In contrast to the light hearted tenor of most Wandering Man posts, this one is designed to help you learn from our mistakes and successes walking the ‘IP’ Trail. We want more people to go there, to visit this incredible landscape and meet the wonderful and warm people who live there. We want you to SPEND YOUR MONEY by giving it direct to those that will benefit most from it, rather than route it via commercial tour companies in western countries, or Nepal itself for that matter. Get your tourist dollar to do the most good it can by spending it directly on food, accommodation and tea from the people who live on the route. It will be a very small amount to you but a massive boost to individual and family incomes for some very economically disadvantaged people indeed.
The Route
The IP Trail was set up by the Nepalese government with help from the UN some ten or so years ago. There is a map and a guidebook. The guidebook’s author, whom we affectionately referred to as Alonzo (it’s his name after all – full name Alonzo Lucious Lyons), is a wonderful advocate for off the beaten tracks in Nepal. His various websites and books are assertive in demanding readers avoid the crowded usual suspect treks around the high mountains and instead head for Nepal’s middle hills between the big peaks and the southern plains. In this we agree.
However, like many similar guidebooks, daily sections are written as ‘hours of walking’. Now Wandering Man is a scientist and is automatically averse to averages being presented as definitive numbers. As we say in science, “what is the variance around the mean?” In plain language, this refers to the obvious fact that the time taken by a fit, well prepared and highly experienced walker of Alonzo’s stature cannot be compared to the likely time required by two late 50’s, slightly overweight and overburdened chaps that were Wandering Man and Rose. Why do guidebooks talk in time? What’s wrong with distance? Most walkers will have been for a stroll around their local hills before and will have a pretty good idea of how fast they can walk. GIVE US THE DISTANCES ALONZO! We can work it out for ourselves.
Having said this, we two did keep reasonably close most days to Alonzo’s timings. We say reasonably close, because as he accurately states in his book, his timings do not include stops. Given you will be walking through some of the most spectacular scenery on earth, will be meeting many, many lovely people, will want to take a zillion photographs, will want to drink tea at the many tea houses and tiny shops on the route, WHAT IS THE POINT OF NOT STOPPING ALONZO? You’d be mad to charge on, head down and ignore the environmental and human experiences around you. Plus of course you might need time for the odd collapse on the ground to rest those wobbly pins.
There is one section of the route where we did severely part company with Alonzo’s estimates. On the final day there is a 5,000 feet descent from Sunapati Peak to the Sun Kosi river. Alonzo breezily suggests you can do that in under 3 hours. Be warned, we took six hours. The only other trekkers we met on the trail also took six hours. And they were in their late 20s and early 30s. How anyone could possibly descend such a height in the time suggested by Alonzo is impossible to conceive. I imagine he took a para glider.
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The guidebook, whilst giving a reasonable overview of day walk plans is frustratingly idiosyncratic. Sometimes Alonzo tells you about available accommodation, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he gives you very specific instructions about turn offs and local paths, at other times he is maddeningly vague about the route. Mostly, he wants you to know about really interesting things like the fact that a UN helicopter crashed nearby one part of the trail and everyone was killed in it. Not good for the occupants nor particularly trekkers on the trail.
The specific IP Trail map is frankly not much better. It is very small scale. Navigation skills are actually, therefore, very important. You need to know in which direction you are heading so a compass is vital. There is no doubt local people will help you out. In fact they will point you onto paths unknown to Alonzo which will both challenge you and cut off corners. As a consequence, we trod some paths we were pretty sure had never seen the white person’s walking boot before. However, our most useful piece of kit was a Garmin hand held GPS navigation aid (other makes are available). It is extra weight (more on this later) but indispensably told us where we were and we used it on several occasions to correct our route mistakes before they had become too serious. The downloadable maps available for this region of Nepal are reasonable, even if they do not list all the village names referred to by Alonzo. At high resolution, they certainly show a lot of available paths and forest roads.
So hear is our distilled advice. You cannot rely on one navigation aid alone. Buy the book, the paper map, the GPS unit and the downloadable Nepal map. Sit at home and use the book and the paper map to plot a daily route on the downloadable map and upload it to your hand held device. Go to Nepal, walk the trail, consult book, map and GPS regularly. Ask local people.
And finally, hand held navigation units use electricity. On the trail you will have infrequent recourse to plugs and power to recharge it. It is extra weight, but buy a powerpack/powerbank that is big enough for recharging your unit several times. If you are worried about pack weight, throw something else out. A GPS unit and power pack are THE indispensable items for your trek.
