Karki, my 13 year old guide is the one who I think is was born to trek (whether he does it professionally as a guide or more likely just recreationally is up to him). In one of my prior posts I referred to him as part mountain goat, part jack rabbit, because of the way he easily treks up the steep trails we have ventured up. We have now done three hikes over the past four weeks, with each hike going further and higher than the last. Today we hiked straight up the ridge of the mountain east of Chanaute to Kakani and then down past Palchok and then back to Chanaute. The trail map below shows our return route, but not the steep direct route we took to Kakani.
It's been fun watching Karki's interest in trekking grow each week as we have sought ever more challenging treks from our initial 3 hour trek with Suman, followed by our longer steeper 4.5 hour trek the following week, to our all day 7 hour trek today with a stop for lunch in Kakani. Today's trek even surpassed my treks in Pokhara as we hiked up 283 flights (almost all of those on the way to Kakani), took over 25,000 steps and covered 11.4 miles. At the start of today's trek, Karki showed up wearing his new hiking shoes (he had been using flip flops on our first two hikes), which I thought was awesome because it shows his interest has grown and I know he will use them to continue trekking long after I return home.
While I've been talking about Karki, I want to add that Suman joined us just as we were departing for today's hike (I think his parents pressed him to join us because he didn't jump up to join us right away when first invited, but rather ran after us after we got a hundred yards down the road). Twelve year old Suman, like myself, does not have the jack rabbit gene. In fact at this stage of his life he's a little pudgy and enjoys sweets way too much. When we stopped for lunch, he only ate half of his Dahl baht (lentils, vegetables and rice) but added about 5 teaspoons of sugar to his tea and then after lunch had room for a Red Bull and a snack that looked similar to Cheetos. I paid for his lunch, but he bought the latter snacks on his own (afterwards I tried to help him understand that too much sugar is bad for your health). None the less, for only 12 years old, he did a remarkable job of making it to Kakani and back and I suspect he will outgrow his pudginess once he hits his growth spurt and hopefully continues to go trekking and cut down on his sugar.
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Cute kids!
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