Test trek!

The most spectacular thing to do in Nepal is trekking and hiking. The two week trek to the Everest base camp is very popular. We fancied doing some trekking but weren't sure if we were fit enough or had enough stamina! We decided to do a short two day trek first to test the waters!

We caught a bus to a small town outside the Kathmandu valley called Dhulikhel and had a stroll round the old town.

Then we followed concrete steps (my idea of trekking!) upto a massive Buddha.

And a stunning lookout tower above Kali temple.

Then we trekked through farmland and small villages to a village called Kavre. We crossed the main road and continued trekking through more rural countryside, random temples and spectacular views of the mountains above us and the cloud below us. We really enjoyed the first two hours and were ready to sign up to Everest immediately...

....then it started raining and we lost the signs we had been following!!

It was a three hour trek and the last hour was miserable, we didn't enjoy the scenery, we were wet through, cold and couldn't find the village we were meant to walk through! We saw three cars get stuck in all the mud. We walked straight past the famous Namobuddha and up a very steep muddy footpath to the Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery where I had booked us a room for the night.

The room itself was very plain and not very clean! But we got to have our supper with the monks in the dining hall of the monastery. Everyone sat cross legged on the floor and had dinner served to them from large communal stainless steel pots, about 100 monks joined us for supper! We had a mountain of rice, daal, veg curry, coleslaw and pakora and we felt we had earnt it after a hard days trekking!

There was nothing to do in the evening, so we drank tea, read, wrang the rain out of our clothes and went to bed early.

Unbeknown to us, the next morning was the first day of Tibetan New Year. We got to have breakfast at 7am inside the actual monastery. It was a simple breakfast, but the monastery itself was stunning, so bright and colourful with golden Buddhas everywhere. There was chanting, prayers, deep beating drums and clashing cymbals and after breakfast everyone got given a goody bag! It was a fantastic sight and we feel really honoured to have experienced it with the monks.

The monastery was on top of a hill and the views were incredible, that's the snowy Himalayas in the background (for our next trek!)

The next day we trekked another 2 hours through farmland and rural villages to another town called Panauti where we caught the bus back to Kathmandu.

Our legs and feet were a bit sore and we were a bit tired in the office on Monday, but we had a fantastic time, we've never done anything quite like it. We do fancy another short trek, though we've concluded we're not ready for Everest just yet!