“The Great Himalaya Trail.”
Just the name conjures images of towering peaks, remote valleys, and a deep wilderness experience in the heart of Nepal.
That part is true – anything else you may have heard about The Trail could well be a myth.
The two most-telling misnomers in The Great Himalayan Trail’s name:
- There isn’t a set trail. The concept was inspired by Peter Hillary’s grand traverse of the Himalaya in the early 90’s, traversing from Pakistan to Bhutan, covering much of the ground across Nepal along the way. But it is still very much a mix of trails, knitted together to form high routes, low routes and connecting passes. You can choose to go many ways and still be part of The Great Himalaya Trail, as defined in Robin Boustead’s excellent book.
- In some places, even following what is considered the main trail, there isn’t a trail at all. You will be climbing over passes covered in snow, clambering through dense forests and over and around roots, crawling your way up rocky scrambles onto precipitous ridges, then dropping straight down the other side. The occasional glacier, crevasse and perhaps a rappel, not to mention meeting a mad Yak or two, is all to be expected.
Yet we’d dreamt of traversing this legendary route, linking Kanchenjunga and Makalu, two of the world’s giant 8,000 metre peaks. And this year, after two previous attempts by The Mountain Company, we finally made it, forging a path through some of Nepal’s most challenging landscapes.
Kathmandu was under water in the 2024 monsoon, the streets flowing with detritus, the dogs bedraggled, the monkeys hiding under the eaves of their temple. Our group arrived trailing travel diversions behind them, from missed connections to flooded roads: but luckily with all their baggage in tow.
We added umbrellas to the kit list and headed east by air to the village of Taplejung, not far from Sikkim and the border to India. We had skirted along the Himalayan Range: Everest, Makalu and then Kanchenjunga flowing past out the airplane window, seen thru the spinning props of the small plane. Were we really expected to walk all that way back again?
The scale of our venture, forest, ridges, leading to cliffs, leading to snow capped peaks extending up into the clouds, became a bit more real. Or unreal? All that, on just our two feet?
Meanwhile, our supplies and 35 staff were somewhere on the muddy roads below us, battling flooded rivers and the portages of our kitchen sinks, through, over and around the washed out roads.
Our first day of jeep travel, started at a little over a 1,000 metres in height, soon dropped us down below 950 metres; we kept thoughts of our multiple ascents back up to over 5,000 metres to ourselves and sweated our way through the jungle.
We followed a map with a sense of humour, landslides being so frequent they were listed on the map as permanent features, closely followed by Big Stones, with a note, (pray as God), hopefully to ward off the former.
At Sukethum our team and gear caught up, and we could take to our feet, limbering up for the 40 days and 40 nights ahead. Bamboo forests were carved through by a thin track, cliffs traversed, and landslides circumnavigated by steep and slippery grass terraces, with rather large drops straight into the river below.
We carried two hiking poles and wished for three. We became masters at foot placement on just the right tuft and angle to keep us more or less upright. We passed through Amjolosa, onto Gabla (or Kyapra, pick your choice of name) and onto Ghunsa, an actual village with shops and pathways and mules and villagers who lived there the year round.
We had been told Ghunsa was a bit of a Namche Bazaar – it wasn’t. Yet the one coffee shop had a real steaming and burbling Italian machine, they just hadn’t quite cracked the cake recipes from the Khumbu yet it seemed.
We rested here, we wandered around monasteries, we found a local monk to perform a puja, we bowed and received red strings for safe passage. We took hot showers in very cold rooms, we were really in the mountains. And finally we were headed for the heights. We wandered up the gorge to Kambachen, and before we pulled into the village, Jannu came into view.
Jannu. Way bigger than expected, more grand than expected. As a climber you look at it and immediately look for the routes, the ridges, the faces, the toweringness of it all.
It’s fame is well deserved and its orange cliffs draped with ice fields creates vertical worlds that beckon the eye and the ice axe. Yet as we set out the next day, the stories swirled from our Sherpas of Mike Gardner’s fall and disappearance on the heights above us, a climber I’d met in seasons we had shared in Antarctica, forming a poignant backdrop to our walk up the valley.
At Lhonak we reached 4,780 metres (15,682 feet), a brightly colored village perched on the confluence of two glacial valleys. When the sun set the temperature dropped from the sky and water turned to ice. The hoods of our sleeping bags came out, breakfast was an extra coffee and a hike in the hills to accustom our lungs to the heights and accentuate the red blood cells to the challenges overhead.
We followed glacial terraces, the natural pathways traversing the mountains: the meandering, spacious, brush covered paths, threaded with Yak trails and wandering from cliff face out to glacial edge. These were natural grazing grounds for Blue Sheep also wandering the trails amongst us, unafraid, their kids frolicking through the rocks around.
