I want to travel in a way that lets me have a really intimate experience with local people.
—Kira Salak
From www.kirasalak.com
I wandered through the dark streets of Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu. It was the middle of the night and I was lost, but it was of no consequence. I had thousands of dollars cash in my bag, but didn’t worry about being robbed. Bhutan is a blessed place. A country the size of Switzerland, with a population of only about 650,000, its people have such a strong belief in karma that robbery is virtually unthinkable. Imagine the consequences of such an act! Imagine the suffering that will inevitably return!
It was strange to encounter safety abroad. I’d spent most of my adult life experiencing the world’s most inhospitable places—malarial jungles, totalitarian societies, war zones. Places where you’re wise to carry a knife, to leave behind a will. But in charmed Bhutan at three in the morning, people just nodded warmly at me, the town drunks left me alone, and the only graffiti I saw were some hastily scrawled smiley faces.
I’d flown across the world to this modern day Shangri La to attempt what is widely considered one of the hardest treks in the world: the Snowman Trek. It lasts some 24 days, and only a few hundred foreigners have ever successfully completed it. Unlike most of the popular Himalayan treks, such as Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit, there isn’t just one high pass to get over—but eleven. You ascend several thousand feet, descend, ascend. Again. And again. Eleven times. Most of the passes are over 16,000 feet, with the highest at 17,600 feet. Then there is the weather, which is notoriously unpredictable and has led to a Snowman failure rate of nearly 50%. The location of the trek—following the spine of the Himalayas between Bhutan and Tibet—is among the most remote and inaccessible country in the world, easily trapping a person between high peaks, making emergency evacuation by Indian army choppers not only difficult but exorbitantly expensive. And then there are the personal risks—like getting dysentery between high passes, twisting an ankle, breaking a leg, succumbing to altitude sickness. There are so many concerns that it’s no surprise so few people ever attempt the trek, and so many fewer ever finish it.
(Which makes us wonder....are there any geocaches on the Snowman Trek?)