Everest Uncensored

While Hindu folks in Nepal were busy playing with colors – celebrating Holi, the festival of colors, to mark the victory of good over evil – Deerwalkers had a different plan for the day – a cultural tour of Nagarkot Tower via Changunarayan. Jeff Gasser, president of Deerwalk, all the way from Florida, was challenging and inspiring the youths to join the hike.

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.

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.

It was already 8:30 in the morning, and many of us were in Deerwalk premises waiting for the organizer to arrive so that we could go together on the hike with excitement. Too bad, there was miscommunication among us and we decided to meet him and rest of the hikers at Koteshwor. Wishing Aawart a very happy birthday, we all finally met at Koteshwor and forgot everything that happened because of communication problem.

It was cold outside but the climate was very pleasant. All of us, fresh and enthusiastic, gathered at the Deerwalk premises at around 8 am in the morning. The van left the premises at around 8:30 am. After picking Rajendra from Sorhakhutte, we finally reached Swayambhu chakrapath at around 9 am. The van stopped at Hungry House Restaurant where we had our morning breakfast. After having few talks with tea, bread and eggs, we finally headed off for the hike at 10 am. Our destination is Seto Gumba.

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.