Trekking the Manaslu Circuit & Tsum Valley

20 days in remote teahouses

By Heather & Pravin

March 16^th, 2018

our introduction to nepali roads

After four days of frantic organization and checking off tasks in Kathmandu, we woke up bright and early and ready to finally hit the trail. First however, we had to get to the starting point, Arughat Bazar.

There are a few routes in Nepal that are plied by slightly more comfortable "tourist" buses in addition to the rickety "local" buses, but the trip to Arughat Bazar was most certainly not one of these. After a quick cup of coffee from a roadside stall with our guide, we boarded the bus and wondered at what time our 8:00AM scheduled departure would actually end up leaving. Pleasantly surprised to be on the road by 8:15AM, our optimism was soon shattered by Kathmandu's absurdly awful traffic; incredibly, it took us three hours to cover the first 25km out of the city.

After stopping after a few hours for lunch, what started out as a 2-lane paved road turned into a narrow, dusty mess of a track that seemed to be dug out of sheer rock on the left, with constant and perilous drops to the right. Aside from us, there was one other trekker on the bus, and we were quite pleased not to succumb to the crippling motion sickness that struck many of the Nepalis!

We were quickly covered in a film of dust and were exhausted by the constant slamming and banging of the bus as its poor suspension meant that we felt every little bump. In the end, it took nine hours to cover 120km, and I have never been so excited to get out of a vehicle!

Trekking the Manaslu Circuit & Tsum Valley

hitting the trail

After so many hours on the bus the previous day, we couldn't have been more excited to start trekking. Our first day was quite short and easy, but it was a good chance to get acquainted with our packs again and to get to know our guide, Binod, a 26-year-old Nepali from a village close to Arughat Bazar.

The Manaslu Circuit is a teahouse trek, meaning each night you stay in simple accommodations in small villages along the trail. Many people opted to hire a porter in addition to their guide to carry the majority of their gear, but we both felt confident that we could handle the extra strain. It was nice not having to carry a tent, stove, sleeping pads, etc., but we both brought along a lot of cold-weather gear and we had purchased -10°C sleeping bags in Kathmandu. Aside from these and basic toiletries, we also carried a variety of snacks from both England (natural peanut butter!) and Nepal (many, many Snickers bars) as we knew that we would be paying a premium for any purchases along the trail, given that any goods would have been carried in by mules. We both also opted to bring a spare pair of shoes to give our feet a rest from our boots in the evenings, and while this was a luxury, it was well-worth it.

The first four days of the trek were spent making our way up the Budhi Gandaki river valley. During our second day of hiking, we stopped to have lunch at a small teahouse in Lapubesi, and found that Prince Harry had actually spent a few nights there in 2016 while helping with some earthquake reconstruction! We also met a friendly pair of hikers, Eric (USA) and Charlie (UK), with whom we ended up becoming fast friends and actually completing the rest of the circuit together. Fortunately, our guides also got along well and it worked out great all around to be in good company for the remainder of the trek.

Our hiking pace was typically quite leisurely, which was fitting because we were constantly in awe of the scenery and stopping to admire the panoramic vistas all around. In addition to friendly dogs in most villages, there were also monkey troupes in the woods, cute, sad-eyed mule trains to contend with on narrow paths, and a ton of different species of birds criss-crossing the skies above us. Most days we awoke around 6:30AM, packed up our gear, and ate a breakfast of oat or tsampa porridge and masala tea or instant coffee. While our accommodation and permits were included in the package along with our guide fees, our meals were separate and we paid in cash for every meal.

"Dal Bhat Power, 24 hour!"

We would usually stop for an early lunch around 11:00AM or 12:00PM, and we rarely strayed from either dal bhat, veggie egg fried noodles or veggie egg fried rice.

