NEPAL [ A Family Trekking Travelogue ] - by limwhow & SereneXMM

[limwhow]

All creatures big and small...

Even as we came to Lower Ghorepani, we still had our eyes peeled to all the animals and insects..
And hey, a rooster-a-coodle-doo was standing proud at Lower Ghorepani waiting for us..

And I quietly followed it as it strolled leisurely along the pavement.
Only to find its path blocked by SereneXMM... Haha..

The girls thought this was the end and were rejoicing.
But haha.. no lah, still another climb to somewhere up there.
OK guys, follow the track an turn right and keep climbing... wah lau eh..

 

[limwhow]

Upper Ghorepani welcomes us at 2870m

Whew. Finally the checkpoint at Upper Ghorepani came into sigh.
Communications on the walkie talkies have been flying all over as the younger children who have arrived earlier are calling and asking when we would be reaching.
"Ok OK.. I have just arrvied. Where are you all?"
"Papa, you just keep walking, there is a Stupa and once you see the Stupa you continue walking and we are all waiting in the Guest Lodge."

And yes! The Stupa!
Mahesh, who was walking just in front of me, said: "You see the small side road behind this Stupa?"
"Yes, tomorrow morning we will be walking up this small track in the dark to go to Poon Hill..."
Oh.. I thought to myself.
Enough of adventure today already ba... another adventure awaits tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I got to look for the young ones...

I stumbled forward a little more and come to a most wonderful sight!
Annapurna South peak! We meet again!
And wow.. the village with such a beautiful view to wake up to every morning.
I am sure many of us in Singapore will pay a high premium for something like this.
Q Jiejie cried: "Oh wow! This is like.. the mountains are so near to us! OMG!"

Haha.. yupe. The little ones are safe and sound right at our lodge - Green View, it said.
And have been patiently waiting for us.

Wow.. what a day it had been.
A day of long walk.
And a level of climb no less than the day before.
A day of new sights, new smells, new experience.

But right this moment, our tired legs and bodies just needed a rest... and er.. hot shower?

Hot shower?
Hmmm... man, this lodge's hot water is not really hot...

 

[tarzanboy66]

Nice landscape picture and video love them all :thumbsup: and envy of your family bond is not easily to bond nowadays especially in SG is a good idea of bring the walkie talkie that come in handy just curious did you ask your tour guide how many time he had climb the top of this mountain.

 

[pkong1008]

This is one aspect I don't normally see in a photography forum. Instead of just showing beautiful photos, this is also about nuturing your children to be physically and mentally strong, imparting values to the young when consumerism is overwhelming them and about family bonding. Kudos to you, your wife and your children for doing this.

 

[limwhow]

Nice landscape picture and video love them all :thumbsup: and envy of your family bond is not easily to bond nowadays especially in SG is a good idea of bring the walkie talkie that come in handy just curious did you ask your tour guide how many time he had climb the top of this mountain.

tarzanboy66, thank you for your thumbsup!
Yeah, many of us living in this modern city would naturally think of holiday destinations when school holidays come.
And naturally we would think of where to go for shopping, for eating, for nice relaxing beach resorts, snowy winter wonderland, skiing, and cruises.
Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just that I feel that our city is such a sheltered environment, and many of our children, including adults ourselves, have lost touch with Nature.
Thus the idea of trekking. And trekking in Nepal.
It turned out to be one of the BEST trips.
And my sincere recommendation to any of our good CS members here going to trekking with a group or with family - just get every one a walkie talkie. It's invaluable.
As for our guide, this Ghorepani Poon Hill trek is a popular trek. So he would have been up here probably countless times.

This is one aspect I don't normally see in a photography forum. Instead of just showing beautiful photos, this is also about nuturing your children to be physically and mentally strong, imparting values to the young when consumerism is overwhelming them and about family bonding. Kudos to you, your wife and your children for doing this.

Thank you, pkong1008 for coming on board and for your positive comments.
We are certainly not the first nor the only parents doing that.. haha... many have done that with their children, I am sure.
I strongly advocate family trekking, believing that the experience will be a most unforgettable one for the whole family.
Even our children, who are highly glued to laptops, TV, mobile phones, agree whole-heartedly.

 

[limwhow]

What cameras can we bring for trekking in Nepal?

