Climbing Mount Everest is one of the most challenging adventures in the world even for any capable person. Janet Hanpeter, Chief Travel Adventurer at Planet Janet Travels, recounts her hike on Nepal’s Everest region with a trek group. Her trip to Nepal was put together with twelve men and women on the team plus their guide from the Sherpa ethnic group. Janet dives into the accommodation, transportation, and other things a climber should take into consideration and prepare for before climbing, including adjusting to altitude.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Hike Nepal in the Himalayans for ‘Regular’ Hikers

Great News! YOU CAN hike Nepal and see Mount Everest in the gorgeous Himalayan mountains AND get the cool trekking vibe WITHOUT climbing super high altitudes (great for folks altitude-challenged such as myself)!

While trekking to Everest Base Camp is on the wish list of many hikers, climbing to 17,600’/5380m may not be the right choice for many of us.  Let’s look at hiking Nepal, but staying under 12,500‘, an altitude most people can handle.

Hike near Mount Everest, BUT without the High Altitude

You still fly into Kathmandu.

You still get the thrill of flying into Lukla – the world’s highest airport that is an adventure all by itself. Highly skilled pilots take off and land on a super short runaway in the Himalayans. It is a carefully orchestrated symphony of planes juggling to fly in or fly out of this hiking mecca that is the starting point of the trek to Mount Everest!

You still get to see all the charming villages, temples, prayer wheels, tea houses and wide assortment of people that make this hiking adventure a once in a lifetime experience, BUT without the grueling elevation issues!

AND you can hire porters to carry your gear so all you need to carry is a daypack!  On our guest  Janet’s trek, unneeded luggage was securely left behind in Katmandu, and those in her group were allowed a duffel weighing a max of 30 pounds each (about 13.5kg).  Each porter carried two duffels (WOW!)

Nepal trekkers, like Janet, can hike with just a day pack.  In her case, they received their duffels in Katmandu (to be a max of 30#) and each porter carried two duffels on the trail between the lodges. The group left the rest of their non-hiking luggage back in Kathmandu, to be securely stored at the hotel until their return.

Small Guided Tour of Everest Region Recommended

Technically you could plan and execute this trip on your own, but I highly recommend that you use a small guided tour company.

Not only do they physically guide you along the trek, they speak the local language (Nepalese and many others) PLUS English, they know which tea houses to book, they arrange all the permits (you need a TIMS card), plan the transporation to and from Katmandu, feed you most meals and pretty much take care of all of the logistics so all you have to do is show up and hike.

The guide Janet used (referenced in the podcast interview) no longer guides.  Fortunately, Janet’s trip closely mirrors the Lodge to Lodge adventure of one of my favorite affiliate small group tour companies, Active Adventures.

What is a Sherpa?

I learned something new and important from Janet’s interview:

Who summited Mount Everest first?

Arguably the most beautiful place on earth, the Everest region in the Himalayas is on most hiker’s Bucket List.  Edmund Hillary is recognized as the first person to officially summit the 29,029’/8848m peak of Mount Everest.

But George Mallory and Andres Irvine may have beat him to it on June 8, 1924:  both were seen high up on their final summit day, but then disappeared into the clouds, so no one knows if they made it to the top and died on their way down or not.  Mr. Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999 at 26,755′.  So the mystery of who actually reached the top first may never be solved.

Happily, on our adventure, we are just going to LOOK at Mount Everest from less than 12,500′.

Lukla Airport : Gateway to Mount Everest

Landing at Lukla is one of the more exciting parts of your adventure. HIGHLY skilled pilots must take off and land on a super short runway to avoid the mountains. I agree with the video caption of extreme, but since they no longer fly in bad weather, I’m not sure I concur with it also being called ‘dangerous’.  I looked over the accident record and found it to be surprisingly light considering the heavy traffic in and out of this tiny airport and the teeny runway. Our friend Janet said landing was one of her highlights, it was so exciting!

Sagarmatha National Park

You trek through this UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site.   The park, which contains star Mount Everest, was established in 1976.  The entry of the park is through the colorful town of Nacche Bazaar.  You may have an opportunity to visit a monastery.

In this podcast episode (click ‘player’ above or on a podcast app on your phone or tablet), I interview Janet Hanpeter of PlanetJanetTravels.com about her lower altitude adventure trekking in Nepal.  She wrote a great blog post about the weather blocking her view of Mount Everest, but on Easter morning at sunrise, the clouds parted for a magnificent view.  You can see photos and read her post here.  Janet stayed in the Hotel Everest View, the highest placed hotel on Earth at 13,000′, during her spectacular Easter morning view of Mount Everest she discusses on her blogpost.

The Village of Namche Bazaar

Namche Bazaar is the name of the town that is the main trading center and gateway to the Himalayan mountains of the the Khumbu region.

You’ll find a visitor’s center, bank, Saturday market, and several internet cafes in this colorfully roofed village.  If you have time, visit the Sherpa Museum.  Be sure to hike above town for your first glimpse of Mount Everest,

Kunde Village

You’ll have stunning views of Everest on your trek to Kunde village.  Located in the valley at the foot of  Khumbu Yül-Lha,  which is sacred to the Sherpa people, you pass through and can explore this village.  Sir Edmund Hillary built a school and a hospital in the 1960’s after his successful summit both of which are still operational today.

