Trekking Expeditions

In this episode David and Malcolm discuss the basics of trekking, including how best to avoid and deal with altitude sickness.

They talk about how the gear is transported on a trekking expedition and they fall down the rabbit hole of what actually is a mule!! The correct answer obviously being: a mule is the sterile offspring of a male donkey (jack) and a female horse (mare). 

They also discuss local initiatives to keep mountains and other tourists hotspots clean from rubbish brought in by tourists.

David used Sherpa Expidition and Trekking on his Annapurna base camp trek: 
https://www.facebook.com/share/1CM14kkqqu/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to Unravel Travel, where every journey has a story.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

You know, that can cause you issues with safety as well if you've got somebody who's a bit slower and you end up being out for longer and the weather's usually worse in the mountains later in the day, so you're better off starting early and pause a day to get there to Kathmandu. You would then probably spend a day in Kathmandu getting bits of equipment that you haven't got. Kathmandu's a great place to start a trekking holiday because they've got all the shops, so you don't necessarily need to have all the equipment. You can hire a sleeping bag, you can hire a down jacket, all that sort of stuff. And then from Kathmandu, it'll take you at least a day to get to the start of the trek as well. Even if you fly, that takes a fair bit of time with the check-in and everything. But a lot of the treks are done by road. Because it's there. Now, I think that means I win the uh the prize for the shortest quote to the start of the podcast, Malcolm. Uh and for those that aren't aware, that was the answer that uh British Mountaineer George Mallory gave when he was asked why he wanted to climb Everest, and it quite simply because it's there. And I think that's appropriate for this episode, which is talking about trekking, because one of the questions I put in the notes was why would people willingly walk hours uphill uh and then end up sleeping in a sleeping bag in a tent or in a dilapidated tea house? And I think because it's there is almost the best answer that I could come up with as well. You're really selling it there, Dave. I know, I know. You I think you really have to do it to truly understand it. And the first time I went trekking, I wasn't planning on going and doing another, but eventually it got under my skin. So if you haven't guessed, today's episode is about trekking. It's not something sadomasochistic then. It's some sort of maybe, I don't know. I I feel like you you get into a rhythm of things, it clears your mind. Uh so it's less of an issue now, but when I was working in the city, being able to turn off immediately on a holiday meant you got more out of the holiday. I found that when I went on beach holidays, which I love doing now, just got back from one, that it can take you a week to, or it used to take me a week to turn off from to decompress about yeah. Whereas as soon as I started walking up the mountain going, bloody hell, you you only focus on one step in front of the other and the obviously the beauty around you.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Okay, and so checking uh in that regard, we're talking about uh overseas big mountains. The UK walks were going at a step beyond and above that.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, I think so. Next level, because I I call UK stuff hiking. There obviously are some challenging routes, very challenging routes uh in the UK. But I'm talking about, in your brother's words, more of an expedition type thing. So in the previous episodes when we were doing I foolishly and realize incorrectly called what he was doing, canoeing, kayaking, a holiday. And he said, I see it's an expedition. And I thought, no, you're right, and the stuff I'm talking about, it's multi-day having to get the right kit with you, usually having a support team with you uh to carry all your stuff, uh, but also all the cooking gear if you're camping. Uh I've I've been on several treks where we half of the team that were with us were carrying the calagastos, the uh the pots and pans and the food to keep us going for half a week or whatever. Uh so yeah, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Okay, so mountains and and so not long distance walking like walking the Appalachian Trail or something, but um because that's a bit lower level, but you actually mean sort of high mountains uh further removed from civilization, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Um and mostly the only reason I'm doing talking about that is because that's my experience. I haven't tended to do the the longer distance Corsica trail or whatever, which I understand is absolutely beautiful, but it's not something I ever got round to doing. So yeah, I mean I've I've got is it worth me just mentioning some of the places I've been and then maybe we go into more detail on the individual places on future episodes if if we feel that we want to? Yeah, sure. Fire away. So my first one was the Inca Trail, which is a pretty good place for people to start, uh, because there's a mixture mix of the culture as well as the trekking, uh, and it's not overly high at about I think it's 4,000 metres, but very, very pretty place to be. Uh obviously the culture is amazing when you get to Machu Picchu. That was the first one I did, and then I didn't end up doing anything for a long time afterwards. And in fact, as I was approaching the Dead Woman's Pass, uh I remember shouting up next year I'm going on a driving holiday. Because it it maybe not quite broken me, but it got close. It was bloody hard work. Uh, but then that was when my knees were still in good shape, and coming down felt like a lot of fun. Whereas these days I'd much rather be going up than down. How old were you then, Dave, when you did that? Oh god. Um, I think it was the year uh the two the Twin Towers got attacked. Was that 2001?