We have crazily carried heavy DSLR with long lenses and a few heavy lenses to trek in Nepal previously.
And when we decided to go for this trek, our promise to ourselves, both SereneXMM and I, was to take care of the children, and to share close moments with them, not to shoot nicely orchestrated landscape shots on tripods. Haha...
But we still had to take our record shots ah...
So one rangefinder each:
For SereneXMM ~ a rangefinder + 35mm lens.
For me ~ a rangefinder + 35mm lens (mostly mounted on the camera). I brought a 75mm and a 90mm in addition. But they started to weigh down on me in my day pack such that the second half of the trek, I left one of the other long lenses in my big backpack for the porter to carry.
Fann the penguin brought her trusty Canon 50D and her 17-85mm.

But the champion must surely be the eldest Jiejie Q.
She was shooting the whole trip with her iPhone and the Golden Half film camera (seen here hanging from her hand).

The younger three children?
Ask Ah Sing and Ah Li, and they will tell you what I often told them:
"Use the BEST camera in the world to shoot ~ your own pair of eyes."
Haha.. yes, in my opinion, the best camera in the world indeed is your own pair of eyes, coupled with your own genuine heart as the best memory card.

 

[limwhow]

That night at dinner...

By this time, my camera battery has gone almost flat, and Q's iPhone is almost zero already.
The wonderful thing about these Guest lodges are, although many of them do not have individual charging power sockets in the room, you are welcome to make use of their common power socket located in the dining hall, or the kitchen to do your charging.
Up till now at 2870m, we have not needed to pay for charging.

I was lucky for I made use of the opportunity to walk into the kitchen and observe the lodge owners cooking our dinner.

These ladies are so friendly - they never chased me out of the kitchen but smiled at me.

Mahesh walked into the kitchen and struck a conversation with me.
"Limwhow," he said. "You know, all the porters say that the children are very very good trekkers."
"So far they are very good. Especially your son. He is very fast. He was with Ramesh and the rest of the porters all the way in front."
"Tomorrow will be a very tough trek because we need to set off early at around 4-5am to trek 400m up in the dark to Poon Hill at 3210m. Going there will take about 1 hour and coming back another 1 hour. And after that we will set off from Ghorepani to Tadapani. This is also another long trek, about 5 hours. So it will be a total of 7 hours of trekking."
"After tomorrow, we will all give the children the 100%!" He encouraged.

Shot taken by SereneXMM while I was talking to Mahesh.

Yeah, man. I knew it was going to be a tough trek the next day.
In fact, in restrospect, compared wit the first day up Ulleri, the trek from Ghorepani to Poon Hil and thence to Tadapani, was the toughest walk.
Why? Several reasons:

• By now, most of us have already developed some form of muscle aches and joint pains. Myself and SereneXMM were aching from top to bottom. AhSing's knees and ankles were acting up already. Q has some calves pain. Fann the Penguin is a light girl, so she has nary a problem. AhLiXMM is ok except for also some thigh aches. The son? That fellow is a tough guy. LOL..
• The vast majority of the trek on the third day would be undertaken at altitudes of about 3000m. So it would always be important to keep an eye out for Acute Mountain Sickness, though, in my opinion, the chances of that would be not high as we have been ascended slowly and our bodies have been acclimatizing.
• That early morning trek up to Poon Hill would be quite shagged, I felt. Cos the ascend is steep. And that first part 2 hours of the day would probably take some wind out of most of us already.

But heck lah, let's just take it a day at a time.
Meanwhile, tonight we need to have a good sleep.

Hot shower?
Haha.. what hot shower?
Here, the 'hot' was at best 'luke warm'.
We tried to shower. I tried to shower. But at the first touch of the water, I could only tahan enough to just wet my hair and sprinkle some water on my body.
Couldn't even apply soap/shampoo.
That was why I suffered terribly that night. My hair was soooooo itchy I was scratching my head the whole night through..
"Tomorrow wherever we arrive at, I must wash my hair properly," I promised myself.

A cold, cold night...
ZA the son walkie talkie:
"Papa, I have prepared your sleeping back for you already."
Wow.. what fortune I have to have my bed prepared for me... LOL.
That night the temperature dropped to about 2 degrees.
Really not cold, as compared to many other wintry destinations.
But honestly, when the wooden room has no heater and you are totally on your own to bear the cold, every degree is significant.
And we were on our base layers again with the middle fleece layer, and T shirt, and trek pants and merino wool socks..
In fact, for the son and I, we have been wearing exactly the same clothes since we began trekking in Nayapul.
So we just powdered our clothes and socks thickly.
And we just grit our teeth and tahan the cold that night..

And.. ho ho ho.. my favourite heat packs.. disposable heat packs so important that I simply stuck one to each of my palms and sole of each foot.
And we knocked out very quickly that evening.
We must have been tired.

