Saturday in Wandering Man’s household is Guardian day. Not moral guardian or other examples of the word’s use. No, in Wandering Man’s abode it’s reading the Guardian day, as in the print version of the well known socialist, liberal intelligentsia, rule of law undermining, revolutionary, communist supporting……

OK. Most Saturdays, in the local artfully dishevelled trendy cafe over a bowl of organic, hand knitted yoghurt, Wandering Man opens the Guardian newspaper and get’s his fill of liberal journalism, confirming his bubbled view of the world.

And what a bubble. According to the newspaper’s own market research:

• 88% of Guardian readers believe it is important that their clothes smell fresh
• 77% are more likely to say the point of drinking is to get drunk
• 54% of readers understand enough of another language to read newspapers or listen to radio news

Well I suppose one of of three ain’t bad.

However, very occasionally amongst the articles on where the best Sunday lunch/skinny latte/ethically traded poncho can be found in the Outer Hebrides, there are little nuggets of tantalisation that stop you in your tracks. Whilst there are plentiful adverts aimed at finding  ‘bathing difficulty solutions’, there are also ethically informed instructions on how, where and when to go to places that might be suitable for the average quinoa eating reader.

For example, many years ago, Wandering man and a jolly Liverpudlian fellow from his workplace spent a couple of weeks in a South African township where the locals kept carelessly losing some of their patients. Taking a short weekend break from wandering around the township trying to find them, they set off to do some fishing in a small village along the coast, and stayed in a hotel that had been advertised in a feature in the Guardian Travel pages.

They arrived to find an extremely shabby ‘hostel’ with broken chairs and a collapsing veranda run by a couple of recent arrivals to South Africa from Europe who had clearly duped the Guardian into featuring their whole scheme. From time to time, other sundry Guardian readers who had followed the same advice arrived with the intention of a nice relaxing weekend by the estuary, expecting just enough of a rough edge to satisfy their sense of social justice.

The place was a Liberal elite sucking vortex. No one admitted it and all pretended this was just what they had wanted as they lay down on the mattress strewn floor under flimsy sheets during the freezing nights.

It took a mere 13 years for the memory of following the Guardian’s travel advice to fade before Wandering Man responded once again to the paper’s liberal call to travel arms. As he digested his yoghurt and took a sip of the skinny affogato macchiato in front of him, he turned the page to see a description of the Nepalese ‘Indigenous People’s Trail’. Affectionately known as the ‘Forgotten Trail’ this seemed perfect. If the locals had forgotten where it was then it surely boded well as the next adventure for Wandering Man and Rose. After all, Rose lived in the same sub-continent. It was literally round the corner for him.

A brief email and Rose responded. “Splendid old chap. Let’s go there before everyone else does.” On closer inspection it simply breathed perfection. Few signs, no map, less than 1000 or so visitors since the trail opened, a six hour dawn bus ride from Kathmandu to the trailhead. This was a trip almost certainly specifically designed for the two of us.

What could possibly go wrong?

It’s here! Leaping two by two down the institutional staircase of Wandering Man’s workplace in a blur of excited anticipation I headed off to the Porter’s office where the prospect of a new technical dawn awaited. Here it was at last. Part birthday present, bigger part boy’s toy indulgence, just a few minutes away lay the promise of perfect navigation. The Garmin. It had arrived.

The modern informed traveller is well served by the outdoor pursuits industry in the provision of ‘technical’ kit suited to whatever form of activity he or she could wish to undertake. Most of us would image that ‘technical’ refers to things with moving parts, but these days the word refers to anything that does not resemble a hair shirt. From underpants to overpants, anoraks to ankle socks, basic clothing has been reimagined using the kind of hi-tech metaphors previously reserved for sports cars and computers.

Passing beyond the world of wicking and waterproofing, there are then the truly technical experiences of portable navigation, power and light. A person’s basic hydration needs can be met through gadgets for water filtration and purification, not forgetting eco-soap assisted ablutions. You can choose any number of ingenious ways to boil your carefully filtered and cleaned water in a vast array of utensils, pots and pans. Once all that is over, sleeping presents no impediment to comfort via pages and pages of pads, mats and bags catalogued in a confusing litany of appeals to divest us of our wallet contents.

