I thought I would post an email from Karen that described her recent trek - Its hard to post with limited time in internet cafe's. I didn't seek the authors permission though, hopefully I'm not sued:
it's ... been 3 days...! i went with
these two guides by bus to this town 1 hour away from
Kathmandu and hiked 4 hours uphill the first day! they
said that i am a good and fast walker because it often
takes people 5 hours for that walk :)
we hiked through little villages, if you can call it
that, just some people living up on the hills. by the
way, our mountains are only considered little hills
here. The kathmandu valley is actually quite hilly,
both nights we stayed in towns at about 7000ft. the
first night in a little village, i really liked it.
the teahouse/hotel we stayed in was really small,
people were nice and there were some other travelers
there, the guides were showing them nepali dancing and
i was taught the card game Shithead. It's quite cloudy
but luckily it rained a little so we could actually
see the mountain range that first afternoon. it was
beautiful. i didn't even see the highest peak out
there. i think the highest one i saw was only about
6000m, yes, only. they have about 15 peaks above
6000m!
yesterday we had a long day and hiked about 6 hours to
this bigger town again with views of the mountains and
the valley but it's too cloudy to see the big
mountains. This morning we woke up at 5am to hike up
to this viewpoint in hope of seeing the high peaks.
the sunrise was nice over the valley and i managed to
catch a small glimpse (not sure if it will turn out on
the photos) of Langtang which is about 8000m!! it was
amazing how high it was.
today we didn't really hike, just took a bus down to
the a cool town called Bhaktapur where there are tons
of old temples and buildings with lots of nice wood
carving, mostly done between 14th and 17th century. it
was nice excpet that i wasn't feeling very well. i am
coming down with a cold :( but i think i will be
alright.
So the hike was nice. the guides were good company. we
will definitely have to come back and do a longer real
trek up in the mountains. I would love to do the
everest base camp trek. The guide said that i would be
in good shape to do it, it will just be the altitude
which i think i will be alright too. it will be at
least a 2 weeks trek. I wished i had gone up to the
annapurnas for even just a few days to be closer to
the mountains but i am also glad i did this valley
walk because it's not very popular but i think it was
just as nice as any hikes we do. the valley views were
great and i did get to see some valley farm life.