HUNTERS
In many areas the late summer and autumn see the backcountry fill up with hunters carrying high-powered rifles. Try to make sure they don’t shoot you by wearing something bright, like an orange hat or jacket. In some areas, officials recommend wearing two or more pieces of blaze orange. Hunting season is not the time to be wearing camouflage in the wilderness.
chapter ten
adventure travel
backpacking abroad
TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN A WOOD, AND I—I TOOK THE ONE LESS TRAVELED BY, AND THAT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.
—“The Road Not Taken,” Robert Frost
North America may well be the best place in the world for backpacking: it’s got a good trail network and vast areas of protected wilderness. Ironically, the excellence of the trails and the numerous published trail guides can lessen the adventure.
Trekking abroad can be different. There are few places in the world where hiking isn’t possible, though it may be very different from what you’re used to at home. In Europe there’s a huge network of well-maintained trails; mountain lodges that provide beds, meals, and heating are found in many areas, including the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Scandinavian mountains, making long-distance walks with very light loads possible. To explore the more remote areas, “primitive” camping is still necessary, of course (and many, including me, prefer it, at least in good weather).
A mountain hut in the Queyras Alps, France.
European hikers often carry their own gear, but in many countries porters or pack animals are used, as in that ultimate hiking destination, the Himalaya. Treks there usually involve porters—one or two for small groups, up to forty for large, organized trips. Tea houses are found on the most popular routes, such as the Annapurna Circuit or the Everest Base Camp Trek, but in most areas all your supplies have to be carried in. The same system is used in Africa for ascents of mountains like Kilimanjaro.Other foreign hiking opportunities range from the rain forests of Costa Rica and other Central and South American countries to the deserts of Australia or Israel.
Charkabhot village, Dolpo, Nepal.
High on the Hardangerjøkulen ice cap, Norway.
Not all these areas are “wilderness” by the North American definition; in the Alps, the valleys are cultivated (in fact, alp means mountain meadow); in the Himalaya, the hiking trails are highways for the local people, used for trading and travel. Some areas are untouched and remote, however: most of Greenland is a mass of uninhabitable ice, as is Antarctica.
Long-distance trails exist in many countries. You can walk from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea along the spine of the Pyrenees on the 500-mile Pyrenean High Level Route or cross the Arctic Circle on Sweden’s 280-mile Kungsleden (the King’s Way). Other well-known trails are New Zealand’s Milford Track in the Fiordland Mountains, the Tour of Mont Blanc in the French Alps, England’s 270-mile Pennine Way, the High Level Route in Corsica, the Concordia Trek in the Karakorum, the Ascent of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and the Annapurna Circuit and the Everest Base Camp Trek in Nepal.
Two books with general introductions to these and other international hikes are Classic Treks: The 30 Most Spectacular Hikes in the World, edited by Bill Birkett, and The World’s Great Adventure Treks, edited by Jack Jackson. Where long trails don’t exist, it’s usually easy to link shorter trails to make through-routes or circuits, just as you would at home.
The problems of hiking in some of these areas mainly concern information and organization. Only the most experienced travelers can set out for unknown foreign destinations on short notice and with minimal planning—and even then chances are something important will be overlooked.
Foreign adventure travel is often considered expensive, but this is true only if you want to visit a place like Antarctica. Indeed, you can visit many places for less than it would cost to hike in some areas of North America. If you live on the East Coast, a visit to Costa Rica or even Nepal may be less expensive than an airline flight to the Southwest—and certainly less than one to Alaska. Although the airfares may be higher, the ground costs are much, much less.
INFORMATION AND PLANNING
It’s not difficult to learn what to expect at most hiking destinations. At an outdoor store, bookstore, or library you should find guidebooks to most countries and areas. Many, of course, are designed for auto travelers and “tourists” rather than trekkers. Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Bradt, Sierra Club Books, and Mountaineers publish books covering areas outside North America that are suitable for hiking. Most include general information about the countries, along with details of towns and popular destinations. Some have details of specific hikes, as well. There are trekking guides for many areas such as Nepal and other Himalayan countries. John Hatt’s The Tropical Traveler covers everything a first-time traveler could want to know in an entertaining and informative way. Its focus is the tropics, but the general information is just as useful for trips to other areas.
Travel guides can never be completely up to date, however, and they may not include the information you require. Tourist boards can be helpful, as can national parks and other land-management agencies, especially for Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. All this information can be found on the Web, now the main research tool.
Many trekking guides contain maps; some, such as those for many European long-distance paths, may even contain topographic maps. However, for most trips you’ll want separate maps. These can be ordered at home from Web sites such as maplink.com or bought at your destination. I prefer to buy maps before the trip so I can use them for planning. Map quality varies enormously from country to country; some are barely more than sketches. I used basic 1:250,000 maps on a trek in the remote Dolpo region of Nepal. We crossed three 17,000-foot passes on that trip, none of which was named or had a height assigned on the map. Adapting to the scale was difficult, and the lack of detail made walking interesting in places—cliffs and gullies appeared in front of us that weren’t on the map. Most foreign maps and trekking guides use metric measurements, so you should become familiar with measuring in meters and kilometers before a trip.