For Rose and Wandering Man, the key objective in packing was to reduce the weight of our bags, so that they came in as near as possible to the 10kg we had carried two years ago. However, during that previous wander, each evening Rose and I were able to arrive at well appointed hostelries that we had booked some months before. The ability to shower and wash our ‘technical’ clothing meant we could carry a minimal number of outfits. This year the guidebooks we had managed to consult let us know quite clearly that such facilities would be few and far between; as in absent. With a choice between increasing our weight of clothes or becoming riper by the day, we chose the polecat option.

Two sets of lightweight walking outfits later, we surveyed our additional requirements. Clearly, we would need clothes to travel in to Nepal and to wear whilst mooching about in Kathmandu, where we were scheduled to spend a day each side of our walk. Consequently, some non-technical underpants, trousers and shirts made their way into our bags, plus of course a pair of smart brogues for evening wear.

Evenings. Will it be cold? Will it be windy? Where will we be sleeping? Such questions exercised us mightily, particularly the issue of sleep. A sleeping bag liner or a sleeping bag itself? Self-inflating pad or traditional Karrimat? Some online accounts of the wander suggest that bed bugs are likely to be a less than pleasing constant companion in certain environments. So a sleeping bag it was then. Tied tightly at the neck.
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The weight began to mount up. And this was before we considered the vexed question of direction. How will we know where to go? I had read a throw away line in that very first Guardian article we read, about a ‘GPS unit’. What precisely did the writer mean by a GPS unit? Being old school, I am never happier than when stooped over a traditional paper map attempting to shield it from the driving Yorkshire rain. A GPS? Why was such a thing necessary?

Of course all boys need their toys. Hence the excitement and anticipation of the special delivery. As is always the case, of course, the reality never attains the expectation of the build up. Unpacking the unfamiliar device, I soon discovered that it needed charging up – a process that took up around the next 18 hours, leaving me ample time to chew my nails and consult a myriad YouTube videos of varying worth. Just what was the difference between a route (pronounced ‘rowt’ apparently), a track, and a trip? Uploads and downloads of TOPO and ‘Birdseye’ maps? It was a totally different language and world – literally. And it weighed a ton.

Much perseverance later, including a few practice walks and the device was starting to open up its secrets. However, a prodigious user of electricity, the device would be of little use without battery back up. Short of carrying a solar panel with us, the only solution seemed to be to purchase yet more tech, this time a pre-chargeable battery pack. One more trip to the online tech store later and this next piece of ‘vital’ equipment arrived. This weighed another ton. Between them, this real tech seemed to weigh more than all the other pretend tech of clothing and anti bed bug sleeping equipment put together; and it had cost only marginally less than the airfare.

With our 10kg limit well and truly consigned to the aspirational dustbin, more stuff went into the rapidly bulging packs. A water purification system, never previously used, dragged from the back of a cupboard. A ‘lightweight’ multi-fuel stove and fuel bottle. A pan for boiling water. Cup and bowl. First (and second) aid kit. Torch. Torch batteries. Protein bars. Bog roll. Wipes. Camera………….

Remember that lot next time you play Dr Foster went to Gloucester.

Those of you awake enough to pay attention will have read about our packing travails pre-wander in the previous ‘I packed my bag…’ blog posting. A desire to cover all bases and ensure that all situations however unlikely could be prepared for led us to vastly overpack. Compared to previous 10kg assisted wanders, this time we both carried around 17kg. This is ridiculous! Here’s an area to cut down.

The Indigenous People’s Trail is located in what are known as the ‘mid-hills’ or Lesser Himalaya area of Nepal. The terrain varies from terraced agricultural land through pine and deciduous woodland to alpine meadows. There are only three peaks – Sailung, Augleswori and Sunapati – only one of them, Sailung, is higher than 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), and all of them topped by ceremonial religious structures. From this you might surmise that actually you are going to meet quite a few Nepalese people on your trek. Correct. By no means will you be alone in the wilderness. Despite the depopulation of the countryside, people will pop up out of apparently nowhere all the time. That rustle in the trees? Someone gathering firewood or fodder for their goats. That small tin hut by the side of the path? A place selling snacks and tea. You will not be alone.

That is, of course, part of the purpose of this trail. The idea is to meet local people and spend your money on food and accommodation directly with them.

Now people need various elements of a life support system, principal among these food and water. As well as agricultural settlements, the mid-hills area is festooned with small bore black plastic pipes carrying water to village taps and in some cases to people’s houses. So that water purification outfit? Leave it behind. Water (paani) is fully available, of pretty good quality and usually boiled (taato paani), particularly if you ask for it to be so. All Nepalese houses seem to have a permanent supply of boiling water available to fuel the Nepalese people’s tea drinking habit. Basically, at no point in the trek will you be reduced to laboriously pumping water from a muddy puddle or stream through a filtration system.

Buy a water bottle that can stand being filled with boiling water and all will be well. Of course, water may not have been properly boiled or treated so the very most you need, if ever unsure about the extent to which water has been boiled, are some chlorine based sterilisation drops. Iodine used to be recommended but this has now been banned as poisonous in Europe and has been replaced by a combined chlorine preparation that you mix up before adding to water. If you still prefer iodine then it can be bought in Kathmandu.

Additional fluid can be bought from the ubiquitous tea shops along the route. In most villages and alongside larger tracks will be small shacks selling tea. It can be a little hard for the uninitiated to spot them, but after a while, if there were no sitting areas outside, we got used to peering inconspicuously inside likely-looking buildings trying to spot tables and chairs. And the tea they make is wonderful. Rose and I preferred the hot, sweet black tea (kaalo chiyaa), sometimes flavoured with lemon, occasionally with honey. It provides just the energy boost needed. Those who have travelled in India will be aware of the milky tea version (dudhko chiyaa). Your choice, although a cry of “black tea” will always be understood if you prefer the piping hot sweet black version.

Finally, alcohol, but not as we know it! Of course, you can buy bottles of beer (usually large 650ml ones) from some of the little village shops along the way, but we never found the need to do so and didn’t fancy lugging them around. Once drunk, bottles have to be disposed of and since there is no rubbish collection infrastructure in the mid-hills you will need to carry them for the rest of the trek until you leave the area. Better is to sample both versions of Nepalese homemade alcohol: Chhaang (cloudy beer made in a bucket from corn, millet and rice) and Raksi – a clear spirit distilled from Chhaang, not unlike rice wine. Many people make Raksi. Rose and I were offered it in most places we stayed. You tend to have to ask for Chhaang as unlike Raksi, it does not keep and is drunk as soon as it is made. The Nepalese regard Raksi as an important source of antifreeze for the cold nights and drink it by the mug-full.

One of our most memorable and slightly surreal experiences on the trek was being given little bowls of Chhaang by the Bhutanese head Lama at the Rajvir monastery below Sailung Peak and then having a lesson on how to make it from the lady who worked in the monastery kitchen. It tasted not unlike a sour Berliner Weisse beer, just with more bits floating in it!

Here’s a recipe if you are interested:

In two previous postings Rose and I already touched on some ideas about what to pack for the IP trail. From the blatantly hypothetical pre-trip pile it all in technique of ‘I packed my bag and in my bag I packed….’, to the realisation that we were both carrying around double the kind of weight remotely sensible for a pair of self-delusional aging overweight athletes in ‘General information…’ we have hinted that weight could, perhaps, just maybe, possibly be an issue. When half your pack contents spend seven days making no contribution to the trek, there is clearly a potential problem with non-contributory passengers. Something’s got to go. Many things actually.

Next time, oh next time, we would do it so differently.

We actually carried (please do not snort too loudly at this) a multi-fuel pressure stove with empty fuel bottle around the whole trek with us. Yes, that’s right. An EMPTY fuel bottle, which of course rendered the stove merely decorative. No one in Kathmandu sells the required fuel. So, no fuel, no purpose for the stove; no stove, no purpose for the mess tins and fancy eating set; no mess tins and fancy eating set, no purpose for the ground coffee and speciality herbal teas. And as you already know from ‘water, water (and tea and Raksi), everywhere’, tea is not exactly a rare commodity in Nepal. The whole thing just unravels from either end. It’s embarrassing.

