Kantipur Pokhara

... soft.

The lucky ones have cracked into the cushiness of the tourist industry. Porters trade in their baskets for the heaping bags of three overpacked Westerners, not to mention their own pack, the diminutive size of my highly technical water bag. They grin the whole way along, grateful for escaping their villages and possibility of meeting their demon - the refrigerator.

We walk together, through the front yards of accomosted ...

... Dutch guy eat some toberlone as the lunatic was carrying 4 massive bars around with him!!

Day 7 - Lower Pisang to Manang 15km now at 3540m
We decided to take the easier route to Manang as there are two different routes to take but we thought we would take it easy. The views were getting even better of the Annapurna's and the weather was still great, getting colder but still clear blue skies. Manang was really busy as the pass had been ...

... bail. We had reached the top but since we could barely see anything, it was rather anti-climactic. Although, the pagoda glowed nicely in the moonlight, and the sights of the lakes and valley were quite pretty. The lights of Pokhara were below us, and the stars twinkled above. Blah, blah blah, get us the hell out of here! After admiring the view for a minute or so, we started our slow and scary descent in the darkness.

We kept tripping, sliding and tempting ...

... and a lazy day. We headed out for lunch early afternoon, but I had to go back to the hotel with some heavy duty painkillers and anti-biotics for a well needed sleep. Woke up 8pmish and wandered into town to find some of the guys for dinner. I luckily managed to stumble across Adam and Ruth so ate dinner with them before heading back to the Amsterdam Club for Steve-O's Canada Day celebrations. Sheltered under an ...

... and were coming around and kin dof checking bags out!!!!

I so enjoyed just going from the hot springs to the ice cold river that I totally forgot to take photos. The only thing to say is that anybody treking to Jinhu should not miss these Hot Springs.

What a great relaxing day and I am now ready to continue the trek and hope the sun will continue to shine!!

... to my face at one stage, thankfully she didnt tell me til later. And oh man did we come our covered in mud, Krys had it all over her ass, looked just like she'd sat in ****, it was great!!! So it's 5pm by the time we get outta the cave and the walk up is gonna be like 3hours so we spotted a town in the distance and thought what the hell, lets get there and then get a bus to Dumre and back to Bandipur. Fantastic idea. We walked for another 20min and landed in some town, not ...

... to do with and we raced down to the village of Kagbeni (2800metres and exactly 1km lower than Muktinath) covering 11km in around 2 and a half hours. On the way we passed a couple of small, stone villages, horses at pasture and encountered the beginnings of the powerful wind we had been warned about (strong enough to blow you across the path). Arriving in Kagbeni, a small village sat at the convergence of two valleys, with a cliff several hundred metres high hanging over it, we dived into ...

... also treated to a magnificent sunrise over the mountain range from Poon Hill. Setting off at 7.30 a.m. each day, we reached our teahouse destinations by mid afternoon to wolf down huge portions of dal bhat and relax our overstrertched muscles in the sun. It was wonderful.












On day 4 I awoke before the alarm. The enthusiastic wake-up call had come from the patter of ...

... reckon that sixty such groups exist within the Kingdom, speaking around forty nine different languages between them.

Soon we were off again and, after passing through a forest, began to climb slowly along a scarred and potholed road into the foothills of the Himalaya. Had the weather not been so cloudy and wet, we were assured that we would have had great views of snow-clad peaks along this route. The vegetation changed and became more varied as we left the tropical zone of the ...