Dal bhat is the most typical dish of Nepal, and all the guides would eat it for both lunch and dinner (and even for breakfast, on occasion). We did this once or twice, but found it was a LOT of food to have twice a day! The great thing about dal bhat is that it comes with free refills, it's great hiking fuel, and each teahouse makes it slightly differently. For anywhere from $5-12 CAD each (the more remote the village, the more expensive the food), you get a large platter of dal (lentils), rice, mixed vegetable curry, pickle, and steamed chard. It was astonishing to see the amounts of food that some people could put away after a hard day's hike! Another ritual was that every afternoon, and sometimes again if the evening was exceptionally cold, we would split a giant thermos of masala tea with Eric and Charlie while enjoying what was always a spectacular view from the teahouse.

At one particularly pleasant teahouse in Solleri, we even got to join in a Nepali dance party. We spent the evening dancing away to Nepali music blasting from a cellphone speaker with what seemed like most of the people in town. Some of the locals were busting some serious moves!

The TSum Valley

After a few days of trekking up the Budhi Gandaki river valley, we forked right and headed into the Tsum Valley, which is primarily inhabited by Tibetans and incredibly remote - closer in fact to Tibet, than to the nearest Nepali road. We spent 3 days hiking up the valley, which only opened to tourists about 10 years ago, and another 2 days hiking back down to the fork where we would continue on the Manaslu Circuit.

The views from the Tsum Valley were incredible, and we were all giddy with excitement to get our first views of some of the larger peaks. Life in the valley seems to be incredibly tough - not much can be grown given the harsh climate and steep, rocky terrain, and the cost of transporting supplies into the valley must be exorbitant. Nevertheless, the teahouses we stayed in were simple but comfortable, and our Tibetan hosts were more than accommodating and we were excited to try some new foods - especially the many varieties of local hot sauces.

In Chhokangparo, halfway up the Tsum Valley, we couldn't have been more surprised to see signs for a coffee shop and bakery! We followed the arrows and found ourselves in the front yard of a local family whose son had worked abroad and brought his new-found love for good coffee back to the Tsum Valley. We were delighted to sip on strong espresso and munch on shortbreads and macaroons beneath some of the biggest peaks we had ever seen with our own eyes.

The Tsum Valley is full of places that carry great historical and spiritual significance to Tibetan Buddhists, and because it is so remote, most of these haven't been restored or altered and are still used as a part of daily life by local people. We were able to visit the local gompa in most communities, and the nuns at Rachen Nunnery were kind enough to allow us to enter their compound and have a look at how they live.

One of the coolest things we saw during all of our trekking in Nepal was a train of yaks loaded down with supplies that were being transported from Tibet to the Tsum Valley (since it's closer than bringing supplies from Nepal). The low, melodious clanging of their bells travelled to us over the wind before we even saw the yaks, and made it seem like they were appearing from another world. They were gigantic and looked immensely strong; given the difficulty of the journey, only the largest, toughest yaks are used. They were loaded down with crates and sacks stamped with Mandarin characters, and because of the cold climate, their fur was much thicker than any other yaks we would see in Nepal.

The furthest spot we hiked to in the Tsum Valley was the incredibly remote monastery at Mu Gompa, perched high up at 3600m and only a couple of kilometres from the Tibetan border. The views were outstanding and had it not been for the extreme cold/wind and the impeding darkness of the evening, we could have spent hours marvelling at the surrounding mountains.

manaslu himal

Once we were out of the Tsum Valley and back on the Manaslu Circuit, the next big thing was getting our first up-close glimpse of Manaslu Himal, the 8th-highest peak in the world at 8163m (26,781ft). It was incredible, and amazing to think we would be hiking roughly around it for almost 3 weeks in total. It's surrounded by other high mountains, but it's amazing height dwarfs anything else around it.

Most nights along the trail, we tended to run into the same few hikers over and over again, with most being from either the USA or the UK. There were several trekkers around our age, and then also many over the age of about 50, and all of these guys seemed to have been to Nepal at least a handful of times before. We can certainly see why - the landscapes are like no other, the people are incredibly friendly, and even with flights and a guide, trekking in the Nepal Himalayas is still generally quite affordable by most standards. We already can't wait to come back! It was a lot of fun to get to know everyone by name and see the same faces over and over again and swap stories about the day over dal bhat.

