What do You Eat, Walking and Trekking?

Problem
What do you eat, on a walking and trekking holiday?

Answer
If you are just out for the day, with a group breakfast at a hotel or hostel, a group lunch picnic or meal arranged, and supper back at the hotel in the evening, you might take the standby of Kendal mint cake, solid white sugar, with a dark chocolate coating. Plus of course water. And something spare, such as a sandwich, in case you get stuck.

Tea House or Tent?
Some treks stop for food at tea houses. Others are based in tented camps. Find out which, and decide which you prefer, before you choose and commit to a trekking holiday company.

Porters
On a longer trek, over several days and nights, you are likely to have local porters. They carry your food. For the large communal meals. (You still want something in your pocket or rucksack or day pack in case you get separated or stuck.

Meat and vegetables
An experienced trekker tells me: "What you need in Pakistan when taking a long trek or climbing up and down hill is protein. No problem with halal or kosher food. You don't take meat on a trek. It won't keep. It goes off too quickly.

"However, we did buy a sheep from a hill farmer half way through a trek. We were a group of 60 people, trekkers and crew.

"Usually your diet is vegetarian. You get your protein from beans and pulses.

"The diet is not dull. The porters take spices and garlic and onions. You can't taste so well at high altitude, so garlic is good. They cook up casseroles and curries, stews and soups."

Protein
How do you get protein?

"We got protein from cheese and eggs. We had yak cheese. Delicious."

Eggs
If you went up for a day or two, for the weekend, you could take cooked eggs. But on a longer trek the porters took eggs.

"On one trek we had a porter whose sole job was to carry the eggs. He had a wire cage, a cage with compartments and an egg in each cell for thirty people.

"That lasted until half way through the trek. Then he went home, back downhill again, because he was no longer needed.

"In Nepal and Tibet we had porters. In Tibet they weren't Tibetan porters but Nepalese."

One way to lose weight.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
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