LODGES
The hill peoples of Nepal have traditionally provided food and accommodation in their house for local travellers and traders. Not so long ago these teahouses were providing the same level of facilities for the first foreign trekkers: little more than dal bhaat (a rice and lentils meal eaten twice a day by the majority of Nepalese) and a hard bed. As the flow of trekkers grew it was soon realised that these foreigners were prepared to pay more for better accommodation and a choice of food. Now sheets cover foam mattresses, toilets are standard, chimneys mean smoky lodges are rare and menus provide meals according to Western tastes. Lodges are now run as businesses, very different from the old teahouses with their hosts eager for news of the world beyond the village.
Food
A typical lodge offers a menu based on noodles, rice, flour, potatoes, eggs and the sparing use of vegetables. Meat is rarely on the menu but is sometimes available. Supplies are purchased or grown locally where possible but most things are carried in by porters. Most meal choices are carbohydrate-heavy: exactly what trekkers require.
Breakfast Offerings include muesli, eggs, a variety of porridges, pancakes and breads with jam or honey. The traditional style of Tibetan bread, ningba, is a flat round loaf cooked in the embers of the fire or on a hotplate. (The deep-fried style of Annapurna and Everest can be made if you ask).
Lunch The same as the dinner menu. Often the main consideration is the cooking time. Have a look in the kitchen to see what's in the pot: there may be dal bhaat cooking or potatoes already cooked. Otherwise order the quickly prepared items: soups, noodle soups, omelettes, breads and pancakes.
Dinner A range of soups are offered but be aware that many are made from a packet. Potato-based dishes include various fried combinations: with vegetables, egg or cheese and finger chips. Boiled potatoes are usually served with ketchup or a spicy local sauce. Similarly, rice and fried noodles come in various combinations. The tasty rosti, grated potato patted together and fried, is increasingly found on menus. Thukpa is a Tibetan noodle soup and Sherpa stew (prakbe in Tibetan) is a thick soup of whatever comes to hand. Desserts include delicious fried apple pie, custard (ensure they make it with milk!) and rice pudding.
Monosodium glutamate (MSG or adihamoto) and salt are used extensively for flavouring. MSG comes as small long crystals until it's crushed. Unfortunately there is no uniform name for it, indeed locals just consider it another form of salt and simply call it 'salt'. For the unaccustomed, too much MSG can give a short-lived pressure headache.
Not on the menu are some good local dishes. Easily prepared snacks are fire-roasted potatoes (they take 12-15 minutes in the hot embers), local popcorn (maakai) which barely pops but is nice, and batmaas - roasted soybeans. (Heh) Rildoo is a spicy main dish made from boiled potatoes that are pounded until it forms a gluey ball that is rolled and chopped into thick chunks. This is then boiled with spices and perhaps a few vegetables. Prahbe rildoo is the buckwheat version. (The standard buckwheat is the sour type, tito pappa, so buckwheat pancakes aren't what they should be). Sukuti, dried or semi-dried meat fried with garlic, ginger and some spices, is often tasty. In Helambu the meat may even be beef. Local chicken and goat meat tend to be tough and disappointing. In Tibetan areas there's no shame in licking a bowl clean, this is the local way.
Another, perhaps less appealing, dish is hehgurda - thin potato pancakes which are normally served with yoghurt, butter and chillies. They don't suit being eaten with jam, nor does the sour buckwheat bread. Gonday or dirddo is real workers food, a heavy cooked maize or millet flour dough served with a bowl of spicy vegetable soup. This is also the national food of Nepal and is considered the poor person's dal bhaat, to be eaten when rice is in short supply.
In the lower Hindu areas many simple lodges aren't set up for trekkers and lack a menu. Either order dal bhaat or lift up the pot lids and see what they have. All restaurants can cook Rara or Wai-Wai noodle soup (chowchow) and omelettes.
Drinks All serve tea, coffee, hot chocolate, hot lemon and Coke. The hot drinks come in two sizes of cup and if you don't specify which they usually serve the larger. Many trekkers spend nearly half their lodge bills on hot drinks. For the economical, frequent use of a water bottle saves plenty. Tang, a packet flavouring, and fresh lemons can often be found along the way but these should only be added once the iodine has purified the water.
Bottled beer can also be found along with chang (local beer), the respected Khukri rum and the infamous raksi.
Hygiene Eating in established lodges is now as safe as eating a cooked meal on an organised group trek. The concept of washing hands, basic cleanliness and boiling water has usually been learnt from lodge management courses. The style of cooking (frying or boiling) renders much of the food safe and salads are not to be found. Hot drinks are safe but local drinks such as chang are not always hygienically prepared.
Your bill You are responsible for keeping a record of what you have consumed in the book (copy in Nepali) provided; usually you have to calculate your own bill. The reason for this is that some lodge owners can't read English. It always pays to be honest - locals often have phenomenal memories and experience of how big your bill should be. Also lodge owners, especially smaller ones, are perpetually struggling to get ahead and certainly don't deserve to be cheated.
Bathroom facilities
These are not so developed but a primitive hot shower or a bowl of warm water is usually available. Solar-heated showers may be introduced to the region soon.
Toilets are sometimes just a few planks over a hole in the ground to be squatted over, or at best an Asian-style squat bowl. No spotlessly-white antiseptic auto-flush toilets here, so watch your ankles. The rural Nepalese have land that needs fertilising so before foreign trekkers took to the mountains there was no need for toilets.