You will pass through several smaller Sherpa villages on your trek.

What is a prayer wheel?

Itinerary of Active Adventures Lodge to Lodge Trek

Any Special Tips?

Bring small bills only on the trek.  It may be hard to change larger bills and you won’t find many ATMs!

Your tour company will probably give you a packing list.  If not, here’s a good Packing List.

Note that you can only bring 33lbs/15kg on the plane to Lukla, so pack accordingly. You can usually arrange to leave extra things in Katmandu (like clean clothes – there is no laundry opportunity during the trek. But don’t worry, everyone will stink!).  You can rent just about anything you need in Katmandu, FYI.

TIP:  Water is heavy and you’ll probably be using baby wipes to wash up each day.  Here’s what I do:  I buy a container of baby wipes and leave the bag open.  Over the course of a few weeks, the water evaporates but the cleansing agent remains on the cloth.  So I carry dry baby wipes that I reactivate whenever I need them.  I use my multi-purpose bandana to get the grit off and then do an finer cleaning with the baby wipes.

Speaking of water, be sure to determine how you’ll be getting your water and find out if you need to bring a purifying system.  There are plenty of water sources you can pull from, but you’ll want to treat it if your tour company isn’t taking care of this for you.  I like these products:

There’s no perfect water filter system, but here are my thoughts on these filters:

Sawyer : I use this the most but have had to repurchase it twice because the filter didn’t work on a future trip even though I thought I had cleaned it pretty well before storing. I like how lightweight it is and takes up almost no room. Obviously I like it or wouldn’t have bought it three times.

Steripen: Works but the batteries make it heavier than I’d like. There is a rechargable model but on this trip electricity might be dicey. If you choose this model for the Nepal trip, I would go with this regular one instead of the rechargable one and (Ugh!) bring an extra set of batteries.

Life Straw in the bottle: The bottle could be lighter, but this is a great alternative. If you want to go really lightweight, you can buy and bring just the straw. I like the bottle version because you can store water without it slopping around (versus trying to use your own bottle).

Note that these links are affiliate links so I make – at no additional cost to you – a small commission which helps to support the podcast and this website.  Thanks for using them if you’re going to buy them anyway!  Kit

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Hike Nepal’s Everest Region In The Himalayas with Janet Hanpeter

“I think I’m going to Kathmandu, that’s really where I’m going to.” Don’t worry, I’m not going to be ruining Bob Seger’s song anymore, but I’m so excited because I know I promised we wouldn’t do anything hard like climbing Mt. Everest, and we’re not. However, we’re going to the base area, not Base Camp. We’re going even lower than that in Nepal on the same trail, on the same trek Mt. Everest climbers go on. I’ll be interviewing Janet Hanpeter, who you first met in episode number six about her adventures on El Camino. I am super excited about this show.

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As it turns out, I will be hiking in the Himalayas myself in a few weeks and I’m prepping for my visit to Bhutan. I’ll be visiting their biggest festival and also doing an amazing hike. I’ll be sure to cover that. Anyway, I wanted to ask you, do you think it would be helpful for me to prepare a video of what I do to prepare for a trip like that? What do I pack and all that kind of stuff? It’s a lot of work to do so I want to do it if you want it but I don’t want to go through that if nobody wants to look at it. If you are interested in seeing how I prepare for an adventure like that, please send me an email or reach out to me on Facebook or something and let me know what you think.

One other thing that came up, I may be blessed with very good genes as far as physical and longevity genes but I was not blessed with good teeth genes. I’ve had three issues with tooth pain even though I haven’t had a cavity in 30 years. It turns out I need a crown again and they’ve gotten awfully expensive since the last time I bought one. I investigated a little bit about medical tourism and it turns out that Hungary or Budapest is the capital of dental care in Europe. I’m seriously thinking about going to Budapest and having all these back teeth that have fillings from my youth capped so that I don’t have this continual problem because it looks like this is going to be my future anyway. It’s about a third of the price and the savings will pay for the trip.

Hungary has a beautiful long-distance trail called the Blue Trail. I would do maybe ten to fourteen days of a pretty section of that trail as long as I’m there. It will give me a chance to look at the landscape and meet the people of Hungary, a country I’ve never been to. I’m leaning pretty heavily on doing this. If any of you all have ever done any kind of medical tourism and have some stories to share, I’d love to hear them. Please send me an email at Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com or if you have an opinion on what I’m doing or considering doing, I’d like to hear that as well.

Let’s get back to the Himalayan Mountains but on the other side over in Nepal where we’re going to be going into the Everest region. First, you fly into Kathmandu, which I’m sure we’ve all heard about as well as its aura, mystery and mystique. You spend a couple of days there and then you fly into the airport Lukla, which is a crazy airport that is small. They have a very limited runway because of the mountains. You have to have super skilled pilots bringing in these small planes and it’s so heavily trafficked that it’s this symphony of planes, in and out. The air traffic controller there must have nerves of steel and I’m sure needs a stiff drink at the end of his or her shift.

