http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Nepal/Jiri/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Asia , Nepal , Jiri en-us Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:21:33 BST Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:21:33 BST Greetings from Nepal land of the monsoon It started on June 10th and well there's been a lot of rain. It's not so bad in Kathmandu and in the Valley but everywhere else it rains SO much. My clothes are probably permanently mudsplattered and it's almost pointless to carry an umbrella because you'll get drenched anyway. In the midst of this lovely weather we decided to take off for another http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Nepal/Jiri/blog-290622.html Dear Loyal ReadersI apologize most abjectly for my failure to post anything on this blog about the last three months of my trip last year. It's not that it hasn't been in my thoughts. I think my reticence stems at least in part from the profound difficulty of summoning memories of places so different from New York that they seem little more than a fantasy. However of all the places I marveled http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Nepal/Jiri/blog-262830.html Montreal and Kathmandu are a world apart. Excluding stopovers 6 hours to Los Angeles 17 hours to Bangkok then 4 hours to Kathmandu adds up to 27 hours worth of leg cramp and not much sleep. It would actually have been slightly shorter but more expensive to fly the other way around the world. But before I can start trekking there's a 10hour public bus ride to survive switchbacking for h http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Nepal/Jiri/blog-148116.html Then it was off to the Everest Region for a 12 day trek from Jiri to Tengboche and back to Lukla for our flight. We hired a fabulous Nepali guy Santosh who was our guide porter friend and family for a month while we trekked. Not only did he take us along the mountain trails for over 500km but he also taught us the local lingo a great Nepali teacher If anyone is looking for a Nepali trekki http://www.travelblog.org//Asia/Nepal/Jiri/blog-38970.html