Friday, July 17, 2015

A trek by any other name is still a trek :)

The following is my personal response to a post by Rich Ball regarding the so-called West Dhaulagiri Trek:

Great site for rugged runners. Keep up the nice work Mr. Ball!

One bone of contention…. There is no Lower GHT (and no  upper one for that matter), just a line on a map, and I personally know the two guys who randomly placed that line on a map far away from any trails in an office in central Kathmandu. One of them has never trekked in his life, the other runs a company that specializes in taking foreigners to Annapurna, Langtang and Everest and did no recce whatsoever...unless you know someone who has hiked this so-called route (and not the group who simply hiked border-to-border following a myriad of trails and not the 'advertised' route), then with all due respect, please reconsider referring to it as anything but a fictitious trail.

Additionally, just so you know, Map House (aka, Crap House – their maps fall apart in a day or less) appropriated my information from my Guerrilla Trek map for the Dhorpatan map that you mention and they did so without acknowledgement and without payment. They did not ask for permission and therefore, I humbly request that this site does not promote that map and company until they make good on due acknowledgement and payment.

My apologies for raising these issues on this public forum, but in my humble opinion, the truth needs to trump all else now more than ever as Nepal re-builds and organizations like SNV and Map House might do well to consider a new, more transparent paradigm. Cheers for your patience and consideration regarding my comment and requests and please do keep up the great work that you are doing promoting trail running and trail runners in Nepal.

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Will be pleasantly surprised if Rich Ball allows the above on his otherwise great site (therefore here it is for the record on my traffic-less blog, haha)

Update: Credit to Rich Ball for allowing my comments on his site despite snug ties to SNV and Crap House whom I implicate above for deception and transparency issues -- the type that has dis-empowered Nepal for centuries and continues to bully and incapacitate the good people of Nepal robbed of opportunity.

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