Reaching our summit at 4985m

Our third walking day starts under the sun, and since we are above the forest we have a great view on the 6000m and 7000m peaks around us. From the Langtang village we follow some budhist pilgrim path with ancient engraved stones.

We also start to see our target for tomorrow: it's the brown summit on the left of this picture, just below 5000m.

Around lunchtime, we reach our base camp "Kiangin Gompa" at 3900 where we'll spend the following 2 nights.


Our first day here gives up enough time to climb up to 2 summits at 4300m and 4600m respectively in order to aclimatise for the next day's walk.

Tonight is going to be an early night at 8pm since we are exhausted from the first summit and we'll have to get up at 5am the next day for the main summit. We enjoy a last cup of milk tea around the wood stove.

Just after 6.30am and our daily portion of cheese pasta, we start our walk under the shadow of the mountain.

Our first obstacles is a half frozen river which we have to cross.

We quickly reach the sunny side of the mountain under a blue sky as the day before. Yet the hike up is not as smooth as yesterday, and some of us start suffer from altitude sickness about half way up the mountain in spite of the aclimatisation.

The last couple of hundred of meters are really hard but yet the view on all the sunny peaks was really worth it.
Our lunch break on top of the mountain just made our symptoms worse so that the way down will not be enjoyable for most of us.

Langtang Trek: Approach walk through rain forest

The first 2 days of our trek takes us through thick rain forest although we are already at an altitude of 1500m. Most of the way, we follow a river up the valley.





The walk is not too hard since we have hired 3 porters. On the way we find many lodges where we can have breaks and enjoy a milk tea.



Our first day lodge is at 2500m, "Lama Hotel".
The second day also starts in the forest, but we quickly have some great views on the Langtang summit, above 7000m.
Here we are enjoying our typical lunch "Dal, Bat" which means "rice and lentilles". It's also served with curry and pickle, and if we are lucky also a bit of chicken meat.

On the way we also make some drinks shopping for the evening.

Our second night is in the Langtang village, already at 3500m. And although the days are quite pleasant with about 20C, the night temperature goes well below zero and the rooms are really windy. As in all the lodges, there is one common room heated with a wood stove in the middle where we can enjoy playing cards.



After more than a week a just local food, and mainly Dal-bat, we discover our new favourites: Pasta with Yak Cheese. This is the dish which we will have for the next couple of days, also for breakfast....

Mahlzeit!

Roof ride to the mountain

So we finally made it to Kathmandu where Sujit comes to pick us up. "Thamel", the old center of Katmandu where our hotel is, is full of hundreds of outdoor shops featuring the best fake brands of the world, for about 10% of the European prices...
After checking to our hotel, we are introduced to great Nepalese food.


But again, time is running out and we have to get prepared to our trek, in particular to get our permits to the Langtang national parks. The next day we start our road for another 10 hour trip through the winding road. Since Sujit has brought 4 other friends, we have hired a bus for ourselves. Yet we dont want to miss out on the local experience and decide to ride on the roof, which is the better to enjoy the view, and salute other roof riders.



The scenery of rice fields is amazing.


On the way, we buy a jar of wild honey collected from the "cliff bees".

After the first 4 hours which are on asphalted road, we start a bumpy ride on a edge of the mountaing until we reach our departing village Syabru Bensi.