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, it could be.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah, I think it's 2001 because I was at Merrill Lynch and it was uh be a couple of months before the Twin Towers came down. So 2001. So yeah, getting on for 15 years this 25 years. Sorry, 25. You're not in accountancy anymore, are you? Did I used to be an accountant? Yeah, 25 years ago. Um and then the next time I and probably when I really got the book was when uh Barbara and I were doing a four-month sabbatical around uh Southeast Asia. Uh and I I trekked in Vietnam in Sappa and Dalat, Burma, went into Burma and we we hiked, trekked. Uh so these weren't really mountains, I suppose, up to the high points in Burma, stayed in very remote villages, uh washing clothes at the village well, all that sort of stuff, and then also Laos and Thailand did similar stuff. Uh so then when I got back, I had a taste for it, and we'd always talked about going to Nepal. So we went to Nepal, uh, and the first one it's got two names, either the Anapurna Sanctuary or Anapurna Base Camp, uh, base camp being the starting point of going up Anapurna Mountain proper, which I believe fewer people have been to the top of Anapurna than have been to the top of Everest. Uh the sa the sanctuary itself or the high the base camp, we went to 4,130 metres, which is quite high. Um, you tend to need specialist trekking insurance or an insurance policy that covers trekking above 3,000 metres or 4,000, they they differ a little bit. But if you're going to do something like this, I would definitely look into what insurance you've got because obviously a helicopter off the mountain doesn't come cheap. Although generally, I mean I have had altitude sickness a few times, and I'll talk about this more later. But generally, just going down cures altitude sickness if you aren't silly and keep going when you spot the symptoms. As soon as you spot the symptoms, you start.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Well, but surely, I mean, in some of these or most of these that you're going to be talking about, you're part of an organised party and a trip. Is that not right? I mean, I guess when you were with Barbara in Southeast Asia, that wasn't probably the case, but the rest of them, these are organised trips. So can you just what happens if one person gets altitude sickness? Does everybody have to bail and go back down?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

Or they were all organised actually. Even uh when we were in Vietnam and Burma, we would all well organise, we would have a local guide.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Okay. Um that's just the two of you though, isn't it? If there's a group of 20 people, you'd never get anywhere the first time somebody gets altitude sickness, you all have to go back down.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Yeah, when it well when it happened to me, I spotted the symptoms, uh, spoke, it was in the middle of the, I just didn't sleep that night. I had a terrible night. I I had nausea, dizziness, loss of appetites, all of the key symptoms. So I I went and spoke to the guy that was organizing it, said, Look, I th I think I've got altitude sickness. And he sort of like spoke to me and said, Yeah, yeah, you do. So what happened was they sent me down. Uh Barbara decided to come down with me anyway. She didn't have to, she could have carried on. So it works like that. They sent me down with one of the young lads who was sort of helping carrying the stuff. So I think by the time I'd gone down a thousand metres, I was already feeling a lot better. And you, you know, you can go down, or maybe it was 500, 700 metres, it took about an hour to get down, and then suddenly you feel your energy return, you start feeling better. Uh so he took me down, then he turned round and went back up and hooked up with the party again.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

But what did that mean to the rest of your trip then? If that happens on the first few days, can you catch them up or you know?

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Nah, well, once you go down, that's it, you're done. Uh, because if you start trying to go back up, you'll just get sick again. Exactly, yeah. So it was a real hardship. Uh, we basically booked ourselves on a safari for the three days that was left of the hike. Uh, so we went uh in I can't remember the name of the crater in Tanzania, but we did a safari around there. So, you know, it it wasn't a problem at all. It depends where you get it as whether you've got that option. Um, the mountains are nice, even just having two, three days chilling out in a mountain village would be not a bad way of spending the time.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, I'm just thinking if you've got a 10-day trek planned and you arrive and you get you have a problem early on, um that could really be a mess up of the whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

