Trekking

Female Trekking Guides in Nepal

A big hat tip to the Chhetri sisters of Nepal, pioneer women in the field of Nepalese trekking guides.

It’s a lot of work to haul loads and guide clients up and down the Himalayas — work that has long been reserved for men. One of the sisters heard a story about female trekking clients being harassed by their drunken male guides, so they started the Chhetri Sisters Trekking Company, operated by women and offering services to female travelers.

As this story tells us, the sisters were led, eventually, to the founding of Empowering Women of Nepal, which offers free trekking guide training to women. EWN has trained more 16,000 women to be guides so far. They are also in the business of rescuing children from forced-labor situations.

So please read the story for their inspiring tale, and let’s all support the ladies of Nepal trekking!

{ 0 comments }

Mustang Trekking:
Remote, Rare, and Radiant

Trekking in Mustang is like being at sea, only with more dust. There’s an endless spaciousness, punctuated by cathedral columns, crumbling cliffs and towers of rock.

In the rain shadow of the Himalayas, north of the Annapurna range and south of the Tibetan Plateau, Mustang has been part of Nepal since the late 18th century but has more in common with Tibet, which surrounds it on three sides.

Alluring, no? We found these lovely descriptions in this article from an Australian newspaper, describing a two-week trek to Upper Mustang. It goes on to say that only about 2,000 trekkers visit Upper Mustang each year, which it calls “a drop in the ocean of 70,000 trekkers visiting Nepal every year.”

Read on, and you’ll come across more fine prose like this:

Then there are the villages – green and lovely oases such as Ghami, where we stop for lunch on day four, which is all autumn-leafed poplars, white-walled courtyards, fluttering prayer flags and pink hollyhocks.

At Embark, we dream of places like Mustang – wild, remote places with fascinating culture and history, not to mention amazing beauty and fantastic trekking opportunities. Our Mustang trek “More Tibetan Than Tibet” is a perfect introduction to this high, lonesome place.

{ 0 comments }

Bhutan Travel Film in Oregon March 11

If you live anywhere near Portland, Oregon, where Embark is based, we recommend you head down I-5 to Albany this Sunday to see a travel film about Bhutan.

Linn-Benton Community College is hosting “Bhutan, The Cloud Kingdom,” is by Tom Sterling, and the event Sunday is part of a series called “Travel at the Tripp.” Tickets are only $8 (and available online), and the show starts at 2 p.m. Directions are at the same link as tickets.

While we haven’t seen the film, Embark has seen Bhutan, and we think it’s a very special place. That’s why we have two or three trekking and cultural trips there every year.

{ 0 comments }

The “Vanishing Culture” of Mustang

We at Embark believe that the best reason to travel is to experience other cultures. We think it promotes understanding among people, gives us perspectives on ourselves and the world, and — if done right — can even help the cultures we visit.

That’s why we love places like Mustang, a former Tibetan kingdom, now part of Nepal, that’s about a 12-day walk from anything like a road. And it’s why we dream of trekking in Mustang before modernization has a major effect.

Not that we’re against modernization. It’s just, as this article from Business Insider points out, there are risks: given more “exciting” options, young people can forget the old ways, and cultures can vanish.

So we applaud the Vanishing Cultures Project, a nonprofit dedicated to “assisting indigenous, traditional groups worldwide preserve their culture by documenting their lifestyle through photography, research, and media, educating the public about these groups, and funding indigenous preservation initiatives.”

They published a book about Mustang, filled with amazing photographs, and give the proceeds to grassroots efforts in the country to help support their culture-saving efforts. And when we say amazing photographs, we mean it; check out these amazing photos of Mustang!

So we encourage everyone who can to trek in Mustang; we can’t wait to start offering trips there as early as 2013. Meanwhile, let’s all buy the book, or some prints, support a great cause, and feed our dreams of visiting the lost Tibetan kingdom.

{ 0 comments }