I’ll put a video on that’s on YouTube. It’s non-stop planes in and out and shuffling this little teeny tiny area that they have with which to work. As you fly into Lukla and you hike up into the Sagarmatha National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, where you’ll find Mt. Everest and all sorts of other beautiful mountains. As I said, we are going to be down even lower than Base Camp. Base Camp is at about 18,000 feet which is roughly 5,400 meters versus the highest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest, which is 29,000 feet or about 8,800 meters. We’re going to be down way lower than that at around 12,500 feet, not even quite that high, which is not even 3,800 meters.

The cool thing is there’s only one trail. You’re on the trail with everybody, with the people that are going to climb Mt. Everest, with all the people that are going to Base Camp and with the people like ourselves doing the regular trek among the villages, en route towards the Base Camp in Everest. You’re also going through all these little villages where the people of Nepal are living, working and transporting everything. Everything’s got to go on this trail. You’ve got this cacophony of people and yaks, the mountains and the Tibetan culture of the Sherpa people all mixed on this one little stretch of land going from Lukla up to Mt. Everest.

In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first ones to be certified to reach the top of Mt. Everest. There is some mystery though. In 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine may have beat them to the punch. They were last seen really high up but then the clouds covered their further ascent and they disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to them. They knew they died but they didn’t know if they’d made it. They never knew whether they made it to the top. In 1999, at an altitude of 26,755, they found Mr. Mallory’s body but they don’t know whether they made it to the top and perished on the way down or not. That remains the mystery.

Therefore, Hillary is the confirmed first ascent. He became so enamored with the Sherpa people of the area, that he devoted much of the rest of his life building schools and hospitals in Nepal. While you’re there, you may want to stop in and visit some of the schools. You’ll also hear about the warmth that Janet has for the Sherpa people too. They’re loving, hospitable and friendly. I cannot wait to go. I’m so excited because I thought this trip was going to be out of my reach and I find out through Janet, “I can do this.” If I can do it, of course, you can do it. Let’s get Janet Hanpeter on and let her teach us all about trekking in the Everest region but at the lower altitudes.

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Janet, you’re one of the most well-traveled people I know. About roughly how many countries have you been to so far?

Over my lifetime, I’m at 80. I can’t quite believe it myself.

I believe you would rank your Nepal trip as your favorite trip ever. In that list of 80, about where would that Nepal trip fit for you?

It’s hard. People always ask, “What’s your favorite trip?” Honestly, many of the ones I’ve been taking the last couple of years, I’ve gotten more adventurous with my travel. My more exotic travel, many of them are trips of a lifetime but without question, the Nepal trek is incredibly special. I would certainly say it’s in my top five. It is an amazing experience I will never forget.

The Sherpa people is actually an ethnic group called Sherpas. They're mountain people. Click To Tweet

I’ve not been to Nepal myself, but Rosemary Burris who was interviewed in episode number five about her Sweden hike in the Kungsleden Trail, also a well-traveled hiker said that Nepal was in her top as well. She’s actually going to repeat that trip. If we all have unlimited time and money, what is it about Nepal that makes even people that are seasoned travelers go back and repeat an adventure that they’ve done before when there are so many places and we’ll never going to see everything in the whole world? What is it about Nepal?

The trek that I took up in the Everest region or the Khumbu region, you’ve got that mixture of incredibly beautiful mountain scenery and you’ve got the Nepalese people. In that region, you’re talking about the ethnic Sherpa, they are incredibly special and their beautiful villages and that whole lifestyle. It’s one of the most exotic and one of the most heartfelt experiences. It’s really that mixture of the culture of the Sherpa people and the scenery you’re surrounded by. The fact that you’re trekking through this amazing territory that you’re essentially on the Everest highway, which is the only road that leads up into this region. You’re trekking along with the locals that are moving up their supplies to their main towns.

When you say Sherpa, I always thought of that as basically the porters that help bring the stuff up but you’re saying it as almost a word for the townspeople as well?

Yes and that’s a large misconception. I had that as well. The Sherpa people are actually an ethnic group called Sherpas. They’re mountain people and they came from the Tibetan region about four centuries ago and have moved into different regions since. The Everest region is filled with pretty much all the Sherpa people and over the centuries, they are mountain people and they’ve acclimated so well. When the trekkers and mountain climbers came into the region to hike and to climb Mt. Everest, they used the local Sherpa people as their guides and porters and the ones who really knew what they were doing.

Over those years, it became synonymous that the Sherpas are essentially your porters. Sherpa could be a non-capital “s” but when you’re really talking capital “S,” it is the Sherpa people and they bring the Tibetan Buddhist religion. They’re very devout Buddhists. You have that whole Buddhist culture. I had been to Tibet in the past and being back in the Everest region in the Sherpa Buddhist’s world, I felt like I was back in Tibet. That makes it incredibly special. You’ve got the monastery, prayer wheels, prayer stones all along and prayer flags. That’s another element that makes it very special.

Can you give us a brief overview of your trip?