From from altitude, you're not really gonna have a altitude sickness until you're seven several days in, just because it takes a while, you you're never gonna get really sick until you hit 3,000 metres or more. Uh, and if that if it's a well-devised trek, they will take time to get to that level. Because the old adage is uh climb high, sleep low. So you're supposed to go to a certain height during the day and then sleep a little bit lower than that so that your body gets a chance to acclimatise. Some of the problems these days is that especially the the one where I was sick was Kili, uh Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. People they try to fit the trek into people's amount of holiday they have, so they end up doing it too quickly. Um and I tried to put myself on a longer one, but it just wasn't there weren't the numbers interested.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

And that's what I had down on my list of things of climatisation, actually. So that that is the as I sort of thought might be the case, the issue if you try and do these things too quickly without getting used to it. And yeah, the number of people flying into Nepal and wanting to go straight up the mountains because they've got a week is gonna be problem, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 11:15

It it it is, and you you're always better off either taking more time than you think you're gonna need or choosing to try and do less than you want to do because you don't have enough time to do it, you will enjoy it more. Attitude sickness is not a lot of fun. I mean it's e it's easy to get over, you come down and then you start feeling fine, but then you've you haven't achieved your target. Um, just a word, another word on attitude sickness. Um, there's uh I think it's called Diamox. Uh oh that's the second thing on my list. Drugs drugs. It's uh it's a medic medication that you can take, which apparently uh helps uh with alleviating the symptoms of altitude sickness. Uh I've personally not taken it because it started to become available as I was kind of stopping doing my my bigger treks. Uh so it's not that I'm against it, I just never got round to really looking into it.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Can you buy that over the counter or is it a prescription thing?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

I'm not 100% sure, but I think you can go to your doctor uh and get it. So I don't think it is over the counter, although it might be in some of these countries where you're doing the treks almost certainly is. Yeah. Uh, because you know, it's a different thing when you go to places like Nepal in terms of you don't need prescriptions, you can get very strong antibiotics, all that sort of stuff. So yeah, so I mean we we touched upon altitude sickness there. As I said, the symptoms to watch out for me look up, search for them online or whatever. But from my experience, it's starts with a bit of tiredness, dizziness, uh, nausea, loss of appetite, just all the sort of stuff that you don't want when you've got eight hours of walking. So you probably wouldn't go ahead with it if you knew what you were doing.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Um and one other thing that's strange because that's what I feel when I meet up with you, Dave, and I'm not even and I'm not even at altitude.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Yeah, well that's that's that's because catching it's because you spent too long in Lincolnshire, Malcolm. You're not you so altitude is what you're used to, so it's not me. It's not me causing that. And another word, well, this might be uh relevant to you, Malcolm, as well. Another word, when you go into altitude, you shouldn't really be drinking alcohol because it it it masks the symptoms and it makes them worse as well. Uh, and obviously dehydration is a big factor. So that's the altitude sickness. Uh I'm talking, so I've touched on that because of Nepal. Uh so I've been to Nepal a few times. As I said, I've done Anapona Sanctuary with a group. Uh I've also led a holiday there uh where I hired local guides. I took uh six people from my uh walking group and went out and spoke to interviewed a local trekking company, which uh very happy to recommend other people to use. They were they were absolutely brilliant. I've also been to Nepal to do Lang Tang and Gossakund, which uh is a very, very pretty uh hike, a bit longer, and you go over 5,000 metres, so it's quite high. Then the other one, Manaslu Circuit, which is a more modern take on the Anapurna circuit, takes a bit longer and is quieter, or used to be, although it's probably getting quite popular now, and that's 15 days' hike.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

That's what I was just gonna say. What what are the durations of these when you say shorter and longer? So that's a 15-day hike, and realistically, it's a couple of days travel to get there, probably from the UK and back again.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

And then, you know, uh and and as you say, unless the hike is a gradual start. So you're talking, aren't you, three or four weeks?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

