The Travel Photographer | Once Upon a Time in Langtang Valley | Nepal

© 2012 Ahmad Shukri | Photograph of Me at Langtang Valley | Langtang National Park | Nepal

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”

– Mark Twain –

I travel a lot and as a photographer, even though I took thousand of photos from my trip, very few of them have “my picture”, most of the times, it is about other people pictures, a stranger that I met along the way or just simple a landscape so on this trip, I make sure that will never happen again, so I slow down a bit and asked my fellow trekker,  Ahmad Shukri to take a photograph of me whenever possible.

The photograph above were taken at Langtang, a small village where the national park headquarters is located, actually I didn’t where where is the headquarters because we were too busy walking. Some trekkers choose to spend their night here especially to those who have manage to reach Lama Hotel earlier that in was supposed to be. Normally for trekkers who choose Langtang Valley Trek, they will start at Syabrubesi and then they will spend their night at Lama Hotel after five to six hours trekking depending on their pace or fitness level.

On the other hand, for six of us, the “slow trekkers” (we are slow because we took a lot of times taking photograph among ourselves, we did not sleep at Lama Hotel, instead we spend the night at Bamboo, which is located two to three hours before Lama Hotel and did you know how long it takes for us to reach Bamboo? It took no less than seven hours to get there and some trekkers just raise their eyebrows when they knew about it.

“Normally”, I said again, “normally” according to Lonely Planet Guide book, it should take around three to four hours trekking from Syabrubesi to reach Bamboo and that’s why most trekkers will sleep at Lama Hotel and not in Bamboo. We did met some trekkers and porters who choose to sleep at Bamboo and asked them, how long do they take to reach Bamboo from Syabrubesi, and their answer is four hours.

I also met one of the porters who can speaks well in Malay (the porter has spend six years working in Malaysia), that they took four hours to reach Bamboo from Syabrubesi and they choose to spend their night at Bamboo because it was getting late, they start their trekking few hours after us and if they continue thier journey, they will not be able to reach Lama Hotel before dark. I think at that time it was almost 3:30PM when I met them at Sherpa Hotel, Bamboo and normally by 5:30PM it will be getting dark here and not very safe to continue the journey.

So we spent the night at Bamboo and continue our journey the next morning to Kyanjin Gompa. Anyway just to let you know, I think, it is not that bad spending the night there, it is a bit quiet compare to Lama Hotel, few trekkers sleep at Bamboo, so if you are the type of person who like to spend a quiet time with your friends, then, Bamboo is just the right place, there are few small hotels there and if you like photography, you can spend the afternoon or evening taking pictures of the waterfall nearby, and not to forget, the sound of gushing water will keep you company at night.