Trek The Unknown

hey,
After not traveling for more than 6 monthes I decided to have a short vacation in Turkey in a place called Kusadasi (pronounced: Kushadasi).

Kusadasi is a a touristy town full of hotels and resorts. It’s located in western turkey on the Aegaen sea shore, 45 minutes driving south of Izmir. The town is set on a beautiful bay and it’s well known site is the pigeon island. Kusadasi is also very close to the Greek Island, Samos and it’s a nice excrusion to do for a day, although we preferred staying on Turkish land.

We arrived there last Sunday at noon. We spent our 1st afternoon there walking around the place and got to know it. Since my girlfriend and I are not really big fans of staying at the beach or the hotels swimming pool all day long, we decided we want to visit some more exciting places.
So we had great plans for the next 3-4 coming days.

Various touring agencies sell tours to places around Kusadasi, But we decided we want to do the things by ourselves, which is much more cheaper and fun. The whole area has great public transportation using Dolmushes. Dolmush is a kind of an 10-12 seat car which goes around like a bus line. they stop everywhere you like on the road and pick you up wherever you are, although some of the line have set stops as well.

We decided to leave early as we were worried there will be no accommodations available in high camp. High camp is the highest and closest camping place to Throng La pass. If you want the hardest day of the trek the be as easy as possible, try spend the night before crossing the pass at High camp.

High Camp has a accommodations for 110 persons, whoever reaches too late gets to sleep in the dining room. nobody get to be thrown out, don’t worry

Eventually instead of leaving at 7AM we left at 8:30AM. We knew we have something like 2.5-3 hour of walking till Throng Phedi (That’s the place to stay for the night before High Camp). Throng Phedi means, under the mountain or hill, which is of course under Throng La pass area, the highest place around.

We reached Throng Phedi at 9:50AM. This was a good start for the day…Walking there includes some uphill walking but a lot of it is also straight surface.

Throng Phedi was discovered to be a VERY nice place. We stopped there to get used to the height of 4450 meters.

At 10:30 we decided to go on. We understood that the hardest climb of the trek is just beyond us. The Climb is one hour long it’s slow hard to breath walk. Some people that want to acclimatize thmeselves get to Throng Phedi climb to high camp and then walk back down to Throng Phedi. Then next day they climb this again. we acclematized ourselves enough in Mananag and along the way, we stayed extra nights at some places and climbed a little every day.

Entering into high camp we found there are 2 camp sites. The 1st buildings you’ll see on your left are the old buildings. don’t waste your energy that you don’t have anyway to walk around there. Keep walking up a little more to the buildings on the left. This is the new camp.

At High Camp we took 2 rooms. it really didn’t seem the acoomodation there were too crowded.
After resting and settling out breath we decided to go for a walk around. there is a mountain right beside the camp which is 100-150 meters higher than the camp itself. There is a great view for there and it’s highly recommended.

At the Time of year we were there (end of October) the whole mountain side was covered with snow. It’s was great sliding on it using the plastic coats we had! Try not to slide accidentally to unknown places where only a helicopter can help getting you out of.

Since high camp is a almost the highest place around, if the sun is out there aren’t any mountains disturbing it’s way into the greenhouse like dinins room. It’s VERY plesent and warm (as long as the sun is shining), with big glass windows watching the whole area around.

pricing:
room for a night: 320 NR
Spaghetti: 190 NR
potato curry (recommended): 130 NR
Veg fried rice (recommended): 190 NR

Since high camp is an isolated place there is no meat in the menu, only veggie stuff.
also, There is light at the rooms (on some other guest houses on previous days there wasn’t) and an early dinner is served at 4:30 PM.

We went to sleep very early at around 6:00 PM , because our plans were to wake up at 4AM in order to cross Throng La Pass.

Since I’m already In the neighborhood (i.e. Thamel) for almost 5 weeks, I think I do have some knowledge on good places to stay.

I’ve been to a bunch of budget geust houses around here and must say that prices are about the same and vary 50 nr (Nepali rupees) from place to place.

Hotel DownTown is the one place I liked (don’t be confused with Down town guest house, it’s a different place). The hosts thee are very nice. rooms prices starts from 150 nr (around 2.5$) per night in a single room without inside bathroom. If you are 2-3 people traveling together you can get away with 100 nr per person.

The bad thing about budget hotels are that they have limited hours of hot water for showers, and even then the are not very consistent about it. Hotel down town has (almost) 24/7 of hot shower water (I’ve stayed there more that 3 weeks and I stumbled a cold shower just once).

So, This is my pick!

Hotel Down town Saatghumti, Thamel, Kathmandu
phone number: 01430471

If your Budget is even lower than this, Freak street, would be the place for you. As I mentioned I didn’t stay there, this is just from what I heard from other travelers. Freak street has limited selection of hotels and is around 20-25 minutes walk from the Thamel, which is where all the touristy happenings. But This blog is not about being a normal tourist, but being a traveler, get to know and experience places. So freak street can also be a nice experience.