So uh that that was a three-week holiday. Yeah, pause a day to get there uh to Kathmandu. You would then probably spend a day in Kathmandu getting bits of equipment that you haven't got. Kathmandu is a great place to start a trekking holiday because they've got all the shops, so you don't necessarily need to have all the equipment. You can hire a sleeping bag, you can hire a down jacket, all that sort of stuff. Uh, and and then from Kathmandu, it'll take you at least a day to get to the start of the trek as well. Even if you fly, that takes a fair bit of time with the check-in and everything. Uh, but a lot of the treks are done by road uh and very interesting roads, very narrow. Uh I've been on one bus where there was uh the driver who was young, uh, and then uh what looked like a 12-year-old, although I'm sure he was a bit older than that, hanging out the door, uh communicating with various whistles and basically telling him how much of the wheel was still on the road. I was on the side with the drop, and I was thinking, I really wish I'd sat on the other side now. Uh but yeah, a bit bit scary, but you know, very, very skilled the two of them. Uh they they didn't drive the bus off. Although to that being said, when we when I took the group to do the Annapurna Base Camp on the to break up the journey to the start of the trek, we did some whitewater rafting. Uh, and as we were whitewater rafting along this uh this river uh next to the road that I think we were going to be driving down later, there was a a truck on the fallen off the road into the edge of the river where we were whitewater rafting, which didn't fill us with an awful lot of confidence about the safety of the roads.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Well, it it had fallen off just as you were coming past, or it it was it had been there.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Okay, yeah. Yeah, so that that that's the ones I've been to in Nepal. You've been listening to Unravel Travel on the subject of trekking. Uh as I mentioned uh Kilimanjaro, uh I've been to Ethiopia, the Simeon Mountains, that was 4,000 metres. Ethiopia, I don't know about you, Malcolm, but due to our feed the world, Bob Geldoff, 1980s upbringing, I thought Ethiopia was complete dry desert, famine or whatever. But if you get into the mountains, it's absolutely beautiful scenery, green, lush, very, very pretty part of the world, which I wasn't expecting. Well, I guess I was once I ducked it, but yeah, uh I wouldn't have known that off the top of my head or from my 80s education. And then one in Europe, which I I really, really pretty hard work. This one. Uh it's the Hort route, uh, where you walk from Chamonix to Zermat. Altitude's not an issue, but we were climbing about a mile a day and then descending a mile a day. So we would start in one valley, climb up onto the high bit between another valley, and then camp down in a valley the other the other side. So that that was when I was at my fittest, probably the hardest physically that I had to do, but I was in my best shape, so I really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

And so for these sort of treks, I mean, I can imagine lots of armchair warriors signing themselves up for these things and it being a nightmare. Was there any sort of do they have sort of recommendations about levels of fitness they expect, people going to training, that sort of thing, or are they just uh taking anybody who signs up? I mean, on your trips, have there been some people who were totally out of their debt?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, that's that's a good question. And I've not been on an organized one for some time. Uh I used to go with Explore and Exodus back when they were both independent companies. I think one of them might have been taken over, I'm not going to say the name, but by uh a bigger multinational now. But when they were independent, you used to you couldn't book it online and then just turn up. You would actually have a conversation with them. They would find out what you'd been on before, make sure you knew what you were getting yourself into, you were capable of doing it. And they grade their treks. Uh so five being the highest, uh, and I don't know if they start at one. But uh, I mean, I took a lot of what how they used to do things on board with how I do things when I'm running my holidays. In that if somebody signs up for a holiday that I've not walked with before or hasn't been on a previous holiday, I have a conversation with them first because I want to make sure that it's one appropriate for them so that they enjoy it. Yeah. But secondly, that that there's they're not going to be somebody that's really struggling and slowing the group down because you know that can cause you issues with safety as well if you've got somebody who's a bit slower and you end up being out for longer, and the weather's usually worse in the mountains later in the day, so you're better off starting early and uh and having that contingency time. But if you lose all your contingency because you've got somebody really slow, yeah you're in a position where you you know you can't deal with things that if they go wrong so easily.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

And it's going to frustrate everybody else as well, isn't it? Spoil the holiday.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

It does, although I find people are really sympathetic with that sort of thing. Uh yeah, expeditional holiday. So I on those, I've not really had anybody who shouldn't have been. I've heard stories of it happening, but I've always been lucky that the people on it were fit people, they were on the right holiday. But as I say, that was a while ago, and they've been taken over, and may I don't know, maybe maybe they've managed to keep those standards, maybe they haven't. Um so if if you've been with anybody recently, then please put something in the comments, positive or negative, just so other people. Because I would always recommend Explore and Exodus. I think they were really, really well run. I had some great times with them, and as I said, I use many of their ideas rolling forward to uh to running my walking group, including the ratings of the walks, so that people would know whether it was an easier walk or a harder walk.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Uh you're you're talking about your walks in the UK rather than the rather than the you uh you I mean because you ran the trip to uh Nepal and uh and Thailand, but Thailand was just it it wasn't quite in the same category as the No Thailand was sight Thailand was sightseeing, I in and around water.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

