Why not do a self-organised trip?
My wife and I did exactly that for our Honeymoon in 1993.
We flew into Kathmandhu and upon arrival organised Trekking permits when we were ‘in country’. In 1993 that was virtually impossible to do outside of the country.
We then negotiated with some local official (i.e. bribed them) to obtain 2 tickets on a 6-seater light aircraft to fly Kathmandhu to Lukla (Edmund Hillary’s aid landing strip). Again, there just wasn’t a way to do that from outside the country at that time. Don’t know if this has changed, or if Lukla is even still used for flights – it was a very dangerous landing strip hanging off the side of a mountain. There was, at the time we flew in/flew out, the burned-out fuselage of a light aircraft that had crashed (yikes!).
From Lukla, we then trekked on our own (no guides, no porters) right up the Khumbu Valley all the way to Everest Base Camp. We also scaled neighbouring Kala Patar which has magnificent views of Everest, the Khumbu Glacier and ice flow and also looks down on Everest Base Camp 1.000ft below (Kala Pattar summit is 5,600m/18,373ft). Breathtaking!
On the way you can take in Pheriche, Namche etc – many stimulating villages, Sherpa settlements, monasteries and markets.Although the entire region is sparsely populated indeed.
After Gorak Shep and summiting Kala Pattar, we then trekked back via a roundabout route to Lukla and flew back to Kathmandhu. We spent a further week or so in and around Kathmandhu, wandering around various sites, monasteries, getting even deeper into the culture.
We were in country for 5 weeks in total.
I still have a lot of notes from that trip, so just ask if you need more info. Quite a lot has changed in Nepal since that time of course, but the mountains and routes haven’t.
An good book we obtained was titled “Trekking in the Everest Region” by Jamie McGuinness. I have my much-thumbed copy right here on my desk. Don’t know if it is still available but I’m sure a Google around may turn up a copy.
Although a daunting prospect at first, organising your own trip and being 100% self-sufficient gives you both enormous freedoms and an enormous pleasure in having accomplished it. It’s not that hard to be honest, and any worldy-wise person who is self-aware and conscious of their environment (not in an eco-friendly sense, but in the sense of being aware of what’s happening around you in terms of the mood of the people, having that sixth sense of danger) should easily be able to accomplish a similar trip.
Since that time, my wife and I have trekked all over the Andes, Patagonia and some very remote parts of the USA on a self-guided, self-sufficient basis.
Go for it! :-)
Posted 13 years ago
