Namaste Travelling!: Nepal

The long awaited ‘life changing, soul searching trip of a life time’ begins. We finally arrived in Kathmandu after an 8 hr stopover sitting on the pavement outside Mumbai airport in the 30 degree heat, sweating away in our jumpers in a feeble attempt to avoid the apparently malaria ridden mosquitos! Not the most relaxing way to spend the early hours of the morning, but apparently the only option when you have more than 3 hours to wait! In desperate need of a shower and some sleep we checked into our very cheap and cheerful hostel - great to have an en suite toilet and shower, not so great to have a window that looked straight onto a wall offering nothing but the sound of howling cats on heat throughout the night. Luckily our neighbour was very skilled with a bucket of water.

Kathmandu Traffic

Kathmandu was crazily busy with beeping cars and motorbikes everywhere and the general hustle and bustle you would expect from a big dirty city really and although ok for a couple of days we were definitely very ready to move on when the time came for us to meet our trekking group!

Kathmandu Traffic

Bhaktapur Main Square

After a couple of days sightseeing in Bhaktapur and Pokhara we set off for the Himalayan foothills to start our trek to the Annapurna base camp. The trek itself was 10 days and consisted
of on average 6-7 hours walking a day of varying intensity and gradient but on the whole nothing too taxing, even for mike with his ‘slipped disc’ and dodgy hip J (thankfully neither of which presented him with any significant problems and his ‘back support’ was quickly disguarded!!) Each night we stayed in little tea houses which were actually not as basic as we were expecting: they were made of concrete, had running water, electricity (sometimes) and the odd ones even had western toilets!! Not to mention quite an extensive food menu...Unfortunately due to a minor/major stuff up on our/my(!) part we took exactly half the suggested amount of money needed and subsequently had to budget like we’d never budgeted before…at times sharing meals and others ordering the cheapest options! Luckily Mike developed a particular taste for Dhal Bhat (dhal curry, rice, popadom, chilli sauce) the local dish that was not only cheap but also offered as many refills as you could eat! Big error on their part.

Dhal Baat

We trekked through numerous villages, bamboo woods and rainforests before transcending the tree line and hiking through the snow and old avalanches whilst managing to avoid (luckily) the new ones! The scenery at the base camp was amazing and well worth the climb through extreme heat, sun, rain, hail and snowstorms to get there! The only thing we would have changed? Warmer sleeping bags and taking a down jacket – it was absolutely freezing !! We spent the evenings playing cards and reading our kindles, which as each day passes we seem to be appreciating even more! Thank you respective parentsJ On our way down we stopped at the hot springs which were also quite an experience as our bodies relaxed in the hot pools we had to shelter our heads from the hammering hail stones which felt like someone was continuously and relentlessly pelting us with paint balls – all good fun when there’s a hot cup of masala tea waiting for you at the tea house!