As we got higher and higher in preparation for crossing Larkhe-La Pass, the highest point on the circuit, the air got colder and colder and the villages were much more basic. It can't be easy to live in these kinds of conditions, and it seems especially unfair that these were some of the hardest-hit areas in the 2015 earthquake. The spirit of communism is quite strong in these villages, with the hammer and sickle flag flying proudly at the entrance to most communities, and it's hard to argue with complete cooperation here when the conditions are so tough and the people so few.

larkhe-la pass

Our last night before crossing the 5106m Larkhe-La Pas was spent at a rough, windswept, temporary camp called Dharamshala. It's only open part of the year, and likely closed down for the season within a month of our stay. There are a few rooms in stone buildings, but along with most people, we ended up having an extremely cold night in a tent. We spent the afternoon trying to take in our unreal surroundings, taking photo after photo and sipping cup after cup of tea in an effort to stay warm. Everyone was giddy with anticipation for the following morning, and with the high altitude and extreme cold temperatures, no one was able to get much sleep.

We got out of our sleeping bags in the pitch-black dark around 4am, only to find that our water bottles had frozen solid. It was that cold! We bundled up with all our layers, packed our bags and ate a quick breakfast, and headed up the slope by the light of our headlamps. It was peaceful and eerie to be walking in complete darkness, but we kept our arms swinging brusquely to ensure that our hands didn't freeze, and little was said as we followed our guide in the thin, cold air.

We couldn't believe how beautiful the rising sun was on the snow-covered hills around us, but it was too cold to stop for long. We kept on pushing upwards, and after a few hours of huffing and puffing in the oxygen-depleted air, we knew we had reached the high point of the trek when we saw prayer flags flapping in the icy winds. We took lots of photos, and tried not to damage our teeth as we snacked on Snickers bars that had frozen in our pockets.

We were incredibly lucky that we had very good weather for crossing the pass, as the descent was treacherous and steep and mostly on loose scree. Had the trail been covered in snow or ice, a fall with serious consequences would not have been inconceivable.

The entire day was quite long, and we were pretty tired during the extremely long descent to the town of Bhimtang. There were no teahouses this high up for lunch, so we had some packaged cookies and a pancake with peanut butter that we had packed out from breakfast, and eventually we did come to a teahouse along the way that knew exactly what hikers were looking for! It had a pair of mattresses lined up in the sun facing the mountains, and I swear a cup of masala tea has never tasted as good as it did during that 30 minute break.

The last couple days of the trek were much more low-key than the pass day and we hung out with the group of hikers we had become acquainted with along the way as much as possible. It was a bittersweet feeling on Day 20 when we arrived in the last town of Dharapani. We felt accomplished for completing what was quite a tough trail and amazed at the sights we had seen, but it was sad that it was our last afternoon with our new friends. Eric and Charlie treated us to a celebratory beer on the rooftop of a teahouse with a beautiful view, and we reminisced and laughed about our adventures together before they had to catch a jeep onwards in order to get back to Kathmandu.

Pravin and I had plans to keep trekking onwards, as the famous Annapurna Circuit also continues onward from the town of Dharapani. Once everyone else left in jeeps, we had our first hot showers in far too long, and then settled in to our teahouse for a half day's rest before starting the Annapurna Circuit the following day. It was definitely a different feeling without the friendly faces we had become accustomed to having around, and when we ordered our afternoon tea, there was a bit of sadness as we requested a "small pot" instead of the "large pot" we had grown fond of sharing with Eric and Charlie!

The Manaslu Circuit and Tsum Valley were an amazing introduction to teahouse trekking in Nepal. For us, accustomed to carrying all of our camping gear anytime we go hiking, it was a luxurious respite from heavy packs, sleeping in tents, and cooking our own food. By any standard accommodation along the trail is extremely basic, but for us the simple fact that beds, home-cooked food, (squat) toilets and friendly hosts were waiting for us at the end of each day's hike made everything seem five-star! We loved Manaslu and the Tsum Valley for their remoteness, lack of crowds, friendly people and Tibetan Buddhist culture. There is no question in our minds that we will be returning to Nepal over and over again, just like so many of the hikers that we were inspired by along the way!