The core trip was essentially what I would call the Nepal trek. It was fourteen days and four of the days were spent in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, which is where you fly in and out of. The trip had two days in the beginning in Kathmandu, two days in the end and then the middle section of nine days was the actual Nepal trek, where we were trekking up into the Everest region.

Tell us about the trail itself.

The exciting piece is to get up there, you need to fly out of Kathmandu, which is in the Kathmandu Valley. It’s about a 35-minute flight from Kathmandu up to the town of Lukla. That is the gateway to the whole Everest region. There are even smaller airplanes but regular small airplanes can fly into Lukla and that’s where all the trekkers begin. Whether you’re going up to Mt. Everest, to Base Camp or you’re doing a mountain climb of Everest or if you’re doing basic trekking, everyone starts in Lukla. That’s where you then follow the one trail that goes up and up into the main town of Namche Bazaar or what they call the Everest Highway.

Is the Everest trail a trail? Tell us about that.

It’s a regular trekking trail. You fly into Lukla, which is at 9,300 feet. It is a mountain town that’s on the side of a mountain and you land at the airport. From there, it’s about a two-day trek up to the main town of Namche. You’re on a trail that’s going through lowland terrace farmlands, then you’re going along riverbeds, in through river valleys then you start to climb up the mountains through beautiful forests. Once you arrive at Namche Bazaar two days later, which has 1,500 population that is the main town of the whole area, it’s a market town. Anything that needs to get to Namche Bazaar or any of the villages along the way or beyond, has to be carried by human porters or pack animals on this basic hiking trail that leads you up. There are no roads in. Although there is a small airport that is above Namche Bazaar at about another 1,000 feet above, it’s at 12,500 feet and that is a small airstrip, no scheduled service and occasionally, a small fixed-wing plane and helicopters because it’s a short takeoff and landing airport. Almost everybody has to fly into Lukla and at that point, it’s a hiking trail and it’s one that goes all the way up.

Are you doing this as a group tour? Tell us a little bit about your travel configuration.

Trekking on Everest requires proper preparation. If you’ve never done hiking, starting small hikes around your community is a great start. Click To Tweet

We had a group of twelve people. I put this together because it has been a dream of mine to trek in Nepal for almost 25 years before I did that. That was back when I was a travel agent. I remember researching a Nepal trek for a client and I don’t even know if he ended up going but I found this really great trek, which was similar to what I took. I loved the fact that it was trekking up into the Everest region and that it was going through beautiful small villages. You’ve got a mixture of both the mountains and the cultural scenery, but that it wasn’t going all the way to Everest Base Camp, which is too far and too high.

Once I saw that trip, I logged it away in my mind and said, “Someday I want to do that.” Finally, that someday came because I knew that I wanted to do it before I got too much older. I started putting the trip together and found the right person to take us. I assembled a group of my friends and it ended up being twelve of us. At that point, our average age was 55. I worked with Gary Scott who is an Australian living in America, who’s done lots of Nepal treks over many years. He’s done a lot of mountain climbing and I happened to meet him personally as I was planning the trip. I was looking at an REI possible Nepal trek and met Gary. After talking with him I went, “He’s the man.” He put the trip together for us. He was our western guide and then he assembled the whole team in Nepal of the Sherpa guides and the Sherpa porters for us. It was our group of twelve men and women, half from San Diego and half from Hawaii.

I should note that Gary is no longer guiding in Nepal, but I do have my recommendations for you in the travel planners that you can download for free on the website. Tell us about the accommodations. Are you staying in a lodge or are you camping?

Back when I had first researched the trip many years ago, the only options were camping and I wasn’t that crazy about camping for nine days way up in the altitude where it can be cold. By the time I started researching the trip to actually take it, what is great is that more and more online through all the main towns, up into that area, there are now trekker lodges. All of these lodges are varying degrees of quality but each place has options where you can stay, where you now have a roof over your head, a room you can sleep in, sometimes a bathroom in the room, sometimes a bathroom down the hall and your meals served and you don’t have to be camping. That has made a huge difference in the trekking industry in the last several years that we have these nice Sherpa lodges. In the past, it used to be the local teahouses that were very smokey, marginal and pretty minimal. The new lodges are certainly not luxury, but they’re very acceptable and it’s a great alternative to camping. The majority of trekkers stay in different types of lodges.

Tell us about the altitude and how you get acclimated.

As you know, when you’re trekking and you’re trekking at altitudes, the altitudes make such a difference. Suddenly, these numbers that didn’t mean much now become very important. You’re in Kathmandu, a lowland and you fly into Lukla at that 9,300 feet. Over the next two days, you work your way up to Namche Bazaar, the main town and that’s at about 11,500 feet. My trip never went over 13,000. Once we got up to Namche, the majority of our time in that area, we did different hikes to different places. We were generally between 11,500 and 12,500 feet. We all did pretty well. The good part about that tough two days from Lukla up to Namche is that you have a couple of days to begin your acclimatization so that you can start to have your body live more comfortably at 11,500 and 12,000 feet. Some of the group would feel a little bit of altitude issues, the headaches or the rapid heartbeats and a little bit of fatigue, but nothing bad and no one had real major issues because that’s still a low enough altitude, unless someone’s incredibly sensitive. It’s not an altitude that’s going to cause a lot of problems.

