Greetings from the land of yeti's, burro's, trekking and H.A.F.E.!

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Greetings from Nepal! I've been here quite awhile and haven't blogged but now you get a super long and oh so exciting blog to read because of it. So here we go . . .

Jules and I flew out from Australia way back in March around St. Pattie's Day. We hung out in Kathmandu with our friends from Thailand, Rich and Charlie, while we bought some gear and got some trekking permits sorted out. Kathmandu is a gear junkie's heaven. The tourist area is like a giant outdoor REI with tons of fake North Face, Mummut, etc. gear just busting out of every little shop. And if you are willing to work for it, you can get some pretty sweet fake gear for pennies compared to what you would pay at home. Some of the gear tends to fall apart. However, I am disturbed that the one piece of "real" gear I took on the trek, a pair of pants from REI, was the ONLY piece of gear that came back with holes and ripped seams. All of my fake stuff held up great so cheers to North Fake!

Anywho, after a few days in the crazy capital complete with political rallies and police men with beat sticks (literally a stick that was not too long ago attached to a tree) we headed off to the little town of Pohkara to buy more gear, yes we love to shop even the boys, and met up with the rest of our group John, Brad and Jenny. We packed our bags, waved good-bye to Jenny (she stayed behind to do volunteer work) and boarded a bus to take us to the starting point of the Annapurna Circuit Trek. When we got to the bus station, aka a big dirt lot in the center of town, we met a couple, Tom and Jay from the UK, who were doing the trek as well. At first we thought they were only doing a few days of trekking since they had little day packs with a sweatshirt and we had massive backpacks full of waterproof layers, trekking poles, long underwear, gloves, silly warm hats and chocolate bars. But we soon found out that they planned on doing the trek as well. We all exchanged looks of "are these people nuts going into the Himalaya's with only cotton sweatshirts for warmth?" and then decided to adopt them into our group. Hey, they maybe crazy, but they maybe fun too, right? And we also befriended Blair who is from our neighboring country to the North, Oh Canada! Thus rounding out our happy little trekking family of 3 cute girls and 5 smelly boys!

I won't give you a play by play of the days cause 18 days is just way too long to sum up without boring you to death, if I haven't done so already, so I'll just give you some of the highlights of the trip.

We started off in the lowlands and spent the first 4 days following a river up a beautiful valley. The days were pretty hot and we walked between 12k and 16k a day (you'll have to look up how many miles that is yourself). The countryside was beautiful and so are the people. We got chased by many kids during our trip shouting "Namaste" (hello) and asking us for "sweets?" or "school pen?" and even "weapon?" Weapon!?! On the second day of our trek it was a holy day of celebration which means little children run around and cover them, and anyone standing around, in red paint. We got attacked three times by gangs of children armed with red paint. They covered our faces and tended to be pretty gentle about it but they savagely attacked Charlie getting it into his eyes and causing his eyeballs to be as red as his face. It was kinda fun getting attacked but it took days for all of the paint to wash off! Sometimes we got bored on the trail waiting for everyone to catch up so to pass the time Brad tired to ride a wild burro and having survived that, felt the need to stick his hand in a stinging nettle bush for the large sum of 300 rupees which is about 5 bucks. He still has red marks on his hand and arm 15 days later!

After a couple days of "easy" walking we finally had a day where it was steep uphill. We were around 9,000 ft at the beginning of the day and an hour later we were at 12,000 ft. The walk was killer and everytime you thought you were at the top, another little ridge appeared over you and you had to keep going. When we got to the top though, we were greeted with the most spectacular view. There was a GIANT snow covered mountain in front of us and next to it, another massive mountain, and another and another! We were super lucky it was a clear day with no clouds so we sat outside our super cool stone guesthouse with our feet up on the warm rock wall and started at the massive mountains in front of us while watching helicopters fly below us through the valley. That's right, they were below us!

Soon we arrived in Manang which a "big" city for the area and also the place where most groups spend a rest day or two. It's important to rest here for a few days so you don't get altitude sickness from the lack of oxygen in the air. We attended an altitude safety talk while we were there so we would be knowledgeable on the symptoms of altitude sickness. We learned many important things but the most important piece of information we learned was about H.A.F.E. (high altitude flatus expulsion). Basically, ever since we got above 7,000 ft. we were all really gassy. Like REALLY gassy. We thought it might be the food or the water or maybe just that all of us had really bad gas but when the old British lady who was giving the talk explained H.A.F.E. to us we all busted out in giggles and "oh thank Gods" from the back of the room. it was so nice to know that there was a scientific term and explanation for our extreme gas problem. Ever since then, when anyone has gas, they yell "H.A.F.E." as a courtesy warning. But now that we're back, it's called L.A.F.E. since we're low altitude and all.

Our rest days in Manang were spent doing day hikes to nearby glaciers, eating Yak steaks which are amazing by the way, and watching movies. Surprisingly, in the middle of the Himalaya's there are a few movie "theatres" set up. They are basically a cold room with a big projector and wooden benches covered with cow hides. I had the best movie going experience of my life in Manang when we got to watch a movie in the "back room". We followed the owner back behind the normal theater, down a dirt alley, around some livestock pins, around several piles of poop, in a gate, in another gate and into what we think use to be a barn. It smelled like a barn and looked like a barn except it had a few benches, a wood burning stove (which just filled the room with smoke and not heat) and a TV. We all happily settled onto our pieces of cow hide and watched "Blood Diamond". When the movie was over we went to leave but discovered the sun had gone down. Being the bright bunch that we are, only one out of eight of us had the foresight to bring a head lamp. On top of that, we were in a barn, in a back alley of a back alley, behind some livestock pens and thus and no idea how to get back to the main road. We all followed Rich with his head lamp in a single file line while he tried to figure out where we were. There was lots of "ouch" and "oh God, I hope that wasn't poop" coming out of us as we blindly wandered around, but eventually we found the main path and got back to the guesthouse without too many major injuries or piles of poop stepped in.

It was lots of fun hanging out in Manang except that Jules got quite sick while we were there. She was struggling a lot through the whole trip and then when we got to Manang she got a bad headache (the first sign of altitude sickness, yes I can still pay attention during a lecture) and a really bad bad bad stomach bug. No good at all! And with the hardest, coldest, highest part of the trek only a few days away we didn't know what to do. Should we stay a little longer and hope she gets better? Should we press on with her and risk her dying? Should she go home? Would the rest of us even make it over a 17,700 ft high pass? Would we get killed by an avalanche? Or worse, get abducted by a yeti?

The answer to these questions and more will have to be answered later cause this is a long blog entry and it's my dinner time, mmmm yak cheese! More later plus pictures! Hope everyone is well! Kisses from Nepal!

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Comments

[jesse]

Maybe my body still thinks it's at high altitude
Hey girl.. you rule!!! I wish I was with you guys!! Go protests yeah!! Yeah, I think my body still thinks I'm in Nepal, cuz my body farts a lot!!! -jesse

[jesse]

Did you ditch Jules?
Well.. what happened girl? -Jesse