So yeah, we did we did uh some snorkeling, we did uh kayaking, sea kayaking, that sort of stuff. But yeah, no, Nepal very much sat down and spoke to people because I'd done that trek myself, so I knew how difficult it was. Uh so just making sure that though there were only people who were going to be able to do it on it.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

And did you insist that they had appropriate levels of insurance? And in fact, do these tour groups insist that you have insurance or did they leave that up to you? I mean, I would have thought they would want to insist on something like that. If they're gonna insist on levels of fitness or you know experience, you'd think likewise insurance is important.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yeah, you're quite right. And back in the day, again, I can't talk to what they do now, they absolutely did make sure they even it wasn't just a case of asking, they wanted to see a copy of the insurance, make sure it went to the right level. And yes, when I did my Nepal one, I I did the same thing, just make sure that people have got the level of insurance they need for for whatever height we were going to. Again, we were over four thousand metres, so it just trips you into that next level. I think there's even a higher category as well, where you go even higher and you need more insurance.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Uh well when we have Stuart back on again to talk about his experience. Around K2, we can ask him what level of insurance he had. I'm guessing it was probably barely any.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

I'm looking forward to that episode because you know I've got a lot of respect for Stu. Uh, but he did say on the kayaking one when we were asking him questions in this vein, which was uh do as I say, not as I do. I do suspect that his K2, given on what you said, I've not actually spoken to him at all about it, but there might be an element of uh we'll put him on as a uh a cautionary note of how not to do it.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah, I think the phrase wingin' a prayer probably comes into mind. You've been listening to Unravel Travel on the subject of trekking. I mean, these groups you you have uh how much of the stuff are you carrying yourself? Because you you were saying there's a group of porters, and if you're camping, I guess there's quite a lot of stuff to carry in terms of cooking material, foodstuffs, as well as the camping gear. I guess you're not carrying all that yourselves. Quite right. Any of it? A day bag, maybe?

SPEAKER_01 23:08

Why why have a dog and bark yourself? Uh yeah, indeed. You don't carry very much, you carry what you need for the day. So waterproof jacket, trousers if you feel you need them, trekking poles I always think are pretty essential for your knees, especially when going downhill, but they do help with up as well. If you're higher, you'd have your down jacket in your day bag. When you stop, it gets cold. When higher, I'm talking way over three thousand metres. Because during the day it's uh until you get really high, it's about 20 degrees Celsius, so it's sort of shorts and t-shirt. It's beautiful weather. But when you get up to 4,000 metres, it'll probably be lovely and sunny, usually, but maybe only four or five degrees C. So having a lightweight but warm down jacket is a good way to go. You'd probably maybe have you'd carry your water, but I'm mostly talking about the day. Well, not necessarily, because I'm mostly talking about Nepal here, uh, and they've got so many little villages and stops that you go in that you can always top up your water or buy a cup of lemon and honey and ginger tea just to help with the inevitable cold that you'll have if you're in the Himalayas. But yeah, there are other places I'm thinking maybe Ethiopia, certainly Kyrgyzstan. There was nowhere to resupply in Kyrgyzstan. You'd have to carry enough water to get yourself to the lunch stop and then from lunch to the afternoon. And what they would do is they they would boil the water at lunch so that you could then have that for the afternoon. Right. Uh or you can take water purification tablets. Uh, I've used that as well. So if you come across a river, you can fill up, just put the purification tablets in, although that there's this piece of kit which I always quite liked but never got round to getting, which is a UV light. Oh, yeah. So you fill your face. Uh so you fill the bottle with water and then put this wand type thing in, and it basically treats all the water with UV.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Right. Uh lovely piece of kit. I was gonna say again, it's like you can read my notes. I was gonna ask you about the straws. You can get these straws, can't you? Which which also filter the water.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Exactly. Uh they'll be doing the same sort of job, I would imagine. Never use them. Uh I've only ever used purification or boiling. But yeah, that it's one of the key things though. You you and probably the most you're carrying is probably your water, to be honest. The weight of the water. Again, depending upon how often you have to stop and whether you can resupply or whether you've got to do it for at least half a day. Uh and then everything else carried by the porters uh or pack animals. That's not very nice. Yeah, well, you know, they they got to earn their money somehow, pack animals. So they're they're often mules, because I didn't know this, but uh mules are apparently stronger than either donkeys or what's a mule, is it half horse, half donkey?

