Tourists are flocking to Nepal in record numbers as the country tries to grip itself back from the remnants of the long conflict and chronic underdevelopment. However, Nepal’s established trekking routes are overcrowded, causing entrepreneurs, including British-Australian trekker Robin Boustead, to look for new trails.[break]
“By my third time to Everest and fifth to Annapurna, I was bored,” says Boustead. Adventurer and tourism consultant Boustead has just finished a lungs-bursting 164-day trek that stretched from Kanchanjunga in the east to Darchula in the west, all through the high Himalayas. He traversed through one of the most ambitious trails and walked for astonishing 1,600 kilometers through the spans of Nepal’s stunning Himalaya.
Boustead battled leeches and monsoon rains while mapping parts of the planned trail. The first 60-day trail exhausted him mentally, physically and emotionally.
“I was worn out. It was over for me. But when you look back after you recover, it was not as hard as you had thought,” says he who finished the first stretch of eastern Nepal last
year before winter.
Boustead has been working on a very ambitious Great Himalayan Trail (GHT) since 2003, researching and since last year, traveling through this uninhabited topography. He was excited by the idea of the project when a friend of his sent him a fax in 2002 saying “no-go” prohibited zones in Nepal were opened for the first time.
Boustead claims that the Trail will be the longest, hardest, highest and most difficult walking track in the world. And the British-born Australian is just out with a pictorial book based on that trail to “let people, especially of Nepal, know what the GHT is all about.” He says a proper guide book on Nepali treks and the GHT is in the pipeline for next year.
Commercial trekking was pioneered in Nepal – home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks – by Lt-Col Jimmy Roberts, a British Gurkha officer who took part in Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary’s historic 1953 ascent of Everest. Roberts realized that for most people, walks through beautiful foothills to the bases of the great Himalayan peaks were preferable to conquering potentially deadly summits. Since then, activity of trekking and high altitude expeditions largely became a south to north vertical movement across the Himalayan ranges. So anything to do with an attempt for an east-west horizontal traverse is quite a radical idea in itself.
And any idea on trans-Himalaya route was ruled out. Bhutan and Tibet were largely closed. The endeavor for any trans-Himalayan trek had to start from Sikkim, then an autonomous principality to the north of India. Indian Army officer Harish Kohli led a relay Indian Army team that undertook their first expedition in 1980. In 1981, S. P. Chamoli, Peter Hillary (son of first Everester Sir Edmund Hillary) and Graeme Dingle trekked from Kanchenjunga on the Nepal-Sikkim border to the India-Pakistan border in the west. Another nine-month trek saw Hugh Swift and Arlene Blum travel from Bhutan in the east to Ladakh in India to the west in the following year. The longest attempt was broken by Sorrell Wilby and Chris Ciantar from Arunachal Pradesh in India through Nepal and to Pakistan in the west in 1990.
But all the expeditions were hindered due to official restrictions and prohibited areas. So, many times, the travelers had to take mid-hill routes. Nepal had a few prohibited areas along the Tibetan border, inaccessible to even its own citizens. In 2002, Nepal opened up, chancing a possibility of the entire Nepali Great Himalaya Range in the trekking route for the first time.
With 30,000 trekkers – and not counting their porters and sirdars – visiting the Everest region this year, and around 60,000 tramping in the Annapurnas, the routes pioneered nearly 50 years ago by Roberts are packed, creating a shortage of accommodation and trail jams. These trekking routes see one of the best facilities with well-maintained trails, clean environment, star-class lodging, etc.
However, Nepal just does not end there.
Boustead calls it “one of the great trekking ‘holy grails’ that has been a potential route through the remotest peaks of the entire Himalaya, which joins all the major trekking regions from Kanchanjunga in the east to Darchula in the west. He claims that he is the first person to survey, plot and describe such a route known as the Great Himalaya Trail (GHT).
After all, he walked for 164 days, first on a 60-day trek from Kanchenjunga to Everest, and then for 104 days from Everest to Darchula.
The busy Annapurna Circuit and Everest Base Camp treks have all kinds of comforts that those attempting the Great Himalayan Trail will have to do without. But the rewards for visiting these little-frequented areas are immense.
Boulstead believes that the introduction of new trekking routes through impoverished communities will encourage micro-tourism projects in places that are too remote for infrastructure development. He has experienced it: a hearty welcome by a 67-year-old Sherpa woman who had never seen a foreigner before.
The actual length of the GHT stretches 2,400 kilometers with Nepal covering the central third (865km) of the highest peaks. The Nepali section of the GHT takes about 160 days to walk, which means multiple visits if you want to walk it all. From Kanchenjunga, the Nepali trail connects to Makalu and Everest regions, then on through Rolwaling, Langtang Valley, Ganesh Himal, and Manaslu. The western section starts from the Annapurnas through Mustang, Dolpo, Mugu, Humla, and ends by the banks of the Mahakali Khola.
Very few places have teahouses, and Boustead, during his 164-day trek, saw human existence for less than 30 days. For many of the sections, even trails are very hard to find, forget lodging. And many times, not a single human was seen for as long as two weeks. There are at least 20 above-5000-meter passes in Nepal.
Boustead hopes that the new trail will tempt people away from the most popular areas.
“The Great Himalayan Trail will become a new turn for Nepali tourism,” he said. It is aimed at adventurous and fit people who can cope with the rigors of trail camping and staying in very basic local lodges.
Robin Boustead is releasing his book “The Great Himalaya Trail: A Pictorial Guide” today, Friday, which was published by Himalayan MapHouse. The signing of his book will take place at the Mandala Book Point on Kanti Path at 3.30 pm on Saturday.
(All photo courtesy: Robin Boustead/The Great Himalayan Trail: A pictorial guide. Map of Nepal courtesy: Himalayan Map House)
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