Likewise the four packs of dense high protein bars that reappeared from the bottom of my pack in Kathmandu at the end of the trek. I’ve still got them, safely repatriated back home. Useless pack passengers, all twelve of them. Most days we walked from 08.00 to 14.00ish, fuelled up on some combination of rice, lentils, vegetables, rotis, boiled eggs and sweet black tea. Hungry? Have another cup of tea.

Clothing? Think about it. Just how many pairs of legs have you got? You can only wear one pair of trousers at a time. If you have been sensible and bought the modern wickable ones, any sweat generated one day will have dried out by the time you come to put them on the next. You’ll be sitting on hard packed earth floors and ancient benches in the evenings so its not as if you will need to dress for dinner. Two pairs will be plenty and even one would suffice if you are a real hard case and wash them out at night clad in your long johns. As for shorts, well Rose and I have different points of view. He is a shorts man, I’m not – mainly because I’m a pockets person and trousers score more highly in this regard. My shorts made the journey around the trek without making a single contribution to it. Smug bastards.

The perceptive among you will have noticed the fleeting reference to thermal underwear. Definitely a must. Warm clothing at night is essential, but try to use lightweight underclothes rather than a thick pair of additional trousers. I’d add a thick coat – the Nepalese all wear the ubiquitous ‘branded’ lightweight down-filled puffer jackets. There is a reason, follow their lead. It gets very cold at night and they pack up really small, being sort of swallowed by their inside pocket until they disappear in effect up their own bottoms. You get them in Kathmandu for less than £20 if you shop away from the tourist areas and bargain hard.

Like my shorts and protein bars, my thermal gloves applauded the free ride they were given throughout the trek, although Rose and I both found a woolly hat a real benefit for those cold nights. Rose generally sported a fetching orange outfit as well as his hat, even in his sleeping bag, but then he did find the transition from his home temperature of 30 degrees Celsius to single figure Nepalese nights a challenge. Still, no reason to look like a Hare Krishna devotee running the London marathon.

So here is the minimum kit list. Add more to increase both your weight and to slow down the decay of your sexual desirability quotient as the week progresses. We’ll start from the bottom up.

Clothes: the essentials

1. Boots: one pair with spare laces.

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2. Lightweight lace-free shoes for the evening and to wear when going to the toilet (you really do not want your boot laces to dangle down the squatting toilet long drops)
3. Socks: two pairs of lightweight undersocks and one pair of thick walking socks
4. Trousers; one pair (oh go on, maybe two), lightweight cargo pants style with multiple pockets otherwise all you will be doing is stopping and faffing about with your rucksack to find stuff (although there is often great merit in a good faff, it can be tiresome if repeated too often).
5. Shorts x 2
6. Underpants: two pairs of ‘technical’ super wickable ones
7. Bras: some. Number and type unknown, as beyond our expertise
8. Shirts: two lightweight tees of the same material as the pants
9. Thermal underwear
10. One lightweight long sleeved top
11. Puffer down jacket or equivalent
12. Woolly hat
13. Sun hat with peak
14. Windproof and rainproof jacket, it may never be needed but if the wind does get up on one of the three peaks, or it rains, you might be grateful

First aid kit

The actual contents really depends on your medical confidence or training. The obvious things like plasters, foot plasters and bandages are usual. We took an upgraded version with IV needles and cannulas in them in case one of us came a cropper and the local sterilisation procedures were not adequate. Also vital is an emergency blanket, the silver reflective variety, in case of an accident.

As for medication, as well as any regular prescription drugs we bought pain killers, anti-diarrhoea and anti vomiting pills. Anti diarrhoea pills are quite good to use on long bus journeys if you feel the slightest hint of things stirring unhelpfully. A bus in Nepal is the last place you want to have problems of this nature. However, whilst we prepared for the well-known Nepal runs, what we were not expecting was the opposite issue. Moving from a western diet to one consisting of vast amounts of rice, a few lentils and vegetables had the effect of both bunging us up and producing enough gas to have a significant effect on global warming. Not that I’m suggesting laxatives as a regular part of the medical kit, but be prepared for bowel changes in one of the two obvious directions.

