Everest Uncensored

Hiking is always fun for me. I like to walk that is why I enjoy. Hiking, I think, is of two categories. One, predetermined destination, where you determine a spot to hike. Another, undetermined, where the final destination is not set. I specially like the second one as I like to wander. Such hiking surprises my life and I feel so much blessed.

504. Hard Second Inning Of Life
Posted Date: 2nd March, 2012

Taking advantage of the long weekend we embarked on this particular hike to Ghale Gaon last Saturday at about 8 am. The destination for the van was Lamjung’s headquarters Besisahar. As the road wound gently around the hills Lava Kafle started telling stories from the past to entertain the hikers. Rudra Pandey kept interjecting with his ‘divide by’ comments at almost all Lava’s stories.

Sunday started out cloudy but by the time the team of highly motivated. Deerwalk hikers made it to the summit at the peak of the centuries old temple it had cleared. Lava took the crew on a side trip to Kathmandu University where they were treated to a nice breakfast of chapatis, parathas and eggs rolls at one of Lava’s old haunts. Although more than 12 years out of university the team heard tall tales of student misadventures and of early morning ascents of Lava through the jungle where cheetahs roamed around.

It was a cold Saturday morning at 8 o’clock when we gathered in Deerwalk office premises for a 2-day hike to Chisapani from Shivapuri. Our journey got delayed a little bit thanks to Mr. Consistently Late. It was already 9:30 AM when we finally embarked on our journey from the office premises.

Yet another hiking from Deerwalk (excited for sure) and we all knew for sure that there was something about this hike as we had Shutterbug (AKA Jitendra Bajracharya) with us on the hike. Khokana, a traditional and tiny Newari village eight kilometers south of Kathmandu (on the outskirts of Patan), which has its own history and has retained its tradition and culture.This village was not far from Kathmandu but surely had lots for the photographers.

Though the starting was in a luxury van, we had to be on our feet once the van left us at the gate of Shivapuri National Park. Initial target was to have comfortable hike to ‘Jhor’ from ‘Pani-Muhan’. However the hikers chose to climb up to ShivaPuri and walk along the hillside to ‘Jhor’. As we walked for a few minutes gossiping and taking photos, Sushant suggested we take a short-cut, which was a steep up-hill climb. That was wonderful, everybody rushed up that path. As it was the beginning, everybody enjoyed the hill. We kept on walking up with snacks and photographs.

Phulchoki is situated at the height of 2782m from the Godavari. It is the highest hill in the south of the Kathmandu valley. Hiking to this area is most interesting because of its natural vegetation. It is said that the place is famous for the bird watching as over 250 species of the birds are found over there. Also there are many different animals like the barking deer, leopard, bear and the other animals. We don’t know whether it was our good luck or the bad luck we didn’t encounter any of these animals .Phulchoki is also famous for its winter snow fall which happens there for the short time on winter.

498. Rickshaw Chaalak
Posted Date: 16th December, 2011