August 28, 2012
Ang Jangbu reports that the IMG climbers successfully reached Arughat today by bus. Sounds like the road conditions had improved, and they only had to switch buses once along the way. Tomorrow they are ready to start the trekking to Sama Gaon. For the trek up to Sama, (camping along the way) they will be accompanied by 6 trek sherpas, 4 kitchen boys, and 34 porters. Right now, up in Sama, Phunuru reports that the first group of sherpas and porters have now reached Base Camp and the second team is heading up tomorrow. Kaji Sherpa is en route to Sama right now with another porter team, and we have 50 Sama porters ordered for them to go up to BC on September 2.  So far, so good!
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- Ministry of Tourism briefing (Ang Jangbu)
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- Mike Hamill and Liz Hawley in Kathmandu (Ang Jangbu)
Before leaving Kathmandu, Mike and the team did their required briefing at Ministry of Tourism and also met with legendary Himalayan historian Liz Hawley. Liz estimates there will be 21 teams on Manaslu this autumn, including all the “usual suspects” (many of these teams also switched over from Cho Oyu, due to the current permit issues in Tibet).
Eric Simonson