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Isn't is is it half donkey, half ass? That's the back end.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Yeah, that's what that's what I was thinking it was as well, but I thought I'd let you say it.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Um is it pony and donkey cross? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

I don't know. Well we should have I should have looked this up. But apparently they're stronger, so it's it's usually mules that uh they have rather than donkeys, uh certainly not horses. And some at some places don't have them, so like uh Annapurna Sanctuary, it's a pack animal free zone because it's a religious area, right? Uh which means all the carrying is done by the locals. Which on the face of it sounds really bad, especially when on one of the treks we realized it was a load of women carrying all of our gear. That there's probably no reason why I should feel worse that I'm letting ladies carry my gear than letting men carry it. I should feel bad either way, but you just do. You just think that you should be carrying it yourself. But then when you look at it from another angle, it's a significant source of income. Yeah, absolutely. And these areas, sadly, are dirt poor. So, you know, it without the tourist income coming in. Uh and we saw Izzy and I have just got back from um Bali and um and Lombok and the Guinea Islands, again, without tourism in those places, their lifestyle would be significantly different. Yeah, I I don't feel bad about it these days. I I'd feel worse if I went there and avoided using uh local labour, whether it's a taxi driver guide or whatever. Uh I think it's a way of sort of sharing. I mean, we're amazingly fortunate because of where we were born, Louth for me. Speak for yourself. We were obviously deep in the West. And I think you know, if you can help in any small way, then it it is it's a good thing to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Yes, that makes perfect sense. I think that's um that's uh something I would agree with wholeheartedly. Uh, there's lots talked about the negative side of tourism, but um there are positive sides to it as well, and especially in these totally out-of-the-way places, although you know there is a downside to trekking. You hear about the the amount of rubbish left on Everest on quite a regular basis. It's all well and good trekking everything in, but you have to take the stuff out with you as well, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 28:07

You do, although I think these places and also uh like Indonesia and beaches, they they're pristine, the beaches, and that's not because the tourists I think they are quite good at taking stuff away, but these areas have now realized that they they will get more tourism if they help. I I I know they shouldn't because it's the Westerners that are bringing it in, but if they organise things to keep them clean. And I I'm a big supporter of uh them charging local taxes. So when you when you arrive in a place, force every Westerner to pay X amount of dollars to help fund these initiatives because we will enjoy it more if it's clean than if it's dirty, and we should be paying for it because we're the ones that are causing the issue in the first place, whether it's you individually or whether it's just sheer volume of tourism. You sometimes just can't help it. You know, something blows out your hand and it becomes rubbish. You didn't mean to do it.

SPEAKER_00 29:03

If you can afford to go to these places, you can afford to pay a modest taxation to keep things, can't you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

So I I'm I'm a big fan of that. I think it's something which uh more and more places should be doing, as long as they use the money sensibly as well, which I I feel they they they're beginning to realise that it's in the best interests of the area to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:23

And these uh treks up into the mountains with camping and the like, you know, you're they they're ca if 15 days, you said for one of them, are they resupplying during that trip or are you surviving off dried rations by the end of it? Biscuits with weevils in them.

