Hike Nepal 2024 – 24th May and the Mountain That Literally Never Ends

We knew this day’s hiking was going to be tough, we did, after all, expect to climb over 1000m in 8km. I think a few of us believed that no mountain can go on forever, but this one did, we literally climbed it for days. it literally never ends. For this reason, most of us started the day with an expresso, and some of us didn’t limit ourselves to one! That, and it was available, so…

We’d only gone a few hundred metres when we stumbled on a Buddhist celebration. May is Buddha’s birth month, and all over Nepal there were celebrations, rituals, and events. We happened upon one at the local temple, and were invited in, so we went! They taught us the story of Buddha, the circle of life, and showed us around the temple. Maia was transfixed by the birth and sex depictions on the wall! After we’d all rung the bell and listened to the chanting, we restarted our hike.

Not much further along we came across a barbed wire boundary. Binod casually led us across it, and we were deeply committed to the trail inside when a man in khaki with a massive gun started barking out questions to Binod. We’d casually strolled on to the army base and were being ordered off the property… oops. Thankfully I had brought radios for maia and I to stay connected, and I’d handed out the spares to the people walking behind us. We were able to tell them not to cross the wire, but to walk alongside it, avoiding the ire of the man with the gun!

From there, there wasn’t much to report except:

• Stairs
• Sweat
• Stunning views
• and Tracy H got stabbed with Barbed Wire

I guess you’re wanting an explanation of this last point? Well, while we were ascending a grueling mix of switchbacks and stairs, winding through farms, fields, and forests on a trail that Never. Ever. Stopped. Tracey H stepped on a piece of barbed wire. It promptly flicked up and stabbed her in the leg. and yes, it was rusty.

Tracey is pretty no-nonsense, whacked a Band-Aid on it and carried on. She had thankfully had her tetanus shot, and had antibiotics on hand to treat an infection if it occurred. However, no-one washed it out, so that night we cracked open the saline and flushed it, then dressed it with a large, non-stick bandage (after soaking it in betadine) and hoped fort he best.

We lunched that day on a spectacular ridge that overlooked the region we had spent the last week or so hiking through, and after lunch it was a Nepali Flat, undulating trail to that night’s accommodation. As we made our way through the village, fat drops of rain started, but we were all tucked up inside beside the fire by the time it started raining for real!

When Maia was getting ready for bed, she screamed loud enough for our guides to come running. She had an enormous, fat bumblebee on her toe. We made her walk outside then flicked it off, where it bumbled lazily away. Random.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Clare Hozack (@hozackc)

Tracey and Louise a few days later

Tracey H

Tracey is in Nepal for the adventure. Her first adventure trip was a Northern NSW Adventure, when we planned to go to do the Cape to Cape in WA but got locked out by Western Australia’s government. You can read about this trip here.  

This year, she wanted to come to Nepal because it was different. She also had a Nepalese friend who died almost exactly a year ago, and it seemed like a nice way to honor his memory. Tracey is resilient. Even when she had altitude illness she could be found in the laundry washing her undies. She can adjust to most situations. She can be knocked down, and she can get up again. Tracey is a domestic violence and breast cancer survivor, and faces all challenges with good humor and pragmatism.

However, she still rates this trip as the hardest thing she’s ever had to do physically, and the second-only-to-chemotherapy thing she’s ever done mentally. As such, she’s feeling pretty chuffed with what she’s achieved!

Louise

Louise and Tracey are best friends! While this was a nice thing to share, they’re here for very different reasons. Louise came to Nepal, on her very first overseas trip, 25 years ago (in her 40’s). She hiked Annapurna as a sort of test for herself. On that trip was a 65 year old that she has never forgotten, and she wanted to see how she compared to this women, that she so admired 25 years ago.

Louise says “I feel i have challenged myself and that i have succeeded. At the age of 68 years, I don’t think I’ll do another hike, but I wanted to prove (to myself) that i could still do it”. ahem. Louise didn’t miss a day. She didn’t just do what she had to do, she did everything that was available to do!

Louise can be slow to get to know people, but once we got to know her she was solid company! We find Louise as we find her, she is who she is. She has had her fair share of “stuff” in this lifetime, has challenged herself physically and mentally with this trip, and is satisfied that she is a stronger, better person now than she was when she was younger.