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: