Nepal Is Ideal for Aging Hikers

On a trek beneath towering Himalayan peaks in the Langtang Valley of Nepal, a fellow trekker asked me my age. When I told him I was 68, he nodded with respect.

Trekking in Nepal is a classic adventure for people in their 20s on the "yoga circuit," but the country's trekking industry creates great possibilities for older hikers because it offers many trails, porters to keep loads light, and closely-spaced lodgings that reduce the need for long days of hiking.

My pack held what I would normally carry on a day hike. A guide-in-training, Bhim Bahadur Tamang, carried our clothing and sleeping bags. We lugged no camping gear because we ate and slept in simple lodges called tea houses.

Our path was rough and sometimes steep (the trek is generally rated difficult), but I never felt pushed to the limit. As an aging backpacker, I was seeing a world-famous mountain range without carrying a heavy pack.

My backpacking prime was from my teens into my 30s. The great mountain ranges of North America were relatively easy to reach, and I did trips in places like the Tetons, the Sierra Nevada and the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Back then, a trek in Nepal seemed remote and expensive. But when I retired from teaching at Rutgers University in 2020, it was now or never for the Himalayas.

The Langtang route, near the border with Tibet and China, is one of many trekking options in Nepal. Its virtues are obvious. It's less crowded and developed than more famous routes to the Mount Everest base camp and the Annapurna region. The trailhead is only a day's drive from Kathmandu, sparing you the headaches of a domestic flight. And the elevation is relatively low for Nepal, reducing the possibility of altitude sickness.

The key is hiring the right guide, and I was fortunate to work with Bishnu Thapa of OneSeed Expeditions. Thapa is one of a modest but growing number of women mountain guides in Nepal.

OneSeed, a global enterprise of outdoor guides, emphasizes working with local people, investing in local entrepreneurs (especially women), working respectfully with local communities and environmentally sound practices. The organization also offers personally organized treks that suit the needs of older hikers.

I was impressed with how OneSeed stresses safe trekking, fair working conditions (like health insurance for its staff) and career paths for porters who want to become guides. Between Thapa on the trail and her husband, Tek Bahadur Dong, in the home office, I was in good hands.  

The trek passes through a region inhabited by the Tamang people, who are Buddhists who trace their ancestors to Tibet. Thanks to them, the alpine vistas of the Langtang trek are complemented Buddhist shrines and memorials. It's not a wilderness trip, but a journey through a long-inhabited region where people raise yaks, grow potatoes and barley, and tend to trekkers.

The journey began in Kathmandu with my mountaineering comrade Mark Krasovic, a former colleague in the American Studies department at Rutgers-Newark. We stayed in a hotel on the edge of Patan Darbar Square, where Hindu and Buddhist temples stand together. We toured with Dong, then woke up early and made a bumpy but beautiful eight-hour drive with Thapa to Syabru Besi, the starting point for our trek at 4,790 feet. 

On our first day, we hiked up a steep and narrow river valley where scenery revealed itself gradually. We climbed some 3,600 feet over nine miles on forest paths and finished the day at Rimche, where lit-up villages twinkled below us.

On our second day, climbing almost 3,000 feet over seven miles, we entered the upper valley, a rolling landscape that Thapa described as "Nepali flat" framed by snow-capped peaks. Trees grew more scarce and grazing yaks more common. We were sobered by the site of a massive rockslide that covers the old Langtang Village, where some 300 people were killed in an avalanche triggered by an earthquake in 2015.

Thapa, who did her master's thesis about female mountain guides in Nepal, was an endless source of insight on trekking and the Tamang people. Lodge keepers, as Krasovic noticed, were always happy to see her. We were invited into kitchens heated by wood-fired cook stoves, where staff and locals traded stories and we taught them how to play blackjack.

Meals were simple but hearty. Breakfast was typically oatmeal or pancakes and fried eggs. Lunch and dinner meant noodles, dumplings, fried potatoes and cheese, or unlimited portions of dal bhat, a Nepali specialty of lentils, rice, a vegetable and pickles. We washed down every meal with spicy tea.

Thapa kept us healthy and safe. Water purity can be tricky in Nepal, so whenever we filled our water bottles, she cleaned her hands with sanitizer, sterilized a full bottle of water with a SteriPen purifier, and poured it into our bottles. When trains of donkeys carrying provisions passed us on the trail, she had us step off the path to the uphill side so no donkey could bump us into a fall.  

She also helped me overcome altitude sickness. When I stepped off a suspension bridge at Kyanjin Gumpa (12,522 feet), I suddenly felt that I hit a wall. My head hurt, my breathing grew labored, and my pace slowed. She used the mountaineering adage of "climb high, sleep low" to solve my problem. We checked into our lodge, ate lunch, and rested. Then we hiked to a beautiful frozen reservoir above Kyanjin Gumpa and descended for dinner and a good night's sleep.

I woke up refreshed and ready to hike up Kyanjin Ri, a barren hill looming over Kyanjin Gumpa. We zigzagged up a steep slope to a Buddhist shrine at just over 14,000 feet. 

The weather was bright and cold. Against a backdrop of soaring snow-capped mountains and glaciers, Buddhist prayer flags flapped in the wind and birds wheeled overhead.

We soaked in the scenery for a good long while. Then Krasovic, who is 18 years younger than me, taller, and with a much longer stride, hiked 1,500 feet higher with Thapa to the actual summit. I descended while my legs still felt fresh.

Next morning, we began the longest and toughest day of our trip: an 11-mile descent of more than 4,000 feet. Hiking downhill on a rough and twisting trail was much harder than ascending, but by sunset we were back at Rimche.

Our last full day was supposed to be a downhill version of our first, but Thapa had a better idea: to take in local life and great views, we climbed out of the river valley and trekked downhill through small villages toward the snowcapped Ganesh range of the Himalayas. Our last night on the trail was in Briddim, at 7,313 feet, where we woke up to find a taxi waiting for us.

Seven days after we set out, we were back in Kathmandu for a farewell dinner.

I flew home to New York City with a quote from a Hindu sacred text lodged my mind: "In a thousand ages of the gods, I could not tell thee of the glories of the Himalaya…"

It took me a while to get there, but thanks to Thapa and OneSeed Expeditions, I saw the Himalayas the way I wanted to: up close and on foot.