I love the gentle sound of Sherpa farmers encouraging their enormous yaks through the villages or on the trail towards Everest. The yaks wear a brass bell around their neck attached to a colourfully woven yak wool collar, the bell makes a gentle sound as if communicating with just the farmer. The tricky part when meeting these caravans is avoiding the huge horns as the … Continue reading Yak Butter Tea and Boots
My first major trip was in 1975 to Nepal and in to the foothills of the mighty Himalayas heading towards Everest. There were no roads into the mountains and although Lukla Airstrip (Tenzing, Hillary airstrip) had been built, we wanted to trek all the way in to acclimatize to the altitude gently and then fly back out to Kathmandu. Lukla Airstrip was built by Sir … Continue reading An Airstrip at 9,000 Feet
Little girls giggling – and little boys giggling for that matter – are delightful all over the world. I would love to know what was so funny for these three, I knew it was us, with our big boots and shorts puffing our way up yet another seemingly vertical hill. Was it our white skin? Was it simply that they couldn’t understand why all these … Continue reading Giggles at 8,000 Feet
TRAVELS PAST & PRESENT 