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Published: March 11th 2007
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We've spent the last two weeks in Nepal and managed to achieve quite a lot already - and we've got another 6 weeks to go - woohoo!
So far I love pretty much everything about this country apart from the state of the food/water supplies, which has basically had either me or Sceats with dodgy stomachs at any given point in time (except today - so far anyway...).
We arrived here on Sunday 24th Feb and walked around Katmandu, had some food and got used to Thamel - the area in Kathmandu we were staying in. Its basically the tourist centre of Nepal, and its full of shops selling dodgy antiques, carpets, and an amazing amount of fake north face trekking gear. There are also tonnes of touts trying to sell guiding services and quite a lot of street children begging for money, asking for milk, or just trying to pickpocket you. All this, mixed with the fact that tourism is down here as a result of the unrest in Nepal (there's a ceasefire now and has been for some time) mean that as a tourist here you get an awful lot of attention when you are walking down
Kathmandu valley cycling.
Check out the very sexy sandal/white sock combo! the streets. Thats not to say there aren't quite a lot of tourists here, its just that there are nowhere near as many as there were a few years ago.
Anyway, in summary here's how I spent the last two weeks:
Monday-Tuesday: walked a little around the city, but was sick, did a 3 hour nepali lesson and seen a place called durbar square in kathmandu (temples and statues, but unfortunately missed the living goddess)
Wed-Fri: 3 day mountain bike trip from Kathmandu to the Tibet border - was really good fun - pretty tough physically as well which was fun. The trip had great sights all along the way, and it was nice to just cycle along and see how the city changed into the countryside. We still managed to find a place in one of the local towns that had an arcade (basically a PS2) and play tekken for 1 ruppee a game (its about 140 ruppee to the pound). Its always good to get involved with local culture... we also ate our first portions of daal bhaat (rice, with veg and lentils and curry sauce - pretty tasty but couldn't happily eat it twice
Luxury bathrooms come as standard.
Accommodation on our cycle trip was a little different from western standards... a day as my only meal like the locals do) and tibetan momos (like little dumplings with buffallo meat inside)
Saturday: white water rafting down the bhote kosi river - this is supposed to be the best river in the world to white water raft down, as there are so many continuous hard/interesting rapids. However, thats in Oct/Nov when the water is really high from the monsoon, so it wasn't really that crazy when we were on it - although it was still scary enough.
Sun: Admin day - booked a mountaineering trip, got permits for different parks, got my hair cut, bought some mountaineering equipment, including some genuine and some fake north face gear - I now look like a walking advert for north face...
Mon: Really chilled out all morning in a coffee shop reading the papers and practising some Nepali with Chris prior to our lesson. Did another Nepali lesson in the afternoon which was good, but its pretty hard to practice anything here with peopel as even the smallest kids here use really good English.
Tue 6th-Fri 9th: We travelled on to Chitwan National Park where we walked in the national park,
Taking a break
Our guide, Sunil chats to some local kids. did a jeep safari, rode on elephants and seen 4 wild Rhinos from about 3 metres away (very, very cool!) and then bathed an elephant in the river. To be fair the elephant bathing was more an exercise of us getting soaked and thrown about by the elephant - it was absolutely ridiculous, silly fun.
Fri 9th- Sat 10th (today): Travelled to Pokhara and did some Yoga - I've done a few sessions now and they are pretty cool - not entirely sure about the philosohpy behind it all (seems a bit to focussed on the individual) but the exercises are awesome for your back and stomach, and the relaxation & breathing techniques are interesting to try out. I also went paragliding today (maximum respect to Zeno for doing it himself) which was surpisingly less scary than I expected - its all very gentle, but then I didn't have to try to control it, as it was a tandem flight - I'd imagine its a little more stressful...
Looking forward My next 5 weeks or so will be taken up by two major treks (if all goes to plan) - the first will be the Annapurna circuit
The bungee bridge
This is the point where people jump 160m down attached to a bungee cord into the gorge below - it's pretty terrifying just looking down from here never mind jumping! around a mountain called Annapurna which is one of the highest in the world (and the first 8000m+ summit to be climbed by a french team in the 50's lead by Maurice Herzog - Chris McC you should read the book about it - it's in your house!).
After that, we have a few days spare (in case of illness etc) before we head to the Everest region to attempt to climb a 6100m peak called Lobuje East which is supposed to be a bit technical - we are doing the 6 days of the summit attempt with some guides, unlike the rest of our trekking which we are doing ourselves, as its a bit more serious, and we've never done anything technical in the Himalaya or above 4500m before.
But, it'll all depend on weather, health and the political situation as to what we'll actually end up getting done. Should be an interesting few weeks whatever happens...
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Chris McC
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That's not real
Were you a little high up on that elephant? Cause that Rhino is made out of stone mate!