Do you recommend that somebody find out their altitude aptitude, for lack of a better phrase, before they go on an adventure like this? Because once they start, you’re committed.

Yes and no. As a San Diego woman, I’m a sea-level girl but I had been blessed over the years with some previous trips. In 2001, I had done a Mount Whitney hike, which was up to 14,500, which is my highest ever and probably will be my highest record ever. I luckily did really well with that and then I’ve been in Machu Picchu in Cusco and those areas had been at 12,000 feet. Tibet was 12,000 feet so I’ve had some travels in the past. It may not have necessarily been trekked, but that I knew that I could handle altitude but as I’m sure you know, altitude sickness has no preferences. You can have two people in a trip, one incredibly fit and one who’s not so fit and it could be the fit person who ends up having the altitude problem or you could not have had a problem in the past at that altitude and maybe this time you do. There are no guarantees, but if someone’s never been over 10,000 feet, it’s probably good to at least have an experience whether they go to Colorado or go somewhere where they test themselves to see how they do at altitude for several days to at least have that confidence. If they do pretty well at 10,000 after they’ve had a chance to spend a couple of days and gradually acclimatize, then they should probably be okay.

The last thing I will say is on the Nepal trek, the first couple of days are the tough ones. When you’re trekking from Lukla up to Namche, that’s the biggest altitude gain from about 9,300 up to 11,500. You’ve got about a 3,000-foot elevation gain over those two days. What every trekking company does, is once you arrive in Namche Bazaar, which is such a great place, you’ll generally spend two nights. You have your arrival day, where you’re trekking in but then the second day is a relaxation or rest day. You can explore the town or groups may do a small day hike for an hour or two, but they have it be a day where they’re letting the body catch up to the altitude and that seems to work pretty well.

How much actual hiking do you do on any given day?

I looked back at our hike and it’s not outrageous. The actual trekking part, it averaged to be about four and a half hours per day. Generally, you start off in the morning relatively early and we would stop for an early lunch somewhere in the middle and break up the trek and have a chance to rest. It didn’t seem too bad. The tough day that I mentioned is the longest one and that is from Lukla, we traveled our first day. We flew into Lukla Airport and then hiked around midday down to our first stop where we spent the night in a place called Phakding. That’s a fairly easy hike because you actually go down a little bit to 8,600 feet. You actually lose some altitude and then the next day is when that’s the long hike from Phakding up to Namche. That ended up being a day that even though it was only four and a half miles, it took us six hours.

The first part of it is through gorgeous river valleys. You’re crossing over the rivers on these metal suspension bridges. I have a fear of heights and I don’t like looking on drop-offs down through metal slats that aren’t filled in. I had to have my friends help me over the suspension bridges. I had to hold onto their backpack and not look down. By the end of the trip, I got better at doing that by myself, but that was for me the scariest part but the bridges are solid. It wasn’t like anything could happen to me. It’s my own little fears but once we reached the halfway point of that trek on day two, we stopped for our lunch and then began what they call the Namche Hill. That is a very steep hill that takes you up and it took us three hours. If anything, that’s the most rigorous part of the particular trek that I did but once you get up to Namche, then you’ve made it and the worst of the real hill climbing is over. It’s such great beautiful scenery all along the way that it wasn’t too brutal, it was really fun and always gorgeous. When you’re with a trekking group, you’re always cheering each other. It was a great accomplishment. That was our longest day of six hours but generally, it was more in the four-and-a-half-hour range.

The Sherpa people are warm, generous, engaging, and very resilient. Click To Tweet

Tell us about Namche Bazaar and that whole area.

I love Namche Bazaar. We had two days there at the beginning and then we had one day back towards the end of the trip. I’ve had three nights there. I could go back there in a flash. I’m not sure I want to hike back in but it is this big Sherpa mountain village that is the hub of the whole Everest region. You’ve got all the locals with their daily life, with their marketplaces selling their produce, selling their yaks. Yak trains are coming through the middle of town from farther villages, up to the road, up to the route, up to the trail. You’ve got the local life and then you’ve got the whole international trekking community superimposed on top of it. Even though the town may only have 1,500 population, it’s filled with trekkers of all types. There are the trekkers like me, that are the easier-type trekkers and then you’ve got the serious folks that are heading all the way up to Everest Base Camp and some maybe even leaving to go on a real Everest climbing expedition. There is a whole huge feel of this trekking world and this excitement and you’re meeting trekkers from all around the world. Everybody’s excited and nervous and the community, the town itself, has built up all these services to serve us, trekkers. You’ve got cool restaurants and cafes, bars, German-style bakeries and trekking supply shops.

I was trekking several years ago in April and that bar is still going strong, it’s called the Liquid Bar. It’s the happening place with all trekking international and mountain climbing pictures all over the walls. This is where everybody gathers to have their drinks. What’s great is they also show movies and two different nights we went there to see movies. We sat there with our drinks, eating popcorn and watching Everest themed-type movies, including the one, Into Thin Air, which is a great movie. There are internet cafes. It’s this incredible international trekking vibe mixed on top of this beautiful Buddhist culture. They have a wonderful monastery there, which we visited. We got to meet the local resident monks. You’ve got a real combination of things to do in Namche to keep you busy and entertained.

