A bonding experience: yelping in a jeep!

9 October 2018

Hello everyone from Kharikhola, a small village at 2,040m in the Himalayas. 

Today we travelled by jeep for the morning to try and get us and our gear to a sensible point to start trekking. There have been no flights in or out of Lukla due to the low cloud for the last two days and so our guides definitely made the right decision in bringing us in this way. It means we are a day behind our schedule but we hope to catch up over the next couple of weeks. 

The jeep ride was even more of an experience than the bus ride yesterday! If you want a team building event, try putting eight people who don’t know each other into a jeep which would have been comfortable for four and send them up a Nepalese track! The only English that our amazing driver seemed to know was ‘head down’ which he shouted before any very challenging section so that we didn’t bang our heads on the roof of the jeep as we went over bumps and into ditches and ‘amen’ which he used when we made it up a section that looked impassable! For those who have skied with me, you’ll know that I tend to yelp when I am scared – there was a lot of yelping today! At one point, we attempted a very steep muddy uphill section three times before one of the porters took over to ‘give it a go’ and we finally got up to rounds of applause from the whole team! We certainly bonded over the experience!

When we finally arrived at the lunch spot, we were all relieved and delighted to be trekking for the rest of the trip! We trekked down about 1,000m and then up 1,000m and it was great fun but hard work. The downhill sections are always very difficult for me as I am afraid of drops but I managed them well today. For those of you who followed my last trek in Nepal, you may recall the wooden and rope wobbly bridges which were challenging for me. Today I had to navigate two of them and one was very steep and had extra wooden slats to try and stop you falling! I needed some hand holding for the steep bit but I felt good when I completed it! 

We were running behind schedule this afternoon due to the route change and so had to complete the last hour trekking in the dark which was hard work and scary. We were all delighted to arrive at our Tea House! 

I feel incredibly blessed to be here, despite the challenges. It is beautiful and a very special place. Thanks for all of you support, it makes all the difference during the tough sections. Have a great day everyone.