Base Camps, and certainly 8,000 metre Base Camps contain energy: from climbers coming and going, from dreams realized and dashed, from people who have climbed up and not come down.
Ghosts of climbers past from Wanda Rutkiewicz’s disappearence to Doug Scott hovered in the breezes. The route for climbers wove up the glacier, off left to the ridge, up to the snowfield and finally onto the summit.
It is a natural, but very long contrived climb, following the best route, but still covering an awful lot of mountain on its way to the top. Doug Scott’s book, Kanchenjunga does the mountain proud, a virtual love story to a peak.
We ate lunch at Base Camp, listened to avalanches, stared up another 3,000 vertical metres to the summit, a magic and poignant place, surrounded by high peaks and privileged to stand amongst them. As the sun disappeared over the ridge, we galloped back down the hill, through the blue sheep and into our chilly tents.
Ghunsa, for all its small village feel, is where we left the Base Camp trek, where most other trekkers would also be left behind, as we set out across the Himalaya.
With Kanchenjunga Base Camp the easternmost point of the high GHT, it is really the true start of the Trail. So did our first two weeks even count?
We took another shower, we washed our hair twice, we charged every technology. I tied double knots in my shoes in the morning.
We are now traversing the high Himalaya, from Kharka to Kharka, the locals seemingly having run out of any meaningful names. Sometimes a rudimentary hut, sometimes a paddock, sometimes a few Yaks on the edge of camp. The porters start late and end later, we bundle up in our jackets and wait while our local guides build campfires to huddle round.
Two of our Sherpas have gone ahead to check the rivers and bridges, so we pass with little trouble through areas that in years past had to be circumnavigated for days on end. We stick to the direct route, which means straight up and straight down in places, through bogs at the base and snow on the passes, there is never anything that could be called an easy day, or an Everest Base Camp like trekking day.
We see but a few people, even locals are few and far between, the trails not connecting much of anything except high Yak pastures they have left in this late fall season – with snows potentially dumping metres at any point in November.
There is a Red Panda listed on the map on the way to Olangchung Gola, who sadly doesn’t show his face. We walk into the one street of the village amidst a sprinkling of rain, the children circling round, “Hello, Hello, Hello.”
We camp in the paddock next to a small lodge and shop. Upstairs the low roofed dining hall is circled by paintings, the open fire in a clay oven against the wall. Chinese tea cups, prayer flags, prayer wheels and photos from the extensive family dot the walls.
It is a lodge, family house and shopping centre all in one, the owner trading pharmaceuticals and natural medicine with Yak trains over the Tibetan border. His wife cooks, he tells stories and tales of his life on the trail, his kids shift from floor to seat to dinner, flowing amongst us all. We go to bed smelling of juniper and with the patter of rain on our tents.
The Olangchung Gola monastery perched on the high hill above is open in the morning, a prayer flag pole lined ascent to its aiery on the hill above. Inside, soft light flows in through gray windows, dappling the floor. Every inch is carved, adorned and covered. Ancient prayer books line the walls. A lone monk wanders silently about and blesses us with prayer scarves. We leave with morning smiles as clouds build in the valley below.
We are headed for the Lumba Sumba pass, we say this frequently, as it is fun. Then I realize it is the Lumba Pass, followed by the Sumba Pass. The snow is deep but the trail foot-packed hard with porter prints. The porters pull out a cooking tray and go sledding from the heights. The sun is blazing, the breeze is crisp, we are looking from Kanchenjunga behind us, along the Himalaya mountains to Makalu far in the distance, so far, in front of us.
Ok, we must keep walking.
It is time, with you having read this far, for a confession. I am not really a very good walker. I discovered rock climbing at 15 and never looked back. I like cliffs and mountains and new climbing routes. Climbing alone on the North Face of Everest is fun, soloing new routes in Antarctica – the best, flying my paraglider off the mountains of Nepal: more fun.
But walking, that is hard. So of the ten of us on this Great Himalayan Trail, I am decidedly the least experienced because I am not so good at it.
Fortunately every one else is more experienced than me. They are enthusiastic and having fun. They have walked long distances before, they know how to go up and down dangerous trails with big drop offs.
They know exactly what to put in their packs and when to take it out. They look forward to the day, and the next day and the day after that. I take it one day at a time, that’s enough for me. The overall length of this journey is quite astounding in today’s world.
We have no internet, we have one food resupply, we have 35 staff and 4 Nepali guides. The map is mostly right, but not always. The trail is sometimes there but sometimes not. Our porters are struggling, we send half of them home along the way and start with a new group – it is more challenging than even they expected.
The one thing above all I am blessed with, is an amazing group of people to trek with. They are all very strong. They never complain, not once. They move along the trail at a great pace.
