Hiking the Himalayas – the Jewish way

March 24, 2010 - 12:19 PM by

Certain birthdays take on an air of importance. At 20 you’re no longer a teen. At 30, you’re on your way to starting or expanding a family. 40 is the age when no one is supposed to trust you anymore. And 50 – well, that’s when you want to do something big – because you realize that you might not be around forever.

I’ve long dreamed of heading out for a challenging trek in foothills of the Himalayas. If I’d grown up in Israel, I might already have done my post-army travel time in Nepal, but as I inch closer to 50, I’m starting to actually plan.

When I first started to flesh out the idea, it was just going to be for me and my wife. But our 16-year-old daughter was having none of that. “You’re taking me and that’s it,” Merav confidently pronounced (knowing that she usually gets her way). And if Merav is going, well, then so are her two brothers.

How could we justify the expense? Turn it into a combined birthday expedition and alternative bar mitzvah party for our youngest son who’s turning 13 next year. And do it over the holidays so we can rent out our apartment. Yes, this was sounding more do-able all the time.

The next step was to find a trek operator. I found several via recommendations on the TripAdvisor website. The first, an electronically loquacious man named Raj, has spent thousands of dollars on ensuring his site is suitably search engine optimized. On it, he writes about treating his guides well and respecting the environment. But as I dug further, I learned he was just a one-man operation, albeit with a very good website. In fact, I turned out he hadn’t had a booking since last summer.

John was equally personable and he and his Nepalese partner put together a detailed itinerary that took us around the fabled Anapurna Circuit, building in rest days for Shabbat, and including home-cooked vegetarian food. But at over $1,000 per person, maybe it would be more sensible to make like an Israeli backpacker and do it on our own, I thought.

That’s when my friend Heidi, who had recently gone with her family to Nepal, suggested I speak with Micha Odenheimer who co-founded the Tevel B’Tzedek organization. Operating out of Kathmandu, Tevel B’Tzedek (which means “The Earth In Justice”) aims to bring wandering Jews closer to their heritage by marrying Jewish values with an ecological mission to make life a little easier for the downtrodden in that part of the world.

We wrote about Odenheimer in Israel21c two years ago. Tevel B’Tzedek runs one and four-month programs where volunteers work with teachers, build toilets and promote organic methods of agriculture. Odenheimer’s aim is no less than creating “a new Jewish language of social and environmental justice in the age of globalization,” Odenheimer told Israel21c at the time. With some 50,000 Israeli backpackers passing through south Asia every year, the opportunity is not insignificant.

Now his group is offering a new service: to organize eco-tours and treks in Nepal. The idea is intriguing: spend a week volunteering in a poor village, the follow it up with 5-7 days of traditional hiking.

Living and working in village, Odenheimer told me, is something that most travelers never experience. It provides a much more down-to-earth perspective than simply climbing ever skyward towards Mount Everest. Plus going through Tevel b’Tzedek can be seen as a kind of charity – helping enable the organization to further its important goals.

I’ve still got time and a whole lot of planning in front of me. But I can already feel the trail beckoning. I’ll keep you posted along the journey.

Tags: , , • Category: History and Culture, Social Justice 

Comments

3 Comments on Hiking the Himalayas – the Jewish way

  1. JIM on Thu, Mar 25th 2010 12:52 AM

    2. Hey go for it!!! The time will pass you by and then it will be gone. Did I say it?
    GO FOR IT!!!

  2. 12 hikes for 12 years | ISRAELITY on Tue, Apr 6th 2010 1:26 PM

    3. [...] us to plan together 12 tiyulim around Israel during the year before his big day, culminating in the overseas trekking experience I described in a previous post for hike number [...]

  3. Hotels Limassol Cyprus on Fri, Mar 25th 2011 12:18 PM

    4. Your division of ages is very interesting and perhaps matches personal crises conventional in psychology

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