Originally there were supposed to be 6 of us on this trip. Grandpa Tim and Misha had helped plan it, and they made it very active. In order to do less driving, and more sightseeing, we had signed up for a 4 day Himalayan trek from the capital city of Thimpu to the town of Paro. Tim and Misha had to cancel their trip because Tim crushed a disk in his back, and was in too much pain to travel. So the 4 of us headed up to the monastery for the first night of the trek.
When we were planning the trip, I did not understand why camping costs more than staying in town. When we got there, it all made sense. We were on the “luxury camping” program, which included our guide Namgay, a cook, 4 horse men, and 13 mules. Wow, what an entourage. They do tourism with a high level of support in Bhutan! Anyhow, we set out on our first day, with a 3 hour, 5 km hike up to a monastery. Why so slow, I wondered? Well, it was steep. And the altitude was high. We headed up to our camp site, at a modest 3,600 m altitude. That’s about 11,800 ft! And more than we were ready for. Rachel promptly got symptoms of altitude sickness – a splitting headache that would not go away. We decided to spend the night and see if it passed. Our guide took it very seriously, and went to consult with the head Abbott at the monastery next door. A half hour later, Namgay poked his head in our tent and asked if we would like to go to the monastery for some wheat porridge and to rest. Rachel said she had just gotten comfortable in bed, and we had already eaten. Namgay asked again two times – his form of “insisting” – and Rachel, who had noticed more quickly than I that this was his form of “we are going!,” agreed to head over.
I joined her some time later. Apparently the Abbott wanted to host us in the monastery for the night. He felt Rachel would be safer if she did not get too cold, so he offered the guest house to us. I went over to check in on Rachel. She was huddled in the corner of a large wooden room with a bowl of porridge in front of her, and a few monks in red robes surrounding her, milling about. She spoke to an older monk, who spoke good English, the head abbot I would later learn. I spent some time with her, and Namgay insisted that we stay in the guest house, on the orders of the abbot. Rachel was too full or sick to eat the porridge, although she described it as “perfect.” I went down the hill to inspect the guest house, which was lovely, and quickly agreed it would be a better night’s rest than staying in sleeping bags in our tents. I went to fetch the children.
It’s hard to overstate the relative comfort of a flat bed on a flat wooden floor, and a shelter that does not go “whoop” in the wind. Rachel woke at 3 am when the Tylenol wore off, but agreed to wait till morning to head down the mountain. At sunrise, my over tired girls headed around the corner one by one to the attached outhouse for the morning business and oohed and aahed at the sunrise, lighting the valley fog like a billowing blanket of white sheltering the land below us. We admired the golden hour as it lit up the monastery on the hill above us, and waited for the mountain to warm up.
Rachel headed down with Bahrain (“brain”) as soon as everyone was awake. Paloma considered going with her, but decided to trek on with us. Mistake. After 2 hours of painfully slow ascent toward our pass at 4,200 m, her headache was also splitting. On Namgay’s good advice, she headed down too, to meet her Mom in town and recover. Anika and I continued with Namgay, trusting Paloma in Bahrain’s capable care (he had already run down and up the hill to meet us again, having delivered Rachel to our driver Dashi…what an athlete!).
Anika and I continued up to the pass, a bit more quickly now that our suffering companion was heading the other direction. Anika had a burst of steam and we pushed up to the top in under an hour, and enjoyed the awesome view over the valley. There was no going back once we descended the back side, a succession of rolling hills that approached our second camp site next to a small lake. Five hours of hiking lay ahead of us, and we happily bounced towards our camp, Anika so happy to have her Daddy with her.
We learned a couple things our first night: get your warm clothes on right away when you arrive. Your body heat leaves quickly up at altitude, as Anika curiously noticed when she told me “I don’t know if I’m warm or if I’m cold.” We warmed her up eventually, parking her next to the barely-working gas heater in the dining tent (did I mention we were on the luxury program?). We also learned that our tent was not built for wind. That night the winds picked up strongly, billowing up to about 30 kts at times. I staked our tent down differently to try to prevent the fly from flapping against the tent all night – I could barely sleep – and somehow it made it through the night. In the early morning, when Anika went to the toilet tent, she learned what it means to “turn the fan up to 11” as the whole tent blew off of her, showing her 11 year old bum to… the horses and sleeping dog. Our dining tent blew open a few times too, its walls giving way to the Himalayan storm.
Fortunately it was a dry storm. We saw only a few flakes of snow and pieces of hail. Everyone survived the second night, and after a hearty breakfast we headed on for another 20 km day.
Anika was more tired the second day. We meandered up and down some hills, and over a second pass where we could view the high mountains of Bhutan in the distance. The trail dog who found us after our first night joined us again, and we found yaks and other wildlife as we trekked. I got a bit worried about the time. While Ani was in great spirits, I heard many warnings from Namgay that we were behind schedule. I didn’t want to hike in the dark, so I started pushing her uphill at times to help her move along. “Silicon Valley parents are known for pushing their kids,” we joked. But it helped. After countless rhododendron forests, 10 km on a high ridge trail, and several river crossings, we got to camp just after sunset. We made it through our second and hardest day.
I wasn’t quite sure why our tent was pitched on a hill. Sleeping on a slope is one of my least favorite things, and when I realized that our dining tent was on a flat spot, I inquired. The crew thought we’d want to be farther from the kitchen / sleeping tent where it was noisy, and away from any smells that might be near the dining tent, as a previous group had left some kitchen trash on the ground. We tried propping up our cots with rocks to make them level. And we tried again. And we tried a third time. It didn’t really work. They were still sloped quite a lot, and I didn’t look forward to sliding out of bed that night – I wanted us to get a good night’s sleep. After some deliberation, Namgay offered to move the tent. We looked for a new spot but could not find one. Finally we agreed to move it to where the dining tent was pitched.
Thank goodness we did. Anika and I got to sleep late for some reason. Maybe the yak meat we ate for dinner? I don’t know, but I got to practice some ukulele songs, she got to read a book. But finally we slept. Very well. Like those rocks – we didn’t really move. Ahhh, sleep.
Our last morning was mostly downhill, and only about 10 km. At lower altitude the forest turned coniferous with silver firs blanketed by thick green moss. I got a bit tired of seeing trash on the trail, so I started picking up any piece I saw. There wasn’t much at first, but as we got closer to town the density increased. Anika and Namgay got in the spirit and started picking it up too. By the time we got near the bottom, we had about 3 bags full, including a shoe I found, many water bottles, and hundreds of shards of candy wrappers.
Let me just say that down hill is SO much easier than uphill, especially when you’re not really acclimated and every big step to climb is an effort. It wasn’t as easy as we expected, but we made it to a farm house at the bottom of the hill for lunch. We ate our usual fare: lots of rice, sauteed vegetables, some sort of meat, and plenty of sweet tea and water. They gave us these silly polyester scarves as trophies for finishing the hike, and we were pretty happy, and pretty proud of finishing it together. To show for it, Anika and I have lots of pictures of us jumping in the air, and holding hands, and being happy together.
