Mardi Himal Base Camp

FROM HIGH CAMP TO BASE CAMP (4500m) AND BACK --> because of horrible judgement of the both of us, we might have ended up a bit higher...

Almost the whole day going down the mountain was equally clear and we got to trek in the sun along a beautiful river in a valley that was totally new to us because it had been so full of fog during the trek up. There were crazy waterfalls and mountains and river formations that we hadn’t previously had the chance to see. We even got the opportunity to collect some trash as a small act of gratitude to the wonderful place we were traveling through.
(Way down pics)

The trekking routes and the guest houses are supplied and kept running by local people and their mules who work insanely hard to maintain the trails, build the guest houses, run the guest houses and bring supplies up and waste down the mountains. As such we have a lot of gratitude towards these super hardworking people who made the treks possible.

Here is a picture of just one of many Nepali people carrying a ridiculous load up a slippery and steep path.

The last 15 minutes of the trek were spent running with our big bags down through a town, across a beautiful bridge overlooking the valley and then up through another town to catch the bus back to Pokhara... because of course, no matter which country I am in I seem to always manage to be late for the bus. But we caught it and the following ride was the bumpiest bus ride I have ever taken. We drove on a road that was more like a hiking trails and was only a road because the bus drivers here are skilled and crazy enough to send it. It seemed like these people saw mules walking on a trail and said, “well if the mules can do it so can a jeep… and if a jeep can do it, so can a bus.”
I was catching crazy air time on some of the bumps and people and their things were bouncing all over the bus. This drive would have been tough on a ATV but this driver managed it with a big ass bus (and it’s probably totally routine for him at this point) even with parts of the road blown out by landslides, boulders strewn all over the path, narrow roads, tight turns and vehicles going the other way.

I would be remiss if I didn’t include a section about the fluvial brilliance I witnessed on this trek. The rivers here follow different “rules” than they do in the Appalachian mountains and around our area in the mid-Atlantic. The Himalayan mountains are so much younger than the Appalachian mountains (the Himalayas started forming ~40-50 million years ago while the Appalachian mountains started forming ~1.1 Billion years ago) so the geographical features are more jagged, include significantly steeper slopes and more variable terrain in general. This makes the way that the rivers form much less predictable and totally differently interesting than those in the Chesapeake Bay and Mississippi River watersheds that I’m used to! The rivers I studied in school and usually see up and down the east coast mostly all follow the same structural patterns from top to bottom (waterfall -> cascade -> step-pool -> plane-bed -> riffle-pool) but the rivers here go back and forth between different formations and structures in super cool and beautiful ways!
(River pics)

Braided section of the river

Here are some Yak-cattle hybrids called dzos that live along the path at higher altitudes. If you go even higher there are pure yaks but we haven’t seen those yet.もっと詳しく