I’m curious about the interactions between people. Do the locals hang out with the trekkers? Do the trekkers hang out with the climbers? Do people stay in their own individual little cliques?

It depends on the time of year you’re there. We definitely met other trekkers but they were more trekkers like me or that maybe were going on to Everest Base Camp to see it but not to actually do climbing. We didn’t come across any mountain climbing expeditions. Generally, they’re probably going to hit Namche Bazaar or maybe spend one night at the most and then they’re heading off down the trail to continue up to Everest Base Camp. We didn’t actually get to meet any official mountain climbers, just other trekkers. There wasn’t a feeling of this separation.

Tell us about the Sherpa people.

That’s one of the reasons us Nepal trekkers up in the Everest region, we all fall in love with the local Sherpa people because they are so warm, friendly, open and engaging. There is no separation, it feels like one big love fest. They’re very gracious whether they’re the ones running your hotels or even in the marketplace when I went to go see the Saturday market and take pictures of the local women selling their lettuce and carrots. Sometimes some of them are a little bit shy but they’re sweet and they smile and they’re happy to have their picture taken. They may not speak English. When you’re dealing with the folks in Namche that are dealing with trekkers then English, of course, is your international language and they’re going to be speaking English but in some of the other Sherpa people that are more villagers or the farmers, they may not necessarily speak English because that’s not their language. There was definitely not a separation.

Everyone was so friendly and they’re fun-loving. They’re resilient people. They’re strong and tough. You always hear the stories whether it’s a trekking group like ours or the mountain climbers that go to Everest that have their Sherpa team of porters and guides that are with them for couple months at a time, they truly fall in love with their Sherpa team. That these people become family. There’s something incredibly special about them. When Gary, our overall tour leader, put together our trip, he worked with his local contact in Kathmandu that he’s worked with for years who assembled the Sherpa team and we met them. When we flew into Lukla, that’s where our Sherpa team was waiting for us.

We had four guides and seven porters. In our four guides, two of them were husband and wife, Pemba and Nima, that Gary’s been with on many expeditions. He knew them very well. He hadn’t seen them in a couple of years. It’s this incredible reunion of dear friends that have been together for many years. They live in a town called Khunde, North of Namche Bazaar. One day as our day trek was traveling through their town, Pemba and Nima invited us to stop at their home and they served us lunch. We got to see how they lived and it was so special. There’s that incredible gracious hospitality that is really part of the Sherpa people.

What was your first impression of the landscape when you got there and could you describe it for us?

It varies before Namche Bazaar and then after. On the way, as I mentioned from Lukla, you’re in the mountains. In the town of Lukla, you can see some beautiful mountains in the distance but then once you start to travel from Lukla up to Namche, you’re heading back into some lowland valleys. You see forested mountains on the side but you do not see the big tall white-capped mountains all the way up to Namche. Once you’re doing the Namche Hill and you start to see the town of Namche above you on the hills, that’s where the mountain views really started. Once you get to Namche, the town itself is built in a bowl. The houses are on the sides of the hill and there’s 1,000-foot elevation gain between the bottom part of the town and the top part of the town, but it’s on its own a little ridge. It is completely surrounded by these beautiful and tall mountain peaks. They are completely snow-covered and the peaks are all over 20,000. They’re of all different shapes and that’s where the mountain scenery really starts of what we think about the Everest region. From that point, it’s all you may have as you’re trekking through beautiful woods and some forests until it gets higher up and it gets a little bit starker. All through that, you’ve got huge white, mountain peaks peeking out in every direction. I’m not a mountain girl, I’m a beach girl but there is nothing as majestic as those mountains. It’s unbelievably beautiful. It’s so pristine and they’re so huge and there are so many of them and it’s incredible.

Speaking of snow-covered mountains, when did you go there and what advice would you give us in regard to weather?

We went in April. I don’t like to be miserable and I always try to plan trips at the optimum weather times. For a Nepal trek, it is going to be your spring and fall, maybe March, April and into early May. It’s around that time frame because at some point soon after that, the rainy real monsoon-y part starts and you don’t want to be trekking. The fall is also a good time, maybe October-ish. I had read that maybe October, November that in fact the skies may be clearer during that period but it’s going to be maybe ten to fifteen degrees colder, as a rule, whether that’s still the case. You have a choice of spring or fall season. Either one’s going to be good. I chose the spring because if it was going to be a little bit warmer, I thought I’d go for that.

As for our weather, it was interesting. It worked out perfectly but we had everything. We had rain quite a bit. We had snow. We had clear sunny days and had cloudy overcast. We had the full gamut. It’s different when you’re down in the lower levels. In Lukla, those first two days as you’re getting up towards Namche, that’s more low level. It’s a little bit warmer but once you get up to Namche and you’re in that whole mountain region at the higher elevations, then it’s definitely more of that mountain temps. I would say we had typical temperatures that they tell you in the brochures and that turned out to be true, that you’re generally going to have daytime temperatures between somewhere in the 40s to the mid-60s. The evenings, the nights and the early mornings if you get an early morning start, those can be cold down into the 30s.

