Day 17: Ghorepani (2750m) - Poon Hill (3193m) - Banthanti - Ulleri (2070m) - Tikhedunga - Hille (1500m) Massive storm during the night. Thunder, lightening and heavy heavy rain. Beautiful to listen to but not so beautiful when we were expected up at 5am to climb Pool Hill (450m up from Ghorepani). Our guide woke us around 4.30am to say it was al...

My first word upon arriving Kathmandu Airport: WOW...

Leaving Kathmandu behind, I headed 6 hours directly west to the town of Pokhara. Pokhara is one of the most popular access points to the Himalaya Mountain range. Though Everest is on the other side of the country, this section of mountains still boasts some of the highest peaks on the planet. In fact, Nepal contains 10 of the worlds 14 tallest m...

Namaste after a crazy month in this beautiful country of Nepal! It seems like forever ago when we were teaching the monks English in Chobar. However, we didn't really do justice in this blog to that 9-day experience before we jetted off for some adventure outside of the city. Even with the language barrier (our Nepali is minimal), we easily fell...

The streets of Pokhara have slowed with my return from the Annapurna hike after 2 weeks and many kilometers. The steady stream of tourists has turned into a trickle leaving store owners idle and restaurants bare of bodies. The music stores lit up with neon lights blast music into the empty streets with few to buy their boot leg CDs and iPod read...

11 Oct 06 - 31 Oct 06 The long awaited trek...! Finally! We did it - booked it almost a year ago, we could not go there in April due to mass strikes that blocked the country; we postponed it to October - for the best! We had the most fabulous time, fabulous weather, and most amazing team with us (Bishwa our guide, and Drugba our porter)! Here wa...

Right Place Wrong Time Those are the first words that we heard from our guide when we got into Nepal. They were right after we got our visas and found our luggage in the chaotic airport and made it to our van. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about and asked him to explain, at which point he seemed a bit shocked. He told us that there...

Stuck in Kathmandu Sep 1, 2004 I should have known that something was stirring when upon landing in Kathmandu the pilot announced it was not safe, and encouraged us all to fly back to Bangkok. But, I had read about the Maoist rebels and felt like I was making the right (and safe) decision to come to Kathmandu regardless. What I hadn't yet consid...