dec08 ebc-chola-gokyo, budget hotels KTM, trekking agency

Hello all,

I have spent december 08 in Nepal, and I just wanted to share some tips and advises:

I would recommend both hotels I stayed in (budget hotels, defenitely no luxury, but good quality for what you pay:

Ganesh Himal (located in Chetrapati, about 10 minutes walk from the restaurants and shops of Thamel, and also 10 minutes walk from Durbar Square, free airport pickup, located in a nice and quiter area than Thamel, but in a bit of a dark alley)

Tayoma (located in Thamel, next to Walden Bookshop, very friendly and kind staff, spacious rooms with tv and phone, and private bathroom, horrible restaurant, don´t use roomservice, nice location, surprisingly quiet)

I have done a trekking of almost three weeks (I did it slowly) in the Khumbu region.

I flew KTM-Lukl-KTM, price of return flight was about 230 dollar.

I am a single female traveller and have been very careful in picking my porter/guide for this trek, which was to be my first trek and my first experience on high altitude ever!

I walked the route towards Kalapattar, and crossed on the way back the CholaPass to Gokyo.

This was in mid december, and it was quite cold during the trek. My guide (who also carried my bag)however helped with finding teahouses which were not the coldest :-) (helping me to get a room close to the stove etc). The teahouses were a lot more luxury than I imagined them to be, with good food, and lovely people.

During the trek I haven´t had a single moment where I didnot feel safe, I got along very well with the guide, and he has been a true addition to my trek, with lots of laughter together, and good information about all things necessary.

I´m very pleased that I traveled there in December (the quiet time of year) since many times I had a ';teahouse for myself'; which was lovely, and I spent various evenings huddled around the kitchen stove with the locals. I don´t think I would have liked the area with many tourists/trekkers around.

As a first-time trekker, who does not do any sports at home, and has a reasonable-to-normal condition, I found the trek tough, but defenitely do-able. There are a few rougher days, but there are many very easy and fairly short days.

The guide/porter I booked was called Purna Karki, and I booked him through Above the Himalaya trekking agency. The owner´s name is Puru, and both him and Purna have a lot of experience in different parts of the country, speak good english, and are very well organised. I found the prices reasonable, and Purna and the other guides(I checked) are good insured, licensed, get a good salary, and have very good equipment (mountainboots, down jackets, crampons etc).

I could defenitely recommend these guys to fellow-travellers, both single female trekkers as groups. I don´t want to post their details on this site, since I am not sure if it is allowed. But please contact me if you would like to have their emailaddress.