Hi Everyone,

Today I offer a short line or two on food during the trek.

We will start our journey with around 10 days of food for our main meals. We will leave Jomsom with 80 packs of boil-in-the-bag main meals and 80 individual sachets of rice with some supplementary powdered potato. I expect we will also leave with a couple of days of vegetables and fruit. It is not feasible to leave with more due to issues of weight. If we left with more we would need to employ another person to carry it, who would in turn need to be fed, and so the spiral of increasing numbers continues.

During the trek, even from the beginning we will try to purchase food on the way. While shops, or other similar premises set up for the purpose of enabling food and other goods to be sold, will be few and far between other than in the larger villages we hope to be able to add to our meagre food stocks on the way. Perhaps through buying things grown locally; or maybe we will be able to buy the occasional chicken. Certainly we will need to have some success with this approach as the food with which we will leave Jomsom will not last far beyond Saldang, the start of the first ‘escape’ route. Indeed the large village of Saldang, 100 miles from Jomsom, may turn out to be our best chance of significant resupply and by then we will know whether we are able to continue towards Jumla or whether we need to ‘escape’ south to Juphal.

Wish us luck and ‘bon appetit’!