Lodgings
Most lodges in the Langtang Valley and Gosainkund have long lines of mattresses separated by bamboo mats and a curtain for visual privacy. There certainly isn't any noise privacy. Newer lodges now feature double rooms and a small dormitory. Lodges in Helambu (except Tharepati) generally have double rooms. The foam mattresses, covered by a single sheet, are of variable thickness and the pillows of variable consistency.
There is virtually no chance of getting bedbugs or fleas if you use your own sleeping sheet and sleeping bag, especially since most lodges wash the sheets and air the mattresses frequently. Hotel blankets and quilts however, having often been used by porters, can contain unwanted bed companions.
There's little privacy in some lodges but with the friendliness of the owners and warm gear in winter they're quite satisfactory. They also never seem to suffer the problem of being full to the extent that trekkers are stranded without a bed; there always seems to be space somewhere. However during October and November Kyangjin is often filled almost to bursting.
Electricity A few villages have rudimentary electricity but it isn't possible to charge batteries for video cameras. The only solution is a solar charging panel.
Off the main routes
In general, wherever there is a village, accommodation can be found. There may not be a lodge as such but people will often invite you to stay. If this does not happen try asking around (this is not considered rude by the Nepalis) and something will turn up. Conditions can be extremely basic, however. In strongly Hindu areas, your presence may be considered jutho (polluting) so, although you may stay, you may have to eat separately and sleep on the porch.
Wilderness areas and base camps offer little shelter other than the occasional overhanging rock. You should also be aware that on detailed maps the dots marked in kharkas (high-altitude pastures) are stone buildings; these are often roofless and are occupied only in summer.
CAMPING TIPS
Choose a spot that gets early morning sun for an easier, earlier getaway. Especially on a shorter day find a place that gets late sun too. Getting the best of both worlds - a great sunset and sunrise - usually means camping on a pass or more or less atop a ridge. Carrying a water bag with at least three litres per person makes this possible.
Take plenty of stuff sacks for separating clothes, a dirty laundry sack and extra for food storage. Get into the habit of always putting things in the same place. Finally is your tent too heavy? Since it's mainly fine during the autumn season, just a tent fly or a bivvy bag might do. Hardy weight fanatics with a five-season sleeping bag could forget even these.
Meal ideas
I have survived far too many camping excursions on locally purchased muesli and milk powder for breakfast, biscuits and chocolate for lunch, and variations on noodles mixed with soups for dinner. However with a little imagination and forethought you can be spared some monotony.
Porridge is easily enlivened by the essential pinch of salt, some honey, milk powder and cinnamon (nice in coffee too), and perhaps even a dollop of jam for decoration. For crunchy more-ishness add dried fruits, granola or some muesli. Tsampa is the local equivalent of porridge. Herbal teas add variety to the morning cuppa.
For lunches, lodge-made chapattis last several days and are tasty topped by cheese or tuna mixed with cabbage, garlic and onion and spiced with masala. Papads/pappadums, the thin crispy and spicy Indian appetisers, are easily cooked in a hot pan, perhaps with a dash of oil. Prawn crackers, the Chinese snack, are also surprisingly easily prepared in very hot deep oil. Soup, perhaps with local vegetables is a warming standby.
Relatively new to the local market is excellent spicy dried buffalo meat (around US$5 a kilo). Eaten raw this is a favourite snack with Sherpas and Tibetans; it also adds considerable texture to a soupy main course. Chunks of cheese (tinned or otherwise) can also inspire the appropriate dish. Local salami is bland compared to the real stuff. A fresh cabbage or cauliflower lasts surprisingly well. Nice by themselves, both are easily mixed to add bulk. Then of course there are the old standbys, onion and garlic. Curry powder, called masala comes in many different varieties and strengths. Potatoes can usually be picked up just about anywhere and, if sliced very thinly, cook in next to no time.
SHOPS, BANKS AND POST OFFICES
Shops Most lodges also run a small shop offering bottled drinks, three or four types of biscuits, chocolate, Mars Bars and some sweets. Often tins of fruit or fish can be found along with noodles, coffee, drinking chocolate, tea, muesli, porridge, milk powder, jam, hats, gloves and cheap batteries. A few places stock film and AA alkaline batteries.
Banks There is a small bank with marginal foreign exchange facilities in Dhunche, but that is the only one in the entire trekking region. All government offices (bar checkpoints) are closed on Saturdays and the numerous public holidays. All are open on Sundays.
Post offices It is possible to post letters in Dhunche, Langtang village and Tarkeghyang. It is better to know the postage rates and have the stamps with you or simply wait until you get back to Kathmandu.
CAMPING SUPPLIES
Instant noodles and biscuits are sold by every shop in Nepal, although many small villages don't have a shop.
Basic supplies are easily found in Langtang Village, Kyangjin and Tarkeghyang. These include biscuits, Dairy Milk chocolate, Mars, Snickers, instant noodles, packet soups, cooking oil (bring a container), onions, garlic, yak cheese, coffee (tea comes in packets - tea bags are hard to find), Horlicks, drinking chocolate, sugar, tinned tuna, jam, honey, muesli, porridge, milk powder and kerosene. Prices are steep compared to Kathmandu but it does save carrying supplies up.
Better brought from Kathmandu are nuts, raisins and snacky things, pappadums, prawn crackers (sold in bluish boxes), masala (curry powder), cinnamon (daalchini), tomato paste (beware, it's in a tin similar to sardines), macaroni and spaghetti, tinned cheese and cheese segments, salami (from delis), dried vegetables (available in Best supermarket, Thamel), dried meat, petrol and gas cylinders. The best place to find most of this is Assan Tol, the busy local market, marked on the map on p76.
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