In January 1996, we visited Nepal, planning to climb Mount Parcharmo - around 6000 metres in the Rowaling region.  As students, we travelled in the university holidays - as it turned out, this was not the best time to plan a climb in Nepal!

From Kathmandu, we flew into Lukla where we were greeted with around 40 porters - all wanting work.  We of course negotiated and chose one who had climbed Parchamo previously and offered a good rate.  He said he had proper boots and climbing clothes but did not have a tent, so we gave him some extra money to rent a tent.  Once he had collected his things, we set off. 

The trekking in Nepal is absolutely amazing - highly recommended to anyone that hasn't been.  Unless you're climbing you don't need a tent or any gear other than a sleeping bag and your own clothes.  The people are extremely friendly and the scenery is awe-inspiring.

With our porter in tow, we trekked up through Namche Bazaar and onto Dingboche and Tengboche as acclimatisation before attempting our climb (which was out to the west of Namche rather than towards Everest).  However, it seemed that this year the weather had been particularly unusual.  Anyway, there had been an enormous amount of snow and none of the trekking teams were able to get through to Everest Base Camp.  Also many high towns had been forced to evacuate and move down to lower areas.

Regardless of this, we still decided to attempt to climb Mount Parcharmo and headed out and up the valley towards Thami.  We were concerned to find our porter still wearing his jeans but assumed that he knew better.  Once past Thami the snow on the path became very thick and soon after, the path disappeared entirely.  We continued on, crunching our way up the valley.  The snow was so deep that at one point it seemed strange that there were hard areas underfoot - until we realised that we were literally walking over buildings and walls that surrounded a town that was covered in snow and had been abandoned!  Our poor porter must have been very wet as he was still walking in his jeans and runners, but he assured us he was fine.

At the end of a long day, we found a spot for a campsite and set up our tent.  It was only now that we realised that our porter did not have a tent (despite assuring us he would arrange one).  He said he would sleep in the snow - but of course we couldn't allow him to do that.  The temperatures were freezing.  So with 3 of us in our lightweight 2-man tent, our porter using a down jacket we had as a sleeping bag, we attempted to get some sleep.

In the morning, we packed up and continued hiking up the valley towards Parcharmo.  But after only an hour or so, our porter decided that he was leaving and no amount persuasion would convince him to continue.  So now we had more gear than we could carry but continued on regardless.  We left a bag of gear there and about 3/4 through the day, Paul headed back to pick up this bag, while Fiona got her bag and Paul's other gear, and set up camp.  All the time we were walking in snow up to our thighs or waist and meanwhile it continued to snow.  Exhausted, that night we set about cooking dinner and somehow managed to get kerosene in our food - making it inedible.  What a day! 

We woke the next morning to find that it had continued to snow heavily through the night and there was no sign of relief.  It was about then that Paul said something like "how about we go to Thailand?".  Fiona didn't need too much convincing!  So we packed as much of our gear up that we could carry and spent a very long day trekking through the now even deeper snow, made worse by the extra weight we were carrying.  But we eventually made it to the small town of Shyanboche. 

Unbeknown to us, in Nepal New Year's Eve is celebrated across a few weeks with each town taking it in turn to host festivities.  We had coincidentally stumbled across the New Year celebrations and despite our protests, the host family insisted that we join in.  This meant having our share of the "delicacies" on offer which included oranges, peanuts, lollies and rice wine - all carefully dished out to each guest.  We felt extremely guilty taking these foods which were obviously so precious here, but which we could enjoy any day we wanted to at home.  We were enjoying sitting on the periphery of the celebrations when our most humiliating moment came - they wanted to be shown what "English dancing" was like.  Again we protested, but to no avail and so finally gave in and did some sort of dance.  That Nepalese town now has a very strange idea of "English dancing"!

The following morning, we were able to catch a ride back to Kathmandu on an old Russian helicopter which had delivered some supplies.  So unfortunately, our climbing in Nepal was not to be at this time.  However Thailand was great - and instead of mountains, we explored the underwater world by doing our PADI diving course on the islands there.

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