Monsoon Trekking: Helumbu

At the beginning of these posts I advised that these blog posts are a retelling of my experience, and should not nescisarily be used as an itinerary. When talking about the route we took through Helumbu, I really mean it; both because we took a few wrong turns and because we squeezed it all into one epic 31 mile day with my GPS unit telling me that we had near 6,500' of elevation gain and over 13,000' of elevation lost. I think some of the mistakes we made should be somewhat informative to other hikers and act as a warning to not make the same dumb mistakes.

I passed through this section of trail before back in 04', but unfortunately the more interesting villages of Melamchigaon and Tarke Ghyang were not on our itinerary. Our route took us over only half of the Helumbu Circuit, starting at Therapati and heading south to Sundarijal and on to Kathamndu.

Another Clear Morning; Hills as Seen from Therapati

Another clear morning greeted us, and for some reason that morning nothing on the menu really appealed to either one of us and we settled for just some lemon tea and decided that we could stop possibly in Khutumsang for a late breakfast or early lunch. The morning was a bit on the cool side, but again the skies were clear and it looked to be another great day for trekking. Our plan for today was to do a double days hike and make for Chisopani, a village just on the outskirts of Shivapuri National Park, and only about four hours from Sundarijal. My plan was still to walk all the way back to my front door. I figured it was just over five miles from Sundarijal to Boudha and then only two and a half miles from Boudha to my apartment. 

Fog Surrounds a Stupa just South of Khutumsang

Biking to Sundarijal

So up until now I have been somewhat hesitant to engage in any kind of movement around the city in any format other than foot, that I was in control of anyway. Taxis are fine, because I'm not driving, and the driving does seem a bit crazy. Last night, with the expectation that the strike would still be going on, I had rented a bike to go out to Sundarijal and do some hiking out that way. With the strike now called off I would get my first taste of biking in Kathmandu traffic. Admittedly this was a Saturday morning, which is the lowest traffic time of the week, so it was a good day to try it out. The route we were taking brought us out past Boudhanath and up to the valley rim. Below is a map highlighting the route from Boudha to Sundarijal.