Lumbini

Kathmandu valley is suspended 1400m above sea level. The road south west from Kathmandu took us over the lip of the valley and descended in a hair raising journey amongst big trucks and over flowing ancient battered buses overtaking eachother at glacial speeds. At each bend there is the anticipation of being greeted head-on by a brightly painted "Road King" but Rushan our driver in his early 20's coped well and drove us safely to Lumbini - the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama- the founder of Buddhism.

After the 7 hour drive we walked from our hotel into the mandala shaped Sacred Garden within the World Heritage site. With temperatures in the 30's we could not dash about so we sat under the pipal tree for an hour contemplating the place. 

Maya Devi gave birth to Siddhartha holding onto a branch from an ancestor of this tree 2,577 years ago. Monks were sitting in the shade of the tree, and it felt very peaceful.

The site was excavated in 1996 and a protective Maya Devi Temple building constructed. There was a steady stream of visitors throughout the day and all paid respect to a small marker stone beneath bullet proof glass marking the "exact" point of birth. We left a kharta (Tibetan welcome scarf) and took 3 leaves from under the tree.

The following morning we woke early and walked back into the site to explore the area to each side of the long central canal that extends north from the Maya Devi temple. Many countries have built temples and stupas in their own style- with countries practising Mahayana Buddhism on the left and those practising Theravada Buddhism on the right. 

A rickshaw seemed the ideal way to explore this grand area of world temples which was work-in-progress. Somehow we became the perfect photo accessory at the Myanmar temple and now feature in many family pictures.

It was a long drive from Kathmandu but a tranquil place to contemplate life.

Solu Khumbu Trek

We are now getting used to leaving our regular budget "home" hotel in Mandala Street, Kathmandu to a more plush hotel to meet the trekking group for our next journey. Our new Everest Base Camp Trek team consisted of a group of 5 friends from Cardiff, a bank worker from London and a woman from New York (Hawaii originally) - a lovely group and thoroughly entertaining.

The flight to Lukla is quite an experience. We were delayed for a day (a fruitless 9 hour wait for the clouds to lift at Lukla) in Kathmandu domestic departure lounge but got an early flight the following day. Leaving the haze of Kathmandu and passing the green foot hills we soon caught sight of the white wall of the Himalayas. The Lukla runway is only 460m long but at least has an angle of 12 degrees to help slow down the STOL planes landing before hitting the wall at the top end of the runway.

A YouTube clip of a typical landing at Lukla airport is here: http://youtu.be/f3bN4c7CfVM

For the full choreographed performance see: http://youtu.be/-xDbyxf7CB4

The trail winds it's way through forested and steep sided valleys. Clear mornings and cloudy afternoons gave good walking conditions and, surprisingly, no rain! 

Prayer flag strewn bridges swing to the rhythm of trekkers and porters, the majority of which have been made by the Swiss so maybe the oscillations are a deliberate precision timepiece!

Sue progressed from 2 to 7 on her blasé scale, as we crossed more and more of them and the realisation that a team of yaks were behind her certainly increased her pace!

A porter taking goods to the many tea houses in the Everest region receives about 50 pence per kilogramme carried. They can carry in excess of 100kg (twice their body weight) which is a considerable income considering the average income in Nepal is just over £400 per year.

The trekking porters are limited to 30kg and are paid well by each trip considering job security and tips. A Sherpa on the mountain, however, may get about £3000 per climbing season (several expeditions), I wonder where the £40,000 paid to Western guides by each client wanting to climb Mount Everest goes?

The focus of the journey for most people on this trail seems to be Everest Base Camp. This seems a shame since it passes through such stunning mountain-scape and villages. The high wall of the Nuptse ridge continues to hide the prized Everest view that everyone seems to hanker after even right up to base camp.

The mountain that rises so majestically after the beautiful monastery at Tengboche is Ama Dablam (6814m- "mother's necklace"). It is like the Matterhorn of the Khumbu and it's outstretched arms guided us for many days during our trek. Looking up at the bulging "Dablam" (pendant traditionally worn by Sherpa women) high on the west face, it seems an improbable place for Camp III (usually below and to the right of the Dablam) for those climbing the mountain and in 2006 an avalanche took the lives of 6 climbers and Sherpas.

We were guided by Lakhpa and Phurba, both Sherpas from Khumjung and Khunde just north of Namche Bazar, for them it was like walking home, so their knowledge of every skyline and village enriched our experience.

Base camp itself is underwhelming and just a distant viewpoint for trekkers to peek at the bottom of the Khumbu ice fall. The great Western Cwm named by Mallory as he peered into Nepal from Tibet in 1922 remained tantalisingly hidden and in the domain of those going to attempt the summit. 

Everest is clearly still big business for Nepal and there is certainly a lot of infrastructure development in the Khumbu region. The death in an avalanche of 16 Sherpas in April this year while setting up ropes and camps for the super rich clients who had not even left their home countries, seems a very high price to pay and not surprisingly resulted in the Sherpa community refusing to work that season out of respect for the dead. The mortality rate for high altitude Sherpas is 1.2%, and there is no other service industry in the world that so frequently kills it's workers for the benefit of paying clients - climbing Everest in this way should not be considered as mountaineering.

This trek fitted into our itinerary perfectly when our attempts to complete a kora of Mount Kailas in Tibet were thwarted by recent Chinese visa regulation changes. Walking through the smart villages of Solu Khumbu in mountains steeped in so much history was, after all, pleasurable and certainly wet our appetites to return to scale the passes and perhaps some trekking peaks in the future.