Nepal
14/11/00
It was during the long journey from Mahendranagar to Pokhara that I turned to Caroline and said in a rather guilty voice, "I have been a little bit selfish with the trekking", not even I knew how selfish I had been. I had decided that it would be a good idea if the two of us go up into the Annapurna Sanctuary. This is quite a popular walk so I assumed that it would be very easy, so Caza rented a sleeping back and we packed the rucksacks and at 6:30am on the 4th of November we set off. By around 7:30 we were both buffing on our inhalers wondering whether or not we had done the right thing.
The trek turned out to be absolutely wonderful after the initial ascent which was an absolute killer. We walked for nine days going from 800m to 4130m. The scenery was gorgeous and full of contrast, we started off in a tropical climate and ended up on top of the world with glaciers everywhere and 14 peaks of up to 8000m in height surrounding us.
We stayed in guest houses as we went along, these were very basic and the only form of shower was a bucket of hot water, but the food was very good and tasted great after a long days trek. The walking was fairly hard and not for the light hearted, we took it very slowly as we aproached the 3500m mark because the air started getting thinner and I know that I have problems with Altitude Sickness and we weren't sure how Caza would react. This turned out to be a good idea becasue neither of us had any problems though when we got to 4000m every step was very hard. Once we had acheived our goal which was the Annaurna Base Camp Caroline and I realised what we had worked so hard for. We were in the centre of an amphitheatre with mountains circling us. Caroline and I arrived very early in the morning so we were able to explore the area. We climbed a little higher and decided to sit on the edge of a hill and watch the glaciers on our sides, it was at this point that one of them decided to show how little we were and how mighty it was. With the sun being on the glacier parts of it melts during the day and fall off, now this doesn't sound to heavy dudey, but when you see a huge piece of ice and rock fall away and thunder down the mountain in slow motion it kind of renders the viewer speechless for a few minutes. We were a good distance away so there was no danger though the first thing Caza and I both did when we recovered was check what was above us but we were in the clear. It is a truely amazing place that has to be experienced, words can't describe it and I think I may have waffled trying to explain it so I shall leave you to enjoy a few of the photos we managed to take, enjoy.
On a rather lighter and more exciting note Caroline decided to have a different sort of adventure. Once we had recovered from the trek Caroline and I booked ourselves in for some white-water rafting. We chose the Kali Gandaki river which offered a good base for beginners by ranging form class 3 to 4-5, it is also a holy river which has many burial and cremation sites dotted along its banks so that offered a cultural side to things. It was a three day affair and was so much fun. We started with the big stuff on the first day, which was quite lucky because we didn't really realise the enormity of the rapids until we were out of them. The safety kayakers had a good laugh at my face as we went down the biggest rapid, Big Borther, backwards. Needless to say when I looked over to see how Caroline was doing she was grinning from ear to ear and nodding in a "Gimme more" fashion. The nights were spent on the beaches and all the food was preared for us by the Nepal raftguides who were all very cool. Our raftguide was called Tyson and his favourate pastime was trying to make us soil ourselves and I nearly did when I fell in on the second day. On the last day he was so disappointed that Caroline hadn't fallen in he spent the whole day trying to get her in by bashing into rocks and when that didn't work he tried flipping the boat, alas to no avail. This may all sound rather dangerous but it was not. We made sure that they had all the necessary safety features and we felt very safe both in and out of the boat because they had some of the best kayakers I have ever seen watching our backs. All in all this was also a great trip, we were able to see more of the wonderful Nepali counrtyside and have a really exciting time aswell. There are no photos because we figured the camera was a little too precious to bring along, sorry.
Things have calmed down now, we are now in Kathmandu and we are here to relax before we hit Bangkok on the 4th of December. We are going to take in the sites, do some Yoga and meditaion classes and maybe even watch a film or two, oooh how untravelleresque naughty us.
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