Day 1- The Start

This is our first visit to the Eastern side of Nepal, the Lumba Sumba pass trek has only been open for a few years and it describes an arc between Kanchenjunga in the east and Makalu in the west.

A short flight to Bhadrapur from Kathmandu and a dusty five hour, bone shaking, stomach wrenching drive brought us to Phidim. Along the road the banana trees and teak plantations were smothered with a layer of dust from the road and would probably remain so until the next monsoon. Sign posts to Ilam pointed to one of Nepal’s tea growing areas and as the sun set, dust gave way to tarmac but the lights on our vehicles did not seem to work making our journey even more terrifying. We came to a road blockage where a jeep had gone off the road the previous week, they were gradually winching the car up from the depths of the valley- another sobering sight! Maybe Indian style road warnings such as “its better to be Mr late than late Mr” would help! Our hotel was crummy and, with Dal Bhaat for our evening meal, we were missing Bhutan!
The following morning we had another 3 hours drive to Taplejung (1775m) before we set off to walk along a dirt track next to the Hangdewa Khola (river) and down to a confluence with the main Tamur River. Our first camp was in someone’s back garden at Mitlung (900m)
Distance 9km 4hrs

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