Nepali ambassador will lead walk into birthplace of Sakyamuni

By Li Zhixin

Nepali ambassador Tanka Prasad Karki announced at a news conference Monday that he will participate in a walk to Lumbini, the birthplace of Sakyamuni, from Lhasa, Tibet, during the first International Walking Around the Himalayas Day in October.

To celebrate the 55th anniversary of China-Nepal diplomatic relations, Nepal’s embassy, the Nepali Tourism Administration, China Volkssport Association (CVA) and Tibet’s Tourism Bureau will jointly hold the walk from September 26 to October 8.

The walk will start at Lhasa’s Potala Palace near Yangdork Lake and the north face of Mt. Qomolangma. The team plans to reach Zhangmu Port on the China-Nepal border on October 3. The ambassador will join the team at Katmandu and lead the participants through Lukla, Phakding, Namche Bazaar and Tyangboche before arriving at Lumbini on October 8. The team will return to CHina three days later.

During the trip, participants will get to appreciate and experience the ethnic customs of Chinese Tibetans and Nepalese Sherpas. “This will be the first walking diplomacy between the two countries. I believe the event will strengthen the countries’ rapport and convey a message of peace to the world,” Karki said.

Those who are interested in the event can enroll at chinawalking.net.cn or through VCA at 8489 6319.

Britain’s top ten walks

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/outdoors/outdoor-activities/5770600/Britains-top-ten-walks.html
we pick the ten of the best British walks.
 
By Nicholas Roe

There’s a small muddy path running through the leafy gloom of a forest in East Sussex that heads due south up a wearying hill, then levels out suddenly just before a flint stone wall and a stile. If you climb over this stile and walk a few paces beyond the tree-line, you will be amazed at what you see.

Directly in front of you a green valley falls away toward the Channel like an immense spillage of grass cuttings sliced by the slow, curving uncertainties of the Cuckmere river. The water down there moves so carefully into the distance it seems almost like an idea of landscape, a brilliant pretence. And here, just now, there is a poised moment, a kind of revelation that’s all the more surprising for the fact that this is, quite literally, an everyday experience in Britain.

In this case, walkers from the nearby honeypot village of Alfriston heading toward the sea’s raggedy edge regularly take this path, savouring this moment every time.

And, like other walkers on other paths all over the country, they confirm in the process the value of walking itself and the extraordinary capacity for surprise and pleasure offered by this terribly ordinary form of transport.

The truth is it’s only by arriving on foot that you get a proper grasp of the landscape’s innate drama. You feel a part of what you see. By walking, you make the link between environment and effort that touches on so many of the nicer parts of living: feeling tired but happy, a sense that that life is pretty good somehow.

There are, of course, some rather more laced-up and proper reasons to put your boots on, such as the fact that you lose weight if you shift your bottom off the couch a bit more often. The blood pumps when you’re up on your feet; your lungs heave, stress dissolves, fat melts and, next thing you know, you’re slimmer, calmer, fitter, healthier, lovelier (all right, some more than others).

But really it’s the pleasure that matters. That’s what keeps us at it. That moment at the stile, the time you turn to your partner and say “will you look at that”; arriving at the pub after 10 hard miles; the halfway pause when you break open the biscuits and hear birdsong. These are the experiences that will keep you reaching for the coat, badgering the children to turn that thing off and find the dog.

When you think about it, Britain has done surprisingly well over the years to hold onto its huge network of footpaths, never mind the overcrowding, the cars, the development, the strange idea that we’re all somehow going to hell in a handcart.

Are we really? When you stand looking down at that river, is that what you think? Maybe not. Britain has at least 175,000 miles of public rights of way, according to the Ramblers, which isn’t far short of the 240,000 miles of roads we possess. That’s really not so bad. Blessed as we are, surely we shouldn’t let it all go to waste?
Britain’s top ten walks

1 Coast to Coast Lake District (190 miles)

2 Elie Chain Walk Fife, Scotland (1.5 miles or 3 miles return)

3 Eastbourne to Alfriston East Sussex (12 miles)

4 Manningtree to Dedham Essex (4 or 7 miles)

5 The Roaches Staffordshire (8 ½ miles)

6 Lapworth circuit Warwickshire (7 miles)

7 Central Exmoor Somerset (9 miles)

8 Tennyson Trail Isle of Wight (14 miles)

9 Rhossili bay South Wales (5 miles + extension)

10 Mousehole to Lamorna Cornwall (6 miles)
HAVE YOUR SAY

Tell us your favourite walks in Britain