Walk in the Himalayas

Today’s speaker was Dr Paul Richards whose talk was entitled A Walk in the Himalayas. This was his third trip to the area, he started in Kathmandu the capital city of Nepal and is 80% Hindu. From there they flew into Lukla which serves as the starting point for trekking and climbing to Everest base camp. Paul said that is not for the faint hearted flying into Lukla as it has one dusty runway with a mountain at one end and a sheer drop at the other end and no radar. He showed us plenty of slides of the magnificent scenery, crossing rope bridges and walking through ice fields, altitude sickness is a major issue when trekking in the Himalayas, even for the fittest, two of Pauls party were affected by it on his trip. Pauls trek took him to Namche Bazaar which is at 11,000 ft above sea level. There was an earthquake in 2015, 7.2 magnitude which devastated the area and killed a lot of people. Some stunning pictures but I think I’ll stick to walking around Meltham.