It was meant to be a special birthday celebration; LE's return to Nepal after an abscence of more than 40 years. The trip had been an idea for the past three years, more of a concept than a concrete plan, but 2020 was a nice even number to remember and LE has a tradition of spending birthdays in out-of-the-way locations, so it seemed like a logical choice; and we are not getting any younger.
A good friend of LE's, a person she went to Nepal with those many years ago, suggested a Nepali named Nar Gautam as a guide and in January 2020, after many emails back and forth LE decided to go trekking in the Langtang valley, the third most popular trekking destination in Nepal. While not as popular as the Everest or Annapurna treks, there is sufficient infrastructure for single and independent travellers to teahouse trek, travelling from village to village and staying each night in accommodation along the route, thus there is no need for the logistics of organizing a camping trek. The valley is in a National park, it is the most easily accessible mountain trek from the capital of Kathmandu, and it forms the upper catchments area of two of Nepal’s largest river systems - the Trishuli and Koshi. The park is situated near the Tibetan border, it's climate ranges from subtropical to alpine and approximately 25% of the park is forested, with large areas of rhododendron groves (hopefully in bloom). Depending on where we walked the trek would be between 10 and 14 days and since the elevation did not exceed 4340 meters this seemed a reasonable choice for two persons who are no longer 25 years old.
All of the descriptions, which made it sound like an attractive destination, came with a caveat: this valley was devastated by the April 25, 2015 magnitude 7.8 earthquake and trekkers should expect scenes of destruction. The earthquake occurred at 11:56 A.M. local time and in an instant the tremors dislodged parts of the hanging glaciers on Langtang Lirung and Langtang II, two of the area’s highest peaks, at 7234 m and 7227 m respectively. As the glaciers hurtled down, they shattered and then picked up more snow and debris. What the earthquake 
didn’t destroy the ensuing avalanche did, generating pressure waves with winds of up to 150 km per hour (93 miles per hour) — strong enough to flatten forests on the opposite side of the valley. The village of Langtang, was completely demolished; burying 116 houses with an estimated 310 deaths, including 176 Langtang residents, 41 foreign trekkers, 27 local tourism staff, and 10 army personnel. More than 100 bodies were never recovered. In only five years the resilient villagers have re-built or repaired their houses, the trekking routes have been cleared of debris and the Nepali tourist office declares that the Lantang Valley "is open for business".
We departed Vancouver on March 11, before the novel Corona virus was raging through North America, and changed planes in New Delhi India on March 13. This was when we first saw that this trip was going to be very different from other trips we have taken. As we disembarked from the plane our temperature was taken with a thermal thermometer and we had to fill out a form with a contact telephone number - this was to be the new normal. We had wondered why the flight to New Delhi was so crowded and discovered, while in the transit lounge, that March 13 was the last day that Indian airspace remained open so everyone was rushing to get home. When we landed in Kathmandu, later that same day, we found out that this was the last day for tourists to enter Nepal as well. AS GG remarked "we were one step ahead of the tidal wave".
We probably should have been worried but we weren't; it was an exciting, exotic, crowded 
city and we were having an adventure. More will be written, we have only just begun.