These are not Everest Base Camp trekkers. They gallop up and down hills, they go out on extra walks on rest days, they eat heartedly and sleep 10 hours a night. And fortunately they are not flummoxed by slippery stones on steep shelves perched 300 metres above a waterfall.
They also (luckily!) dodge charging Yaks with a-clarity. They stomp into camp and demand soup. There are no shrinking violets and it is a good thing because a shrinking violet on this section of the GHT would wilt, and then fade, in no time. I am starting to enjoy this walk, swept along in their enthusiasm.
We also have two Doctors – a very good thing as our porters seem to bump into things, get infections, trip a bit and generally get tired. They are diagnosed, treated and sent along their way, as good as new as they will ever be.
They get a physical diagnosis, and then Dr. Mike later discusses their overall diagnosis: what, led to what, led to this, causing that. When long sections of trail loom I catch up with him and an hour or two later we are at camp, and I am well informed about just about anything.
Dr. Rich gets sandwiched between Marion and I on the trail. Marion, fresh off a quick bike ride across America from the Northern to the Southern border, is also an ultra trail runner and research scientist, while Rich also specializes in sports medicine.
Marion and I have enough questions, enough queries and the free advice is well mined as we travel the trails. There is no better advice from a rare and personable Doctor, who knows the mountains, sports and medicine than one who has a day to share advice. Then overnight you can think about what was said and corner him the next day to continue the conversation.
It is that continuation of the conversation that becomes the link, as one day I walk with Chris, a zoo keeper living in West Australia who specializes in Tigers. First thing I learn, is you don’t go in the cage, they will kill you, as simple as that.
People don’t become friends with tigers. And Tigers have long memories, so if you don’t treat them the way they like, they won’t forget. Chris knows tigers like some know their best friends.
Joe and I are on an afternoon walk one of the many days, the post lunch, still uphill forever to the next camp walk, that is looming ahead of us. Joe has swum the English channel. I want the story, the whole story, no skipped parts, no editing.
When you have a few hours, and camp is a long ways away, on a rare and not too bad trail through the forest, you can really get it all. First, just in case you would like to know, you can swim the English channel as a relay. I like that part, sounds doable.
You just have to be able to swim in 15 degree C. water. For a long time. He swam Lake Windermere in the U.K. as a warm-up, 16 km or so, non-stop. Makes the challenges of walking the trail pale a bit.
We do the 25 or so km. back from Kanchenjunga Base Camp one day. Joe’s partner Jess and Marion are on the topic of baked beans. What you eat them with, the different brands, time of day, how their mothers cooked them. I fall back a bit and catch up to them again. Still more about baked beans, they are important in the U.K. you see.
Jo is living in Devon, has worked ski seasons in Colorado where I grew up and now rescues people out of the waters in Southwest England. When we hit the monsoonal torrents of the Himalaya, she is a good person to be close to. Like me, she likes to wander off up the trail on her own. Our Sherpas get worried, I tell them that is not a thing to worry about.
As far away as we are, Rob and I can’t help lapsing into business stories: teams he has led, global, corporate speak about past lives and resilience and authenticity and leadership and motivation; the buzz words that come and go as fast as revenues rise and fall and the trail goes on and on.
We reach Thumdum, in our notes listed as “the Tibetan village that time forget.” We suspect that time has not even found this village.
It is dark wood wreathed with smoke echoing from the eves of the houses. The first house in the town has its terrace draped with drying but still blood red Yak meat.
We camp on a small island, the stream burbles and a zillion stars come out. Many of us are star watchers, we retreat from the dining tent after dinner and a half hour later are still outside shivering, viewing satellites, the Milky Way, a constellation or two and the brightly and distinctly coloured planets.
We are feeling small in the mountains and even smaller under the stars.
At Chamyang we farewell Jess and Joe as the big city and real work calls them home. They depart with Galdan for a walk down the Arun river, and we suddenly feel a much smaller group, their enthusiasm taken away from us.
We still expect them to show up for dinner and lay places for 10 people. When we stop along the trail we look back and expect them to come around the corner soon.
And then there were eight of us, heading out onto an obscure dotted trail on the map, north towards the Tibetan border. It is up and up again, and we see no one, no other trekkers, and then pass beyond even where the locals go. For the next 5 days it is just us and the porters, traipsing along through the heights, not a soul to be seen.
An occasional rock wall signals a Yak outpost, then even these fade, the trail gets steeper, dipping deep into gorges then climbing straight back out again. If we weren’t fit before, our bodies are forced into it now, grappling with roots, sliding through sandy and rocky slopes, circling landslide areas. I rarely slip, I rarely fall, yet manage to do it rather ungracefully three times in a single day, finally toppling over into a mass of tussocks to end the day. C’est la vie.