The only other essentials we recommend are sleeping bag, maps, cell phones, guidebooks and GPS with the biggest powerbank you can get. Spare batteries may or may not be useful. Some water purifier drops (see water water…), a water bottle, a penknife, some travel soap and a travel towel, head torch and walking stick. Beyond that, you should consider if you really need anything else. Probably not, but anxiety is a powerful driver and as well as reassurance you are also going to increase your weight.

Finally, take as many plastic bags as you can and wrap everything in separate ones. After about three days, Rose and I overcame our endless faffing trying to find stuff in our packs and ended up knowing exactly which bag to look in. It actually became quite helpful.

Packs on back, hats on head, boots on feet. WanderingMan armed with sprung pole to aid balance whilst I (Rose) contented myself with a partially fashioned walking stick found on our walk from Mudhe to Dhunge. We were posing for photographs at the trailhead. Two village girls along with a family from the village were going to offer Puja atop the revered Sailung Peak. They were going our way. The girls had offered to carry our packs, an offer we declined.

We’d walked through the village offering hearty Namastes to the many folk young and old who had come to see us off or just to stare. Ahead of us a 600 metre climb. We were marching off to soar.

The ascent offers beautiful views of terraced pastoral land against the backdrop of the Himalayas, 47 million years spent reaching for the light has left them white capped and a little curmudgeonly when responding to the scratching of humans.

The path up to Sailung Peak was littered with goat pooh and other animal droppings; an indication that ‘as the goat trots’ rather than ‘as the crow flies’ is the preferred measure of distance and shortcut validation. Our guides would stop and wait for us, ask us to pose for pictures, giggle, offer us sweet biscuits and ask to carry our bags.

It was all very lovely, until they discarded the biscuit wrapper straight onto nature’s floor. In fact all the way up to the Peak there were discarded plastic bottles, crisp packets, the ubiquitous blue and pink plastic carrier bags and other assorted debris. It jarred.

We would visit two more revered peaks during this trek and observe the same thing. Where there was worship there was garbage.

Although constitutionally secular Nepal has a significant majority of Hindus (81.3% at the 2011 census), followed by Buddhists (9%). Both view nature as sacred. In 1986 The WWF instigated a meeting in Assisi between leaders of five of the worlds major religions. It resulted in the Assisi Declarations on Nature (https://goo.gl/6qCWau) that allowed each faith to highlight its approach to the environment. Hindus and Buddhists alike affirmed the need to protect the earth and all sentient and non-sentient things.

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Faith groups, secular NGO’s, Governments, the World Bank and others all engaged in dialogue, all agreeing that the planet needs protecting and yet here we are with garbage strewn about for animals to eat, to contaminate land and invading a consciousness that should be engaged with the natural world in wonder.

Leaving aside the issues of infrastructure, education and worry which we in the West have become so accustomed to in respect of garbage. Leaving aside the behaviour change stratedgies and taxes levied on the consumer to manage waste disposal so de rigueur in the West. There is not a one size fits all enviromental programme but I do believe there is something we all can do. Pick it up and send it back. The people who need to see this mess are the manufacturers and shareholders and they need to see it outside their front doors. It is their behaviour, their pursuit of profit which needs to be confronted.

So here is my suggestion for protest within the principles of ahimsa (non-violence). When you go trekking take a postcard or an envelope. Pick up a piece of this debris – attach to postcard or envelope and send it back to the manufacturer’s parent company or to an identified shareholder either individual or institutional. “This is yours – you deal with it. With love from…”.

If you are so minded, talk to villagers and get them to collect the stuff as I’m sure the wealth of some of the tour parties who visit could be combined to send maybe a Kilo of garbage back. Let those who know but do nothing deal with the problems caused by selling sugary sweets, fast food and other shit entirely unnecessarily to villagers, in the process slowly trashing old ways of life. It’s entirely inappropriate and harmful if we set it against the principle that the planet needs protecting. It is the multi nationals whose behaviour has to change. Let them have their environment rendered toxic.

“Rose…..Rose!” WMan shouted. “please shut up and look”. In the distance our guides had now gone onto perform their Puja carrying with them one hundred eggs as an offering. Behind them, scattered about, the unseemly mess of humans. All around us the unsurpassable majesty of the planet – “it must be worth a stamp’“I mused.

NB: rather gruesomely I would apply the same principle to shareholders in Munitions companies, although postage might be problematic.