The worst overseas trip of my life but I’d go back if I could see one thing

It started with a ‘bone shaking’ six hour drive in a car with no suspension but this holiday had an extraordinary ending.

I was watching Michael Palin on SBS recently reminiscing about his Himalayan adventures and it reminded me of my own.

So I pulled out my travel diary from 1991 (it was like rediscovering the Dead Sea Scrolls) and relived our trek up the Langtang Valley in Nepal. It began with a bone shaking six hour drive from Kathmandu in a Toyota Corolla with no suspension.

Hiker walking on train in Himalayas.

By the time we got to our starting point, the village of Dhunche, I was already wrecked.

We hired a guide who ended up carrying both our packs as we traversed what the locals laughingly regard as foothills.

I didn’t so much trek as trudge and it was hard going.

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My wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) lured me to Nepal. She had trekked before. “You just wander from hotel to hotel” she said and I thought that sounded okay.

I pictured myself with a wooden staff and a Tyrolean hat, eating schnitzel after a hard day’s walking.

Phil Brown. Picture: Ric Frearson

But in the Nepal Himalayas a hotel is basically a wooden hut with no electricity and a bucket for a toilet. I was duped!

I was so frustrated at one stage I set to cussing and every step was accompanied by a new profanity and those profanities echoed around the valleys.

The thing that kept me going was the thought that I might see a yeti but they’re elusive buggers. There was a yeti Hotel in the upper part of the valley but I didn’t notice any checking in there.

The Lirung Glacier in the Lantang Valley, 60km northwest of Kathmandu. Picture: Sam Taylor/AFP

The views of the mountains were incredible and there were a few mad bastards setting off to conquer the nearby peak of Lantang Lirung which was only 7,227 metres high. Just a baby compared to Everest.

I can still see its peak in my mind’s eye looking like a gleaming white shark’s fin in the crisp October air.

When we eventually got back to Dhunche to rendezvous with our driver we found a bunch of other travellers desperate to get back to Kathmandu and a group of pretty tough German women tried to hijack our vehicle.

But I plied the driver with some American dollars so he threw them out of the car and off we went for another six hours on the scariest road I have ever experienced.

Would I do it all again? Umm, not really. Unless you could promise me I would see a yeti.