Munnukka, Nepal Langtang - Paradise lost

The book describes the author's second journey to Nepal in February-March 1985. He first travelled to India and Nepal in the summer of 1984. That was a hair-raising trip which included a great deal of trouble and hardship. Half a year after returning home, in the winter of 1985, he couldn't hold himself back any longer and impulsively bought airplane tickets to Nepal in the middle of the university semester. A week later he was already in Kathmandu and went trekking in Langtang for two weeks. Langtang was an unknown valley to Westerners until 1949 when H.W. Tilman's small expedition visited there. In 1985, it was still customary to begin the trek to Langtang from the valley of Trisuli. However, the road being built to Dhunche and Ganesh Himal destroyed the mountain area's natural beauty, and already in the following year the trip to Langtang had been shortened by a couple of days. Since then, Nepal has turned from paradise into a country of political unrest, the murder of a royal family and a decade-long civil war. However, these did not stop the flow of tourists to Langtang and Nepal. It was only stopped on 25 April 2015 by a powerful earthquake in Nepal, which destroyed large mountain areas including the Langtang Valley and killing half of its population and many foreign hikers.