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Wanda's Kanchenjunga Wild - the beginning

Thanks Wanda! These are from our Kanchenjunga Wild Oct-Nov 2001 explorations, a 42 day trip.

Wanda also wrote a diary in the Trip diaries section.

The team members were Wendy, Wanda, Robin and Kirstine; the sirdar was Ram Kaji, Sila (Mekh Bahadur) as cook, Lobsang as general star and Jamie and Joel leading. And of course we had a great crew of porters, kitchen hands (Karma +) and sherpas (Prem +). THANKS all of you!

(We run a great exploratory trek out here every year, see Our treks).

Wanda with our two female porters.
The girls were 15 years old and petite but carried around 25 kilos a day,
could sing and dance and got their hearts broken.

 

Lets start from the beginning. Sightseeing, fun in Kathmandu.
Flights out were a problem so we flew to Biratnagar (a third of the way) then took a private bus
for the eventful two day journey to Taplejung. Wendy had travelled the length of Africa and said
she had never came across such a consistently bad bit of road. It was an adventure though!

Yep, this is one serious road. Below Jamie watches a truck begin to slide...

Nasty. But no problem, in the end.
still on the road, our first inspiring view of the mountains

Even from the road in Jannu (left: 7710m) is impressive. The huge Kanchenjunga peaks (8000m+) are the right mountains.

 

Above is the valley that we begin the trek in.

We begin trekking in the middle hills, a sweaty joy of pretty thatched houses and "Namaste" from the children.
Some treks such as the Everest BC trek miss out this sort of region,
which is a shame because few people realise how beautiful the middle hills are.

 

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Bal Bahadur, or star porter leader hands out cold weather gear.
At the beginning of our trek we supplied our porters with wool socks, gloves, hat,
new shoes, rain jacket and pants, and even a set of sweat pants and top. Our crew work hard
(it brings tears to my eyes thinking about what the did) but we truly care for them.

Enough, lets get on the trail...

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jdesign -- all rights reserved -- frozen in time July 2013