Hike Nepal 2024 – 20th May & Happy Birthday Karla

For Karla’s birthday, she got a cute pajama set from the Women’s Charity Sungabha Nepal, a voucher to spoil herself, and a solid case of vomiting and diarrhea. She opened her presents, and a “card” as best she could (it was a piece of paper with everyone’s well wishes on it), then put her head down and started walking. It was an “easy” day today, only 5km. However this is still obscenely hard when at least 5 of us are putting all our efforts in to keeping our sphincters closed and our bodily fluids inside our bodies.

5 people down with gastro wasn’t as bad as we originally thought, though. Originally, there were 8 people who failed to show for breakfast. It was only when we found Tracy, Naomi, and Linda in their little shack, lined up like sausages, so close they could taste each other’s exhales, and giggling that we realised they were just snug and having a good conversation. Lucky for them because they had a 30m dash for a squat toilet that night, and they may not have made it…

Our starting crew on the day of Karla’s birthday. The shed where Tracy, Linda, and Naomi camped the night is in the background.

We weren’t far from our destination of Lamtang, a village that was decimated by the 2015 earthquake. The same one that occurred 10 days before we were supposed to fly to Nepal for the first time (we ended up camping in Cambodia instead, you can read about that here). There was something faintly spherical about hiking the region that was catastrophically affected by an event that also affected us in Australia, and I was enjoying these thoughts when Maia informed me that she hadn’t weed aaaaallllll day. That, and she had a headache.

A rest stop, after climbing another 400m or so in one go.

Getting dehydrated is bad for you. Getting dehydrated at altitude is downright dangerous. Here I was with a 10YO who was dehydrated at 3500+ metres, so I made her drink.

A lot.

Which she promptly vomited up.

At least that brought me to my senses. I started giving her small sips of hydrolyte, and nursing her for the rest of the walk to Lamtang, which she did, carrying her own bag. Once there she was sick again, and i mixed a high concentrate electrolyte and gave her sips every time she woke from napping. This was less than ideal for me, as I now had Maia’s sinus infection, and I was hoping to lie down myself. Instead, i was doing laps of a 3-story building, bring up boiled carrots and bringing down empty plates. By the evening she was back to her usual self, and I was exhausted, anxious, and sick.

 

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Karla

Most of you know Karla as one of our trainers. She’s the one that beat Jade in the Burpee challenge one time, despite being 20yrs older (although Jade was pregnant at the time, Charlie and I have no excuse, and just accept that Karla is awesome). Karla is one of those strange people that LIKE being taken out of their comfort zone, and experimenting with things that she wouldn’t have done on her own, and also exercising. Our adventure trips hit those goals square on!

The Kepler Trail, NZ (2023) was her first adventure holiday, which she cruised through, and she learned about herself that she handles uncomfortable situations very well! You can read more about that adventure here. Karla will give anything a try, and especially thrives in a team environment. She likes feeling part of a group, and likes to think she’s easy to be around. To date, I haven’t heard anything to the contrary!

Mark and Karla enjoying a break on the way to Gosainkunda

Mark

Mark is Karla’s husband, and while he was happy for her to go off galivanting through NZ last year with us, he was all in when he found out we were coming to Nepal! This has been a lifelong dream of his, and he’s always been fascinated with Nepal. He watches all the Nepal documentaries, reads all the books, and is fascinated by the mountains. He liked training for a specific reason, and having never done an adventure holiday before, found out that he liked having something to train for. Incidentally, he and Karla met through national level Table Tennis, so perhaps it’s not surprising that their competitive spirit and “exercise for purpose” bones were tickled in this training format!

Mark is a genuinely nice human being. He’s also determined and competitive. He was the U21 Aussie Champion for table tennis, and repped for Australia a few times in the international scene. With all the travel, sport, and training he’s done, Nepal met his expectations. He enjoyed seeing how different it was to Australia, and how it wasn’t just about the mountains. He loved exploring the little villages and fields, seeing women working those fields with kids strapped to them, Nepali people and porters walking the mountains in thongs, and the lush forests. It has been more varied than he thought it would be, and he didn’t miss his TV!!

He also impressed Karla. It would appear that she wasn’t sure how he’d go in this environment, and that he rose to the challenge (not in that way – the walls are thin in the teahouses).

Creative reuse and recycling in a country that doesn’t have garbage collection, and a village where everything that comes in or out does so on the back of a man or a yak.