Ok so where was I? right after Bakhtpur we were leaving for Trisuli and rafting. the drive to Trisuli was amazing scenery. The road is about halfway down the valley and the constant downhill and twists and turns makes your ears pop. It took maybe 2 hours to get there and when we arrived we just chilled and ate dhaal bhaat then had some card games and played a drinking game which turned into boys v girls. Claire and meghan were picking abit on our guide NaZ but they came the worse off At Trisuli the sleeping arrangements are strange. You [View Full Entry]

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God where to start!! yeah I know I havent been very good at the whole blog thing but to be honest I havent had time to breath in the last week or so. from the day we bagan so 2nd October we have been on a whirl wind sight seeing tour of the Kathmandu valley so no time duing the day to email when we have yet anothert 5 mile walk or a stinking cramped local bus to catch. The homestays in Kathmandu were nice though. I was away from the giurls in a seperate family. The dad was a ice [View Full Entry]

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I told you you would get 2!! ok so after KTM we left for the farm house it took maybe 30 mins on a local bus to get to this town in the valley wher we got off and had noodle soup from this "restaurant" which would hardley pass UK hygiene standards before we went for an hours walk through rice paddy fields and wild cannabis plants. the trek was pretty tough cos it was all up hill and very hot. but the views were amazing and the farmhouse was loads of fun. when we got to the farmhouse in the [View Full Entry]

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They say one the memorable experiences of traveling is the local transport systems well the 8 hour bus journey to Pokhara was an experience - highlight countryside and making it in once piece, lowlight the suspension system (or lack of). Ricardo and I left the quiet sanctuary of Kopan Monastery to bounce and bump our way up through the tooting mayhem of Nepal’s roads to Pokhara. Much of the journey was painful experience from the physical comfort point of view and spent readjusting our sitting position to relieve number and tender parts. Ours was the 300 Nepal Rupee Tourist Bus and [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everyone!! Well the day in Pokhara made us a bit nervous about all the other stuff we'd planned with this guy. Dont get me wrong there was some good stuff to see, but not quite as advertised! We went round a few temples and then headed to the regional museum. This was actually pretty good, loads of exhibits about the unbelievably turbulent history of this little country, all their tradtions etc. Then we headed for Devis Falls - so called because some unfortunate Swiss bird (Devi) got washed away whilst taking a bath in a nearby pool in 1961! You [View Full Entry]

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Before meeting the girls in Pokhara I made a quick overnight sidetrip to Kushinigar, the site of Buddha's death. While there I stayed the night in the Burmese temple - maybe the closest I'll get to Burma on this trip. Just like Sarnath and Bodhgaya, Kushinigar is a study of contrasts. Outside the park is dirty, noisy, smelly India and as soon as you walk through the gates it is green, peaceful and quiet. At the ripe old age of 80 (at a time when 50 was considered to be very old) Buddha was walking home to his birthplace to die, [View Full Entry]

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Haven't posted in awhile, so this is a long one. Kathmandu is in Asia. I forgot what Asian cities are like. Generally, they're lacking in essential infrastructure (sidewalks, sewage, garbage removal), have terrible air pollution and traffic rules are really more rough suggestions than anything else. Asian cities also contain aggressive "luggage handlers" at the airports. I totally forgot what this was like. When I was visiting a friend in the Philippines a decade ago, whenever a taxi pulled up at the airport, a batch of locals would scurry over. After the driver popped the trunk, o [View Full Entry]

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In the words of Eddie Murphy in the Golden Child 'Viva Nepal!' This place is fantastic and I wish I had given myself more time to spend here. First was the job of getting out of India thigh! On my last day in Varanasi I met a really cool couple with a fascinating story. She was an English Girl that worked in Venture Capital and he was a Peruvian mountain guide and one of the funniest blokes I have met in a while! They met in Peru but not romantically and then the girl had a mountain bike accident in Bolivia [View Full Entry]

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Tommorow Anja myself and our Brasilian/american buddy Leo are catching the bus to the start of the anapurna circut tommorow. We have told the governments (canadian/nepalies) that we'll be gone for about a month. Tommorow we'll be heading to besisahar to bhulbhule (where we spend the first night and from where we actualy start walking). I dont really know where we're planning on spending each night but basicaly the plan is to slowly make our way up to manang where we'll spend an acclimatization day at 3540m before heading in to do a side trip to the tilicho(or something like that) [View Full Entry]

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Left Kathmandu early in the morning to head down to the river where our rafting was to start. The river we were on was usually not that fast or rapiddy, but because its monsoon season it was a bit faster. Got to the site for the rafting and were the only two people there, which wasn't what we expected because rafting's usually done in big groups. Shortly after though, a whole bus load of Koreans arrived so we could get going down the river. Still seemed a bit strange though that it was only us two and the guides in our [View Full Entry]

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