SPEAKER_01 29:41

Well, you've got to get a bit of protein in your biscuit. Generally resupply. So that 15-day one, we were regularly going through villages and goat meat. Yeah, exactly. In fact, I'm trying to remember which it it was the manaslue one, the 15-day. We'd done the high bit of the trek, and we were all feeling super super fit, got all these red blood cells coursing through our body, and the the guy that was leading it, and that Nepalese guy said, uh, tonight we're gonna have a decent meal. We're gonna go to the village, buy a goat. Uh, I should just tell vegetarians to maybe to turn off at this point, have it slaughtered, butcher it, uh, and then that will be the meal for tonight. We all went, Okay, that's cool. Uh so do is it okay if we go and watch the whole process? Uh because I I I again I feel if you're willing to eat meat, you shouldn't shy away from it. You felt about it before you you felt that about it before you went to watch it. But I think if you're if you're eating meat, you should accept that it comes from a living animal and uh not not just think that you get it in Tesco's or whatever. Anyway, so they said, Yeah, absolutely, you will have to go quick because they need to get there early. So we were sort of like jogging half of the route. But as I said, we felt brilliant because we'd we'd we were probably about 2,000 meters down from the highest bit, so we we were as good as you get in the mountains. Anyway, we got there and sure enough, there's a goat tethered, uh, and we sat waiting for the rest of the party or whoever to turn up to uh to slaughter the goat, and then there's this this woman, old elderly uh woman comes out and there's a bit of an altercation, the goat gets untied and it bounds off up the mountain. And I go, I think that's our dinner, it's just run off bleating merrily and is making sure it's going nowhere near any human anymore. And anyway, sure enough, uh the guy who was arranging all of this turns up, and there's a lot of uh maybe not heated but animated discussion in uh Nepali. And it turns out that yes, that was our dinner, and they basically put a bounty out uh to whoever can bring a goat or a baby water buffalo. Immediately the village disappears off, and very quickly somebody comes back with his baby water buffalo, which makes me think that there might have been a little bit of maybe he let it go, I don't know. Anyway, and I don't know whether I should go into the detail of the slaughter of the water buffalo, because it's probably not well. Let's treat it like we did the decapitation. Okay. So there's this baby water buffalo, and they get a sledgehammer.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Yeah, let's probably not go into that detail.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

I think we just said let's not do uh yeah, it was very apocalypse now, if you've seen the film, especially the director's cup. So yeah, we ended up eating water buffalo for dinner and for breakfast, and I'm sure there was plenty left over. Well, there was plenty left over. But what was interesting about that wasn't the the killing of it, but the butchering of it was really interesting because literally nothing goes to waste. Catch the blood, make blood sausages, you know, every everything. And again, that's how I feel. If you're going to take an animal's life, then you want to make sure that everything is used, otherwise it's just disrespectful to the animal that voluntarily, maybe not, gave its life. It was testicle sandwich next day, was it? Did I say it was a male? I can't remember. I think it probably was. And no, I didn't have any testicles in my sandwich then or at any other point. Are they tasty? Do you like them? Uh anyway, I've forgotten what the original question was.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

I was asking you about the standard of cuisine on these trips when you're miles away from anywhere.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Oh, that was how old is it? How how yeah. And then on so that one was resupplying regularly on another trip, Kyrgyzstan. Yeah, we were basically this is the most remote I've ever been. It was a 10-day trek, and basically it resupplied halfway through. So we had bread for five days, and it you know, it got more and more stale as we got towards the fifth day, so that it was just rock hard. And yeah, a lot of canned goods. So you start off with the fresh stuff, and then obviously once that's gone, you move on to the tinned beans, tin sausages, all that sort of stuff. But you're doing s burning so many calories, virtually anything tastes tastes good. So yeah, you know, the the these aren't culinary trips anyway. You're eating to to make sure you've got the energy for the next day.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Yeah, and you're not catching much local produce, are you? You're not in the muscle beds or catching the fish or uh anything like that. So unless it's a local goat that wondered. Well, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

That was the only time I think that we actually did anything like that. Just a quick nod to a comment Stu made as well. Uh I always take my own coffee with me on these things just because uh it tastes so much nicer, and I love having coffee in the mountains. Stu described a place in Scotland where you can't think of a better way. Uh same, I can't think of a better way to start the day with a fresh cup of coffee looking out at the mountains. Absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

And a trowel to hand. I know we're probably running out of time on this episode, but we'll have a few took for it, so we've all come back to those. Yes. Um, we should definitely come back to each of these places again. I I'm aware of one of your stories about the toilet facilities, the urinal in a in a particular location. I wasn't actually going to tell that story, but thanks now, because we're carrying me under the bus. We'll come to that one another time. And we've already had the you urinating on the guard, so you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

Yeah, yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Anyway, so those are just teasers for another time.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Exactly. As was this episode as a whole. Uh, I think what we will do is we'll it might be a regular coming back doing a little maybe one or two of the uh the destinations in more detail. Yeah. Rather than sort of like have a whole load of trekking episodes now, we can sort of feed them in so that there's variety for people who aren't interested in trekking.

SPEAKER_00 35:40

I think that makes sense. Good, thank you, Dave. That was really interesting. Thank you very much, Malcolm. Really enjoyed doing it. Speak to you all soon. Bye bye.