1st Pictures of the Langtang Treck

After a few days in Kathmandu we took the Bus towards Langtang National Park

1st stop up in the mountains

Hmmmm snow-capped mountains

Trekking permit control. We getting closer – only a few more kilometre till we reach the park. We went to a small hotel and where happy to escape the “Bus from Hell”. Time for a hot shower and a cold beer. This night was a early one.

The next day we did start early. Good morning mountain!
This park represents a very good example of graded climatic conditions in the Central Himalayas. Elevation gradients (from mid-hills to alpine) together with complex topography and geology have produced a rich biodiversity unique patchwork of vegetation. You walk up – starting with a sub-tropical zone. Than hill forest takes over, different monkeys roam the trees. Further up the temperate zone is covered mainly by oak trees fading to old growth forest of silver fir, hemlock and larch in the lower sub-alpine zone. All over you find Rhododendron – to bad it is fall right now. Later you cross the tree line at about 4000 meter and you find alpine grassland meadows. On the way up you do this in 3 days and down it takes you 2 days.

The Gang: Rebecca from Belgium, Antonio from Italy and Sharee from Australia. Still happy – they do not know what the day has prepared for them (and me). More than 1000 meters to climb and 8 hours of walking.

Day two: Still cows – further up only cow and yak mixes or yak’s.

A few streams you have to cross by foot and a few have this nice bridges. A lot of fun to let them swing a bit when the gang is on it :-)

Yak baby – nice!

On the way up we did pass a few of this prayer wheels. Inside the drum are prayers and the water turns them non stop. So the praying never ends!

One of the few villages. I have to say that this is complete different from Spiti Valley. Of course the altitude – here you start all the way down and the last village is up at about 3600 meters. This is where you start to trek in Spiti. And here are hoard of trekkers with hoards of porters and guides. Some of them even carry tables and chairs for the customers. A porter gets paid by the weight he schleps up the mountain. So they have 50-60 kg each and get about 10-20 € for about 8-10 hours of torture. This is the information one of our hosts gave me.
Than you find lodges all over the way – in Spiti there is only one or two families hat can host you in a separate room. And than you have a lot of different food to choose from up here – and i have to say it was all quite good!