 

[limwhow]

Day 3 of Trekking:
To Poon Hill and to Tadapani

This third day saw us moving out at 5:15am from our guest lodge
to move in the dark to Poon Hill.
And after the return to Ghorepani,
we set out towards our destination for the day - Tadapani.
What a trek this day brought.
What a trek.

Clickable on the image below to see the larger version
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[limwhow]

Poon Hill

The highlight of this very trek, is walking up Poon Hill to see sunrise.
Yes, it was just so simple.
Poon Hill has been described as the perfect spot for the best view of the Annapurna range, where one can see:

• Machhapuchhre
• Hiunchuli
• Annapurna South
• Annapurna Fang
• Nilgiri
• Dhaulagiri range

The magical moment would be when the sun rises just above one of the lower ranges on the east and its ray first hits Annapurna South.

Expecting a freezing cold climb, we had all the three or four layers of our trekking wear on.
Haha.. what a climb this was.

 

[tecnica]

exciting....

 

[limwhow]

Early in the morning...
No light. Freezing cold.
... and some of us don't know why were having stomach pain..

[This series of shots were all taken with my rangefinder which I had to grapple with estimating the distance in the dark and hazzarding the shots.
Thus please pardon me for the out-of-focus shots and those with movement blur. But just to demonstrate the moment, I thought they should suffice.]

We walked in the deep dark with our torch lights.
Among 7 of us, only our son and I carried daypacks because we wanted every body else to walk easy.
We started the climb on a even flat walk, which very soon became flights after flights of steps with high intervals.
Often we had to lift our legs high to put our feet onto the next step. Not easy.

We rested momentarily at a lighted hut..

Here, there was a rotating gate through which we enter and from which we started another climb.
Q Jiejie clutched her stomach and asked: "Haiyoh... why ah? Why are we doing this ah?"
I laughed and laughed and said: "Ok, give me three days. In three days' time, I might be able to answer this very good question."

Climbed and climbed we did.
Again, SereneXMM and I did our usual few steps and rest to take a breather.
Although we were the first group to start the climb up to Poon Hill, very soon we were over-taken by some of the later starters, trekkers from other parts of the world. The narrow trail became more crowded as more people walked with and ahead of us.

For thus far, I have personally been quite optimistic about the trek.
But this morning, this very moment, for the first time, I actually cursed and swore and questioned myself.
I was genuinely worried about the safety of the children, walking in the dark in the uphill climb.
Knowing how the mountain treks were, a misstep in the dark could easily mean a fall off the edge of the cliff.
Sh*t. If anything were to happen...
"This is CRAZY," I muttered quietly inside my heart.
Really, it was really crazy doing this insane climb in the dark. Nearly 400m of ascend in one hour. In the dark!
Aiyoh eh...

 

[limwhow]

A video of darkness... of SereneXMM's legs and of our climb up to Poon Hill.

For some strange reasons, in between trying to catch my breath and trying to negotiate the climb, I still had the presence of mind to whip out my digital point and shoot for some video taking. Although it was still of pitch darkness.. LOL..

[video=youtube_share;Cg61TJDg9QI]http://youtu.be/Cg61TJDg9QI[/video]

 

[limwhow]

... finally. Finally.

If this tower atop Poon Hill could laugh, it would certainly be laughing its rooftop off looking at us panting and trying to catch our breath as we tried to near it.
For the first time on this trek, we have broached the 3000m altitude.
Our Pengiun was feeling nausea and Q Jiejie was still having stomach cramp.
On that morning, I didn't think much of these.. but it was later that I kicked myself in the butt.
Why? Because though not severe, these could very well had been slight symptoms of altitude illness.

And as first light dawned, and we could begin to see.
I could certainly see quite a crowd of trekkers gathered at the clearing atop Poon Hill, eagerly awaiting sunrise.

 

[limwhow]

At first, it was still pretty dark around.
And we were all a little disoriented.
I couldn't find where the children were because they were all over the place.
But I though aiyah.. just relax lah.
We were just here to enjoy the sunrise.
So.... slowly the first light became a first and a half light...

SereneXMM's first shot showed there to be some Ang Mohs who were all relaxed and sitting on the clearing waiting for the magical moment to come..

[Shot taken by SereneXMM]

 

[limwhow]

Aaaaawww... sunrise
~ the first magical moment of the morning.

There was muttering all over the clearing. And the inescapable glow of the sun peeping over the range to the east captured everyone's attention.

I looked around and found the Rabbit and the Kitten seated side by side watching very intently their very first sunrise over the Himalayan ranges.

