View of Manaslu, along the way to Sama.
It is low season for biking (at least for me) at the moment. We are looking into some interesting routes for the summer – more on that later – but right now focus has been on mountains.
The Himalayas have really grown on me, and I was not very surprised to find myself in Nepal for a fifth time last November. As usual running / light packing was on the schedule, and I decided to do a fast solo traverse of the Dading district, to then meet up with Richard and the Manaslu trail race.
Dading
Dading is the district beneath the Ganesh Himal, wedged between the Ghorka District (Manaslu) and Langtang. Apart from a cultural heritage trail, linking a few Tamang villages, it receives very few tourists. This particular year the April earth quake, of which Langtang was one of the most affected regions, followed by fuel blockade due to constitional crisis and uprising of the Madeshi people of the southern Terrai planes, did not exactly increase the number of visitors.
Dading with its abundance of paddy terraces.
A half day jeep ride took me from Kathmandu to Syabru Besi, where I spent the night. Following morning, I set off west. The first day was not overly exciting, but the following week was truly amazing. Running thought paddy fields, occasional villages, high alpine pastures and old growth forest with a Himalayan back drop cannot get much better.
There were zero non-Nepalese, and in fact very few locals on the trails. Finding accommodation was easy, but official guest houses were only to be found in very few villages. I took some time for detours, particularly up the trail to Paldor Peak. Without gear it was not possible (at least for me) to summit it, but hiking well up into the snow made for a nice experience.
Alpine forest in Dading.
The last day was a bit of an adventure, starting with getting mildly lost in the jungle, to then find the correct trail to the Budhi Gandaki river valley, to then get lost again. After a lot of vertical, I reached the paddy terraces high above the Gandaki, but could find now way down. Finally I found a very tiny well-hidden trail, just to discover that the suspension bridge had been destroyed by the earth quake. A hard climb back up in the afternoon heat, refill of water, and forced jog got me to Soti Khola just after sunset.
Manaslu
After jogging a bit up and down the Gandaki, the runners of the Manaslu Trail Race, organized by Richard, arrived. I joined them from the second day of the race. I tried to run well, but not so fast as not to enjoy things. The first two days went well. Then, staying at a fantastic location – the Hinang monestary – I got violently sick, and spent the night awake at the sub-zero toilet. No more running for me, but just walking these trails is quite nice (and I ran the thing solo a few years ago, so did not feel I was missing out too much.
It’s nice that there’s still some of these old school bridges left!
The race itself was amazingly well organized, and it was actually way more fun to spend evening with the other runners than I had expected. Reaching the valley of Tibetan refugee village Sama, we found that the border to Tibet was open for trade (which it is 10 days every year) and saw a caravan of 600 yak make its way across, to purchase ramen and cheap electronics.
Preparation for the 2015 Sama children’s running race.
Another interesting discovery was Youth Cyber, an internet café at this very desolate location. The place is operated by Nyima in a very modest chack, and if it wasn’t for the satellite dishes outside, nobody would suspect its existence. Spending two nights in Sama to acclimatize, there was also time to visit the home of a Tibetan family, the small local monestary, and make a detour up a ridge toward the border.
Hinang monestary. Beutiful, and in a perfect location.
Leaving Sama, we crossed the Larkye La, slept in Bimtang, and then jeeped out from down the valley. I spent a fair bit of the jeep ride thinking of what would be a nice itinerary for a possible future run, and for sure a high traverse of Dolpo on the Tibetan plateau is high on that list…
A magnificent view of Manaslu, on a clear sunny day.
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