest mountains in the world. I decided to start taking some of my clothes off to test how cold I was. Not an experience I would wish on my worst enemy.

On the way back down to Ghorepani, I walked down with a girl, Jen, from Edinburgh. It’s extremely rare to meet other Scottish people backpacking, for reasons I will never understand, as Ireland has a similar population yet they get everywhere. Feeling all healthy and full of life with my love of the great outdoors restored, we started talking about Scottish treks and outdoor activities. It really hit home to me that I have done literally nothing in Scotland and made me quite ashamed. Whilst I have spent the majority of the past few years not living there, I did spend an entire year there last year and still never went up to the highlands and islands. Of course you are always keen to explore more foreign shores, but I don’t have an excuse as I spent most of my weekends loitering around Edinburgh doing the same things, in the same bars, with the same people. I did not see a return to Scotland anytime soon, but after this trek I feel a deep desire to go home and see why everyone raves about what my own neck of the woods has to offer.

I returned back to the guesthouse for a nice warm cup of tea and a huddle round the fire with the rest of my group. I got chatting to a middle aged Australian women who I’d spotted up at the Poon Hill peak with her very young daughter and made a mental note to talk to her when I got the chance. It turned out her daughter was only eleven. What a wonderfully cool thing for a girl of that age to do, but even more so, well done to her mum for bringing her along. A lot of people use their kids as an excuse for not going on more adventurous holidays or locations, but it’s nonsense. It just means they won’t go out of their way to entertain them more. It’s much easier in Spain or Greece to send them to the beach or the kids’ club. Not only that, but what an experience for the child. Plus, she’s surrounded by travellers and locals, giving her a taste of adventure, as well as opening her eyes to the rest of the world. When you’re eleven, no one exists outside you and your family, so seeing how children in Nepal and India the same age as her have to live she could not have failed to grow as a person.

The mum actually impressed me even more once I got my gushing praise out of the way. She told me that her school had kicked up fuss about the mum taking her out of school for six weeks and threatened to report her to the local education authorities. This is the only time of the year the mother could get off and told the school that she will learn and remember more from her six weeks in India and Nepal than anything they will ever teach her at school. As she was telling this her daughter was sitting on the other side of the room with a bunch of local guides and a few groups of many different nationalities, all gushing over her and telling her how cool she was for getting to the top of the mountain. I wanted to hug her mum. She’s my new hero.

We were supposed to set off at nine but I knew we had a shorter day ahead of us and did not see the point of leaving so early. Especially since we got up at 4am! I told a slight white lie to my guide about having a stomach bug and returned two hours later fresh and ready to go.