Q Jiejie was still suffering from her stomach cramp as she sat grouchily all covered up.
LOL.. she must be cursing and swearing her unlikely stars for making her climb all the way up just... to watch this?!

Aaaawww... the Rabbit and the Kitten.. and the little Teddy bear.
Man, this is magical. To me at least.

 

[limwhow]

Sun-lit peaks...
~ the second magical moment of the morning...

Some more muttering, and this time round we turned our attention to what was behind us..
And yes, the ray of light from the rising sun was just beginning to hit the peaks.
And in SereneXMM's first shot of this the taller Annapurna South peak was the very first peak to be tangential-ed by the golden hue.
Hiunchuli peak, which was to Annapurna South peak's right, was still shrouded in darkness, as well as the twin-tiny-peaked Machhapuchhre (fish tail) at the far right. Annaurna Fang peak was just starting to catch the fire, on the left...

[Shot taken by SereneXMM while everyone else was dropping their jaws over the magnificent sight.]

My shots?
Yah, fortunately I had the presence of mind to change my lens to the 90mm.
Well, atop Poon Hill was the second time i used my 90mm lens. And after that, for the rest of the trip, it was put into cold storage. Haha..
Here I merely trained my lens onto Annapurna South Peak which was catching fire.. leaving enough space on the right to frame in Hiiunchuli.

And the Penguin?
Well.. she had her own point of view, and her own idea. And I could see why.
She was more fascinated by the clouds than the mountain peaks..

[Shot taken by Fann the Penguin.]

 

[limwhow]

Teddy bear also wants a memory of the moment...

AhLiXMM: "Papa, take a picture take a picture for her too.."
Well, that was what we climbed all the way here for mah, right? No?

\

 

[noob117]

Early in the morning...
No light. Freezing cold.
... and some of us don't know why were having stomach pain..

[This series of shots were all taken with my rangefinder which I had to grapple with estimating the distance in the dark and hazzarding the shots.
Thus please pardon me for the out-of-focus shots and those with movement blur. But just to demonstrate the moment, I thought they should suffice.]

We walked in the deep dark with our torch lights.
Among 7 of us, only our son and I carried daypacks because we wanted every body else to walk easy.
We started the climb on a even flat walk, which very soon became flights after flights of steps with high intervals.
Often we had to lift our legs high to put our feet onto the next step. Not easy.

We rested momentarily at a lighted hut..

Here, there was a rotating gate through which we enter and from which we started another climb.
Q Jiejie clutched her stomach and asked: "Haiyoh... why ah? Why are we doing this ah?"
I laughed and laughed and said: "Ok, give me three days. In three days' time, I might be able to answer this very good question."

Climbed and climbed we did.
Again, SereneXMM and I did our usual few steps and rest to take a breather.
Although we were the first group to start the climb up to Poon Hill, very soon we were over-taken by some of the later starters, trekkers from other parts of the world. The narrow trail became more crowded as more people walked with and ahead of us.

For thus far, I have personally been quite optimistic about the trek.
But this morning, this very moment, for the first time, I actually cursed and swore and questioned myself.
I was genuinely worried about the safety of the children, walking in the dark in the uphill climb.
Knowing how the mountain treks were, a misstep in the dark could easily mean a fall off the edge of the cliff.
Sh*t. If anything were to happen...
"This is CRAZY," I muttered quietly inside my heart.
Really, it was really crazy doing this insane climb in the dark. Nearly 400m of ascend in one hour. In the dark!
Aiyoh eh...

wow thats quite abit of ice!!

 

[limwhow]

Summit of Poon Hill..

Haha.. Poon Hill is not called a hill for no reason.
In Himalayan term, Poon Hill is no where near as high as the mountains.
Thus in the eyes of Nepali, 3210m is merely a little pimple.
But for us Singaporeans, 3210m is many times our 163m Bukit Timah Hill.
Thus, it is a proud group of Singaporeans who brought our National Flag ALL the way here to mark the moment.

Poor thing, a nauseous Penguin and a Hair Dryer with stomach cramp don't make no good companionship.
Haha.. poor things.
But what is even more poor thing is us, SereneXMM and myself.
How on earth are we going to motivate this group of punctured-tyres to walk the next 6 hours... Jiak lat ah...

Now I have also to deal with a punctured SereneXMM..
Hiayah....

 

[limwhow]

wow thats quite abit of ice!!

Yah.. indeed, noob117.
Icy frost and all that..
It was really quite an experience.
Was it similarly icy when you all were up at Poon Hill?