nepal Archive
Click here to read part 1, if you missed it! From Ghunsa we began to travel back up a different valley. I thoroughly enjoyed leading another delicious grind up a steep hill in rhodendron forests. I snagged the blissful opportunity to get my heart pumping and felt like I could have flown up that climb, happily drenched in euphoria of effort, similar to the runners …
Fair warning that this blog entry meanders my contemplative thoughts quite a bit and will probably read more like a diary than an “adventure blog”. (I spent a lot of days walking in forests and clouds with not much to look at, and had too much time to think, haha). Manaslu was a great challenge and next up were the Langtang & Helambu regions. But …
Polishing off my Annapurna trek with a solid two days of downhill walking, I established a new base in Dharapani at the low elevation of 1860m. Here I waited for my guide to arrive from Kathmandu for the Manaslu circuit. He turned up as expected on September 15th, but the poor soul had fallen off the jeep en route, losing most of the skin off …
After spending two weeks laid up in Kathmandu with a severe gastrointestinal bacterial infection and a bruised ankle, I was eager to get back on trail. I picked the Annapurna circuit since all the villages on the route have infrastructure catering to trekkers. Thousands of people do the circuit every year, so local people are not shocked to see foreigners with big backpacks ambling around, …
I’m in a new city, in a new country. People speak a different language and eat different food. Everything around me is strange and overwhelming. Kathmandu is not like other Asian cities I’ve visited. Awkward moments abound as I struggle to practice speaking Nepali to blank stares. I always say I have a good sense of direction, but here I prove myself wrong, getting completely lost …