On a high pass in the Himalaya, Dolpo, Nepal.
TRIP PLANNING
Hiring a Guide
In some parts of the world, such as the Himalaya, hiking without a local guide can be difficult, especially in remote areas, unless you can speak the local language. If you are going to be out for several weeks you may need porters to carry food and equipment too. Joining an organized trek is one way to deal with this but it is possible to hire guides and porters yourself. In cities like Katmandu there are many guiding and trekking companies offering this service. National tourist bureaus, adventure travel and outdoor magazine advertisements, trekking Web sites, and hiking guidebooks are sources of information. To check the reputation of a guide or trekking organization you could put a query on an Internet hiking newsgroup or message board. Nothing beats a personal recommendation.
When hiring guides and porters all the details of their employment should be established clearly at the time. As well as their duties and payment this should include food and equipment, both of which you may be expected to provide (and which can usually be bought or hired locally). Procedures for cooking, sanitation, water treatment, and trash disposal should be established before the hike begins, too. Tipping after the trek is the norm. The booking agency should be able to tell you the standard rate.
Political Instability and Terrorism
The political situation is very volatile in many countries with violent demonstrations and uprisings always possible. Getting caught up in these can be frightening and dangerous, even when visitors are not targeted. Sometimes, though, kidnapping rich Westerners (and even a threadbare hiker living on minimum means is rich in many countries) for ransom or political leverage is a deliberate tactic. Even worse some terrorist organizations target and murder visitors from countries they see as enemies. It is important when planning trips abroad to find out the up-to-date
position regarding security in the places you intend visiting. This information is available on the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs Web site at travel.state.gov/travel/warnings.html.
Vaccinations
Vaccinations against various diseases—everything from yellow fever to hepatitis—are necessary when visiting many countries. Courses of vaccination can take four to six weeks to complete so you need to contact your doctor well in advance of your trip. Information on what vaccinations are needed plus other health information can be found in the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) biennial Yellow Book, Health Information for International Travel, and on the CDC website (www.cdc.gov/travel).
Money
When traveling it’s best to carry some coins and low denomination notes in the local currency for small value purchases. In some remote areas where only cash is accepted you may need a fair amount, in which case it’s best to carry it in small sums in different places on your person and in your pack. It’s best to obtain foreign currency in advance of your trip too so you can get the best exchange rate and not end up trying to find an exchange bureau after a long tiring flight. For anything other than small expenses credit cards are ideal, being safer and more convenient than cash. The main brands are usable in a surprising number of places (in Norway, for example, you can pay for accommodation and food in remote unstaffed mountain huts by filling in a credit card slip). In towns credit cards can be used to withdraw more cash from banks or ATMs. Bankcards can be used for this too but only if your bank is part of the same international network. Traveler’s checks, the traditional means of dealing with foreign currency, aren’t as convenient as credit cards or ATMs but might still be useful at times, though I haven’t carried any for many years. If you do use traveler’s checks ones from widely recognized brands such as American Express or Visa are best. Dollar checks are welcome in many developing countries, ones in the local currency or Euros are more likely to be accepted in Western Europe.
Web Planning Sources
Finding information for foreign travel used to be difficult and time-consuming. The Internet changed all that. The problem now is the vast amount of information available. Say you are interested in Nepal, a prime destination for overseas hiking. Enter “Nepal” on Google and you get an astonishing 8,980,000 results. Refine the search to “Nepal Hiking” and you still get 161,000 results. Even if you then search for just one popular hike in Nepal, the Annapurna Trek, there are 35,100 results. This overwhelming volume of information can be reduced by using sites that have done the searching for you and which provide links to selected relevant sites. One of the best of these is a Dutch site called Traildata base (traildatabase.org), which claims to be the world’s largest such site. Click on “Nepal” on the Traildatabase home page and you get 61 links, a much more manageable number, especially as they are divided into categories. There is also much useful information including links on the now venerable (in Web terms) GORP site (gorp.com) and on Away.com. (Among the material on Nepal on GORP.com you’ll find a feature of mine on a hike through the remote Dolpo region.) Most countries’ tourist boards have Web sites too. Nepal’s can be found at welcomenepal.com.
Once you have general information and an idea of where you want to walk, you can get to the specifics. Making lists may seem tedious, but I find they’re the only way to ensure I don’t forget anything. One is a gear list, tailored to the area and weather conditions expected; a separate list covers items you need for travel but that you won’t take backpacking, such as extra toiletries and clothes. Perhaps the most important list is for the essentials—passport, airline tickets, foreign currency, and addresses of hotels, contacts, and embassy. (I leave a copy of this list at home, along with an itinerary, in case people need to contact me.) This last list should be kept in a secure place while you travel; I use a small nylon pouch that I can hang around my neck or over my shoulder (under my clothes) for all documents, including passport and tickets. When hiking, I keep it in an internal pack pocket.
