Tea with a Stranger in Langtang

Langtang is the trek you can do when you do not have time for a trek. A day's drive from Kathmandu, a few days up the valley, and you are in the high country — glaciers above, yak pastures below, and the kind of air that makes you aware of your own breathing.

The valley was badly damaged in the 2015 earthquake. A whole village was lost. What has come back, slowly and stubbornly, is a credit to the people who lived through it. The teahouses are rebuilt, the trails are open, and the welcome — perhaps because of what was lost — is warmer than anywhere else we go.

On my last visit I sat in a lodge at Kyanjin Gompa while a woman I had never met poured me tea and told me, in careful English, about her daughter who was studying in the city. We talked for an hour. She did not need to. That is the trip, more than the peaks.

If you have a week and want to see the Himalaya properly — not from a viewpoint but from inside it — Langtang is where we send you. It is not the most famous valley in Nepal. It is, in some ways, the truest.