In fact, at elevation we had three different mornings at three different places in three different towns. We went to bed without snow, we woke up in the morning and there was snow covering everything. It snowed overnight. It’s really a mixture, but what’s great about a trek you already expect this. We were well-dressed and I don’t think we ever felt really cold. We were dressed for it properly. A lot of times when you’re trekking during the days you actually do have gloves on. Normal treks when you’re in a place where it’s 65 degrees, you’re not wearing gloves but those times when it was colder in the 40s maybe early 50s, you definitely would wear gloves and more of your trekking gear and then you would layer and take it off as the day got warmer. It was fine and even the rain wasn’t a problem.

On a scale of one to five, with one being a couch potato, five being difficult but not ironically climbing Mt. Everest difficult, what would you rate this particular adventure at the elevations that we’re talking about?

Let me back up to one thing that helps differentiate it. The trek that I took and looking at catalogs, REI and even Active Adventures, they seem to offer two types of Nepal treks into the Everest region. One is like the one I took. They call it an Everest Lodge to Lodge Trek, which is very typical. It’s nine days trekking, staying generally below 12,500 feet, which is what I did and there are those treks that are a little bit longer. They go to Namche like we did but then they continue on to the next town up and spend the night at a place called Tengboche, which has a beautiful monastery. We didn’t get that far. It’s a little bit higher and it continues for several more days, all the way up to Everest Base Camp. As it’s getting up to Everest Base Camp, that’s exciting to be able to visit Base Camp and see where all the expeditions start and hang out, but it’s a 17,500-foot elevation. It’s a big difference. You’re adding from the 12,500 to 17,500. That’s another 5,000 feet of elevation gain over a few days and the landscape gets starker, it’s beautiful I hear. I have not done it and the places to stay get simpler and simpler and simpler. Possibly even camping. It’s a much more rugged trip.

When I say about what the level is, I’m talking about my type of trip, which is an Everest staying in the Namche Bazaar region at the lower altitudes. For that, I would say the trek might range in a three to four maybe on that one tough day but it’s very doable. It’s not a technical trek because again I don’t do technical trekking, that’s not my thing but all of us were fit. We’re average age 55. I could still do it now but I would have to train. Every one of us trained a lot. We did a lot of hiking. Us San Diegans did a one-time hike. We went up to a place two hours away up in the mountains. We did a hike that took us to 10,000 feet. We got a teeny bit of altitude, but not a lot. We were all well-trained and we had the right hiking boots. If you’re well-equipped, it’s a very doable trek for somebody who’s fit and has trained for it.

What advice would you give folks that would like to do a similar trek as you did?

I would say do it, but I would say that you want to be someone who’s at least comfortable hiking. If you’ve only walked around the block at home in your city and you’ve never done hiking, I think you would want to take the next baby step up and at least go out and start doing hikes around your community and get into trails that have hills and that you’ve got some uneven terrain and that you’re getting yourself built up. Maybe you go and take a three-day trek somewhere, where you get used to a multi-day trek so that you build yourself up. You’ve got more confidence in using hiking poles, in being in your hiking boots and that you’re comfortable out in nature trekking. It’s basically walking, but what I will say that the two days getting up to Namche, even though you’re working your way uphill there was never flats. You were either going up or down and even if you look at your elevation gains, you had the river and you were crossing the river. You would go up the hill and then you would go down and then you’d cross the river, you’d go back up and then you’d go down. There are lots of up and downs. You need to be very comfortable with hills. You are going up and down hills. That kind of training will help build your body for that type of thing. It would be very helpful.

Do you have a favorite story you’d like to tell about your adventure?

One of the things we did special, which is not on a normal itinerary because working with Gary who knew the region so well, he could plan what he wanted to do for our trip. He added a special element but it’s still doable for other folks. When you’re in the town of Namche Bazaar, a good day trip is you go up to an airport, the Syangboche Airport that I have mentioned. It’s about 12,500 feet of altitude. It’s outside of town maybe about a one-hour hike. You can go up to the airport, it has pretty views and then about another 45 minutes past that, you get yourself to a hotel that’s called the Everest View Hotel. It’s a beautiful hotel built by the Japanese back in the ‘70s. They thought they were going to develop the Japanese market who could fly directly into the Syangboche Airport at 12,500 feet and go to the hotel. They found out over time that a lot of their Japanese travelers that went from sea level to 12,500 had major problems with altitude and it didn’t end up being a very good thing.

They still get people staying there. We did spend the night there. The hotel’s got the most amazing location. It’s set on a ridge and it’s looking facing east, directly to Mt. Everest. You don’t have to stay there as we did. We spent one night. You can also trek there for the day, go onto their patio and sit there at their café and have a drink or lunch and look down the valley towards Mt. Everest, twenty miles away. It’s amazing views and of course, for us, it’s the closest view we would have of Mt. Everest. One of the challenges of Mt. Everest is that the whole valley can often be covered in clouds and even though you potentially have a view, it’s going to be clouded over. In fact, that day we were trekking to the hotel, we arrived in the afternoon, it was clouded over and we kept praying. We knew we were spending the night, we thought, “We have quite a few hours, we have an overnight, we have the next morning, maybe we’ll get lucky.”