A typical information list contains two sublists: information common to every trip and that specific to a particular trip. John Hatt describes a good way to organize this in The Tropical Traveler. The list below is adapted from his.
Permanent Trip List
Passport number with date and place of issue
Credit card numbers and bank’s telephone number and e-mail address
Home doctor’s name and telephone number and e-mail address
Camera equipment with serial numbers
Camera insurance policy number and insurance company phone number
Specific Trip List
Embassy address and telephone number and e-mail address
Travel insurance number and telephone number for claims
Medical emergency telephone number
Plane ticket booking reference number
Plane ticket serial number and date of issue
Dates and times of flights
Telephone and booking numbers of the flight-booking agent
Phone card numbers
Telephone code from home
Telephone code to home
Traveler’s check numbers
Contact address
ORGANIZED TRIPS
One way to avoid having to do all the trip organization yourself is to go with an adventure travel company. These trips vary from “catered” ones—your gear is carried by porters or pack animals and all the cooking and even tent pitching is done for you—to ones where you carry everything and do most of the work yourself. (The ski tours I led in Scandinavia fell into the latter category.)
Organized trips can be fun and a good way to experience a new country. You do need to be comfortable traveling and hiking with a group and with a specific itinerary, however. Most companies give you all the details, such as how many people will be on the trip, how far you’ll walk each day, how difficult the walking will be, how many days will be spent walking and how many in motorized transport (some trips can involve more motor travel than walking), what to bring, and what type of weather to expect.
IMMUNIZATIONS AND HEALTH
Foreign travel, especially to developing countries, often raises health concerns. The first thing to do is discuss the trip with your doctor to find out what immunizations you’ll need. Do this well in advance of the trip—some shots may be necessary weeks before you go. You also need to know what other medication it would be advisable to carry, such as malaria pills. I always take a broad selection of antibiotics, plus a strong prescription painkiller (remember to bring copies of any prescriptions to show officials).
Water can be a problem in developing countries, or in any remote area—some foreign waterborne diseases make giardiasis look like a slight cold. The biggest danger is from viruses—unless they have a chemical disinfectant built in, filters do not remove viruses. Iodine is the standard water treatment; I used the Polar Pure Iodine Crystal Kit when I went trekking in Nepal for two weeks and had no problems, though I did come down with a nasty stomach ailment in Katmandu (which I blame on brushing my teeth with unpurified tap water in my hotel). I found being careful much more difficult in the city than in the wilderness.
FOOD AND SUPPLIES
Eating different foods is one of the joys of adventure travel. Finding quick-cooking ones suitable for backpacking can be difficult, though, so I usually carry some dehydrated meals. This applies even in Europe; I’ve resupplied with some very odd selections from tiny village stores in the Pyrenees and ended up carrying loaves of bread and tins of beans at times because I couldn’t find dried items.
Fuel supplies can be even more of a problem. White gas is almost impossible to find outside North America. If this is all your stove runs on, you’ll need gasoline (which could cause clogging). Far better is a stove that will run on kerosene, a common fuel in the Third World. (It’s usually not very clean, though, so bring a filter funnel.) The MSR XGK II is probably the best stove for international travel because it will run on any type of petr
oleum, clean or dirty, and is easily maintained in the field. In Europe, butane-propane cartridges are common, and alcohol can be found in many countries, especially Norway and Sweden. By the way, knowing the local name for your fuel is important: In France kerosene is called pétrole, but in Britain petrol means gasoline (kerosene is called paraffin).
If you plan to take photographs, take along all the film you expect to need when visiting developing countries; carry spare batteries, too. In Europe, film is easy to find but is more expensive than in North America. On long trips, bringing a second camera is a good idea because making repairs or finding spare parts is likely to be impossible in most places. I know people who carry three cameras—the third usually is a small compact, carried “just in case.”
INSURANCE
Comprehensive travel and medical insurance is essential. For backpacking, it’s important to check that hiking and camping are covered in your policy—many general travel policies don’t cover you during such activities. Gear and cameras need insurance, too. Carry a list of camera gear serial numbers, both in case of a claim and in case a customs inspector asks you where you bought your gear. If you can’t show where you purchased it, you could face hefty import charges.
A self-catering hut in Norway.
DIFFERENT CULTURES
Meeting people from different cultures can be one of the great pleasures of adventure travel. But it’s important to learn something about their cultures in advance so you can avoid behaving offensively or disrespectfully. Good guidebooks have details for specific countries. Knowing just a few phrases of the local language can help with communication; phrase books can be useful, but most are geared to general tourism and don’t include the words you need while backpacking. Trekking guides are usually better. Stephen Bezruchka’s Trekking in Nepal has an excellent appendix on Nepali for trekkers.
Chris Townsend Page 58
