Tea House Trekking

Now that we're finished the official trek, it may be time to reflect on what this kind of travel is like.

Tea houses, or lodges, certainly simplify travel in Nepal.  No tents, no food to carry....  Most of the popular trekking routes have such facilities at regular intervals that can be used for lunch or for supper and a night's accommodation.

Needless to say, the quality of the accommodation and the food varies considerably.

On the Manaslu part of the trek, the lodges tended to be more rustic.  The buildings were of stone construction with tin or wood roofs and some were basically covered with a mud mortar.  Most rooms were small and crowded.  The toilets were too often wet, dark and fetid places.  The worst was Larke Phedi, the last stop before we crossed our first high pass.  The toilets were broken, your toilet was wherever you wanted it to be and the space was just large enough to cram 3 metal cots into a stone-walled windowless room covered with mud and an earthen floor.  Most of us would have preferred a tent. The "dining hall" was crowded with a few dozen hacking people of all ages.  The  food was basic.  Leaving at 4:30 am wasn't early enough.  We were well away before it was light enough to see more of the squalor.  It was what I imagine a base camp of climbers might be like, only possibly worse.

The best were clean and bright with nice views.  Obviously the Annapurna route was better developed since it's been part of a trekking route for much longer.  You could usually tell something of the relative prosperity of an area by the quality of the lodges.  The Annapurna villages were obviously better off and once over the Thorung  Pass, even better.  Internet, cell service, much better buildings, more varied menu....  For better or worse, more of the trappings of home.

A good indication of how far along the supply chain a place was could be ascertained by the price of beer.  We favoured Nepali brands, Everest and Ghorka.  Prices for a 660 ml bottle ranged from 250 to 550 NRs.

Villages varied considerably.  Some were clean with well-made paths of flat stone.  Others were rocky, muddy and strewn with garbage.  Animal dung was everywhere and it was common to have yaks or goats being driven through town, or to have cows wandering aimlessly.  Even the main streets of Pokhara had its quota of wandering bovines.  In some, dogs slept all over during the day only to bark and scavenge at night.

Lodges in some places were really like hotels: multi-storey, big rooms, dining rooms, toilets with views..

Meat was rare.  We settled into a routine of oatmeal for breakfast, usually with hot milk (milk, like water, was suspect because of a lack of pasteurization - hot, steamed milk was the solution), Tibetan bread (fried and sometimes greasy), pasta or rice with potatoes for lunch and something similar for supper.  Some had a form of pizza.  Some were quite good.  French fries were common and usually well cooked.  Eggs were the main form of protein but if you asked for anything with egg in it, like egg-fried rice, it always came with either a fried egg plopped on top or slices of fried egg covering the top.  There seemed to be no alternate concept to incorporating eggs into a dish.  Odd, given the proximity to China.

Some soups were thin and watery.  Others were thick and tasty with noodles, even if the noodles resembled ramen noodles.

The more remote areas obviously had rustic building materials and pretty basic construction techniques.  Building codes? Not here.  Some looked like play houses constructed by children.  Others featured complicated wood joints and excellent stone work.  We saw new construction going on, most to a much higher standard.  Power tools or power anything, for that matter, were rare.  Some had hydro or solar power.  Some had neither.

In any case, we were usually happy at the end if the day's hiking to reach our beds for the night, have some tea and cookies and rest from the ups and downs of hiking in Nepal.