Our camps were in meadows alongside black lakes circled by mountains, streams bubbling through. We contrasted this with gorges and deep jungles, with leeches on every tree, hemmed in by log bridges we roped ourselves across.
The clouds circled the valley and rain again blanketed us. Then it cleared and we were headed again for the heights, with views of Makalu ahead, finally the finish line loomed somewhere over a range of ridges. We had gone up and down so many times we were nearly dizzy with it all. Almost miraculously however, we were mostly unscathed, no twisted parts, no major bruising, no speared by Yak horns. Only a few tracks from leeches across our skin, but what is a leech amongst friends.
Earlier in the trek, in Ghunsa, I had popped into a lodge and met a few Sherpa’s I knew from Everest “oh yes, we know you” though I doubted it, but as ever, they did know. Not only did they know, we had climbed to over 8,000 metres together on my first Everest expedition, to the West Ridge on Everest
“And we are here with Eric, come back after dinner.”
Eric was of course the Eric Simonson, CEO and owner of one of the U.S.’s largest and most successful mountain guiding companies. But Eric was not back to climb this time, but trek, first into Kanchenjunga Base Camp, a long held dream after not reaching it on an attempt of a long ago climb.
And so we share stories in Ghunsa, and in Yangli Kharka catch up again. Eric knows the remote and memorable terrain of Everest’s North Face, from that magical rock that pokes out of the centre of a huge snow face, that you sit yourself aside of for lunch in the vast expanse of the face.
He had been there even before I had, heading up and out towards the West Ridge of Everest with Ed Viesturs. We have friends in common: histories shared with Ed Viesturs on the North Face, Andy Politz on the West Ridge, and Denali, which Eric had climbed yet again just a few years back and I’d last flown out with John Race.
It is good to share tall tales with another climber, still walking the trails of Nepal. I am not alone in a life long love of the mountains. Even walking it seems has its charms, particularly in the people you meet and the stories that can be created and shared.
At Yangli Kharka in the Barun Valley, we set ourselves down alongside a large and wide meadow. Above, black rock and waterfalls cascade down, a Himalayan version of the Grand Canyon.
I had fond memories of Yangli: I had helicoptered out from here after successfully leading a team up Makalu just over ten years before. It was good to have the valley around again, the mountain overhead again. The trail up was singular pleasure, cobbled in places, winding up out of the heights to Langmale Kharka, perched high above the valley floor, boulders as neighbors that had fallen from the heights.
Our timetable gave us one day to get up and back to Base Camp, no allowance for weather, excuses or a comfortable start, so under cover of darkness we awoke in the morning, and started as dawn touched the earth and then the peaks above. It was misty and cloudy, the air rolling with white, but slowly it dispersed and as we galloped up the valley, it cleared and the added value view of Makalu, in all its majesty, towered over three vertical metres above us.
People often ask about the Himalaya, the scale. In Colorado the peaks touch the clouds, in the Alps they pierce the clouds, in the Himalaya they live in the clouds and you become part of heaven when you are amongst them.
Makalu Base Camp was some low lying lodges, a few bright colours, but everything was dominated by Makalu with its orange-pink ridges of pure granite rising above.
The clouds played amongst the heights, revealing, covering and revolving about the spires. Through binoculars I imagined myself again on the summit pyramid, that final 150 metres of vertical on the top of the ridge.
Makalu is a proper, perfect, dream mountain. Steep, soaring, majestic-any number of cliches can cling to its sides and none are overblown.
Then it was down and down and down, we had been so high and now must descend. But oh, it wasn’t over yet. We had the Shipton La, actually three La’s (la, de la, de la) it seems.
A curving river crashed alongside the walk, punctuated by yet a final 1,000 metre vertical hill. Back up into the mist and cloud, for a night out at a one lodge town called by the map Mumbak and by others as perhaps a lost French wayside village of Debotay? Anyway, that is where we slept and on the morrow, we hiked straight up onto the Shipton La, and then were treated to an extra bit of scrambling, as Mike was never one to pass up a good climb to another point, peak, boulder or pillar.
Then the trail wound down and around, before cresting the ridge, clouds billowing in the lowlands of Nepal below, as we floated out across the Himalayan hills, hopping from ridge, to hill to valley for a final night and a final beverage on a final soft and grassy terrace.
A last night in the tent, home for 40 nights. A last day on the trail. What would we do without the rhythm, without walking across all the folds in our map as Mike so aptly put it. We had 6 folds on our map and we had now crossed them all.
We dropped to the Arun River, with its waters starting from the Kangshung Face on Everest and coursing down the Kama Valley before making a hard right turn out of Tibet and into Nepal. Perhaps the snow high on the Kangshung Face I’d climbed on years ago was just coursing past now?
I’d long been a climber, and now perhaps, with a little help from my friends, I’d finally learned to walk.
