Himalayan Trekking.

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Well where do we start, we landed in india fine and the flights were acceptable... unfortunalty there had been some kind of mix up and i didn't get my extra leg room.. we ended up with the seats behind.. almost mockingly!!! But apart from that, a flight is a flight so can't complain.

We got to delhi and pretty much within 3/4 hours of landing had managed to get our selves booked on yet another flight up to Kashmir to stay on house boats for a few days and potentially go trekking in the himalayan mountains...which, i'm sure as you can guess from the title is exactly what we did.

AMAZING

I don't think either of us have ever seen scenery like it, if i get time once i have finished typing i'll try and post some of the pictures. We ended up doing an 8 day/7 night trek through the mountains with a belgian couple Frederick + Gaultier, 2 Girls from denmark Luge + Regitse (i hope i spelt their names right...) and Claire + Imogen, also from England.

We have also managed to sort our travel all the way down to chennai with accomodation up to mumbai.

Back to the trek...

Over the eight days we have managed to reach a total of around 4600 meters!! above sea level. The altitude didn't really effect either of us.. although i must admit i did get a small fever for one day having spent 7 hours trekking and me and imogen decided it would be a good idea to go up and see the nearby lake.. only to find ourselves jumping in.. it was just a little bit cold...i lie, it was bloody freezing, and we think it was abit of a shock for my body, but don't worry!! i'm fine and well again!!!!

The people we went with were great, they catered to anything we needed and the food was really really nice, if not abit hot for some of the others. If we needed a break it was fine, there were horses if needed to carry us. It was abit of a compeition to see who could get the horses up to a decent speed towards the end of it, and you may be surprised to hear that actually yes, there was some rolling plains where we could stretch their legs abit. It wasn't all up hill!

Day 6 proved to be the worst for climbing.. it had rained for the majority of day 5 and we couldn't move anywhere as the horses wouldn't manage the incline's safely, so we had to do 2 days worth of climbing in 1 day... what these guys never tell you is how bad the bad is.. and it was bad.
We ended up walking on paths no more than 8" wide with a sheer drop of 600 - 700 meters or more on 1 side and steep cliff on the other. Katie struggled alot with her the height playing on her mind, but with abit of guidance she pulled through and i'm not afraid to say im proud of her for doing it. The days walking were absolutly exhausting but the views you got at the end were amazing.. waking up amongst the clouds and seeing some amazing sunrises / sunsets as well.
The weather is surprisingly changable up here, the first few days were pure hot heat, then we had a few days of rain (which i admit was so utterly welcome) followed by some cloud cover... again very welcome.

I guess i should bring it to some sort of a close here.. there is so much more i could say but time is growing short in this tiny cafe type place.

We miss you all dearly but just know we are safe and sound and doing fine. I mentioned earlier our next stop is daramsala, which i'm not sure if i'm spelling right.. but meh! nevermind.

All the best

Pete + Kate

xx

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Photos

Himalaya's Day 1
The first photo before we set out on the trek

Group shot!
Before we all really knew each other..

Sunset
My first sunset - and the last good one for a while