We had dinner, it still was clouded, about 9:00 all of a sudden it’s moonlight out. The clouds opened up and we got about a half an hour view of Mt. Everest and Lhotse peak next to it. The next morning, we also kept praying through the night, “Please.” Somehow, the clouds part and we wake up in the morning to the sunrise and there’s the view. At 5:40, one of the early birds of the group got up first thing, looked out, the sun hadn’t even come up and they saw the skies were clear. They came pounding on all our doors. We all headed outside, 5:40 AM with our pajamas and our jackets over us. There we have the most gorgeous view of Mt. Everest in the clear skies and it had snowed overnight. Everything was peppered in beautiful, fresh white snow and it turned out to be Easter morning. That will always be one of the most magical moments of my life, being out there Easter morning with fresh snow, with this full-on view of Mt. Everest with the famous plume you always see. That plume of snow that’s blowing off the top of the peak. That’s a photo I’ve sent you. In fact, I’ve written a blog post about my Easter morning surprise at Mt. Everest. That was a very special moment for us.

Janet, if you would please for those that may not have read our interview with you on episode number six about your adventure on El Camino in Spain, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

My name’s Janet and I always loved to travel. I’ve had different careers then I finally decided a couple of years ago that it was time to make my travel, my travel writing, my travel photography be my main avocation. I started Planet Janet Travels, a travel blog to inspire, educate, inform and hopefully encourage others to get out and travel even more of the world. I know many people travel a lot and it’s about getting out and traveling to new parts of the world that you haven’t done. Maybe trips that are a little bit more adventurous, which is what you do so well. I’ve been able to add more and more exotic trips both cultural and physical adventures that are not crazy stuff. I love to write about that, that’s on my blog posts and encouraging people to get out. Particularly those that are 50plus, that we’re still young enough, healthy enough but we got to be doing this travel now, rather than wait twenty years when maybe our body won’t cooperate so much. That’s what I do with my Planet Janet Travels.

Janet, is there anything I should have asked you that I forgot to ask you?

Let me add one thing that’s actually quite fun and it’s pretty exciting. We talked about you fly into the town of Lukla. What I didn’t mention is that it is one of the most amazing experiences you have ever done. It is listed as one of the world’s most extreme airports for a good reason. Lukla is basically a town set in the mountainside and when you fly in on your small sixteen-passenger turbo-prop plane, it is one of those what they call a STOL, Short Takeoff and Landing. You fly in and as soon as you spy the airport, it’s this incredibly short runway that drops off into nothing and the pilots are certified pilots, not many people can do this kind of airport. You come in and you drop in quick and you land because the runway ends in the mountainside and if you misjudge, you are crashing into the mountainside. It’s wild but it’s exciting as heck. I’ve sent you some pictures including a video link that I found that does a beautiful job of showing what it’s like to fly into the Lukla Airport.

I’m luckily not a nervous flyer. I sent lots of prayers but I had every confidence and I enjoyed every minute of it. It was so exciting and it’s fun because when you’re in Lukla, you’re watching other planes come in and take off. It’s unlike any airport I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s one of the most exciting things I did on the Nepal trek as well. Not to make people scared but it’s the reality, it’s a pretty wild ride but it’s small planes and these pilots are experienced and they only fly in good weather. That is the one challenge with Lukla. A lot of times you may show up in Kathmandu for your scheduled flight, we happened to fly out at 6:45 in the morning. Luckily the skies were clear, not just in Kathmandu but they were clear enough in Lukla, which is 35-minutes away so we could take off.

Many times if the clouds start coming in, flights get canceled, they get postponed and it may take you many hours before your plane can take off again or you might even have to wait another day and that’s the same with getting out. A lot of times the trekkers, you have your departure date out of Lukla but in case that airport’s socked in that day, you may not fly out until the next day. All of the operators will tell you there needs to be a little bit of flexibility when it comes to small treks particularly the flying in and out of the Lukla Airport. It makes a part of the thrill of the adventure and there is nothing to worry about and it’s very exciting. I’ll tell you that landing was one of my all-time favorite things as well, to be honest. It was incredible.

Janet gave us a ton of great photos. Our thanks to Janet for sharing her adventure to Nepal. I’m sure it’s going to be added to a lot of people’s bucket list now that we find out it’s accessible for a normal hiker like myself. I’m super excited, Janet, thank you so much.

Important Links:

• Janet Hanpeter
• Episode number six – Previous episode
• Facebook – Active Travel Adventures Page
• Kit@ActiveTravelAdventures.com
• YouTube – No. 1 Most Extreme and Dangerous Airport: Lukla Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal
• Rosemary Burris – Previous episode
• Gary Scott
• Blog post on Planet Janet Travels
• Planet Janet Travels

• Here’s How »

• activetraveladventures.com
• Active Travel Adventures Facebook Page
• Active Travel Adventures Facebook Group
• Active Travel Adventures Twitter
• Active Travel Adventures Instagram
• Active Travel Adventures YouTube
• Kit Parks LinkedIn