Never Ending Peace And Love

  Kathmandu, Nepal
Sunday, November 4, 2007

Nepal Nepal, we love it! Well, we arrived on the 25th October from Delhi and headed straight for Thamel, the touristy part of Kathmandu to the Khangsar Guest house to wait for our fiends Tom and Charlie to arrive.
Thamel is a crazy place, like a massive market selling everything you can think of and specialising in trekking gear. There are soo many people and taxis and rickshaws and bicycle rickshaws and beggars its overwhelming, noisy and pretty dirty but fun!!! We got hassled by way too many druggies for our liking, and one night some loser wouldn't leave us alone, threatening us with needles and bricks for money it was real scary and Darren had to knock him out in the end, then the police came and beat him with batons, we couldn't believe it!!!!
Apart from that though everything was cool and We had some great steak dinners and spent many an hour wandering aimlessly round the stalls.
When tom and Charlie arrived they bought two Canadian fiends, the lovely cousins Amanda and Kyle. We all dressed up for Halloween

AH, how good did we look?

Halloween camel!

(as characters from The Wizard of Oz and a camel!) and got very drunk and went to a very expensive party at the local yak and Yeti hotel. We wanted to go to the casino but weren't allowed in because of our costumes.A good drunken night was had.
The next day we went on a two day rafting trip to the last resort which was mental.

Rafting trip, we so were the A team!

The rapids were grade 3/4 - quite scary for virgin rafters and the water was soooo cold! We jumped in once and got thrown out once which was more than enough for us! On the second day we got up early to jump off a 160mete high bridge over the river

This was the view off the bridge we jumped off!

- Kate did the bungee jump and Darren did the (worlds biggest) canyon swing, we have the dvds to show you when we get back it was amazingly scary and Kate lost her shoe in the jump - not funny when considering the 25minute steep climb up the side of th mountain after! The second day of rafting in parts was more scary than fun and we all got a good few cuts and bruises and were exhausted by the time we got back to thamel.
To chill out we all went off to Pokhara a real laid back area by a massive lake which reflects all the mountains around it was beautiful!

Lakeside

We had a massive drunken poker night won by tom and generally relaxed. We rented out mopeds to explore and find a pool to chill out by and got stuck in the worst hail Storm we could ever imagine. We took cove in a restaurant and it was so noisy we had to shout to each other. The hailstones were HUGE

Hail Stones - these babies were HUGE!

they could seriously do some damage but it was over relatively quickly. We also hired a boat and went for a boat ride and a climb up to peace pakoda which almost killed us and made us question if we wanted to trek or not - but we had already brought loads of gear!!!
Tom and Charlie left for Varanasi leaving the four of us to plan our trek. we originally were going to do the Everest base camp trek but decided on second thoughts to do the Annapurna circuit - an 18 day (it took us 16 woo) trek through the Annapurna and surrounding Himalaya mountain range.

At high camp just before the pass

It was easily one of the best things we have ever done and easily the most physically challenging. For 16 days (apart from 2 acclimatisation days) we were up by half 6 (sometimes earlier)and trekked for between 4 and 9 hours a day, climbing peaks to reach the pass which was at 5416 metes.

Coming over the Throng La Pass

We walked through forests, mountains, dessert

Totally deserted

Amazing view - this was coming back down

and god knows what and it was so cold - minus 18 degrees at the top, everything froze.

Always sunny, always cold

We saw loads of beautiful waterfalls and went in a boiling hot spring which was heaven after 5 (or in darren's case 10) days of not showering.The landscape was so beautiful

Little mountain children awwwww

we know we will never see anything as amazing again, nor will we have to endure endless herds of goats, yaks, donkeys and horses which could knock us off the paths as the pass and which move so slowly its silly. [PHOTO_ID_L=s516628183_211717_6019.jpgDarren nearly caused an accident when we moved a Rock to help a donkey pass, but instead of moving it to the side he just chucked it off the mountain and we all stood there for a few minutes wondering if he'd just killed someone or something or caused a massive landslide.
We could wrote forever about the trek it was so worthwhile although the food was a bit shitty, hopefully the pictures (soon to be up we promise!) Will help. Anyway we did not die of altitude sickness, although we were all adamant at some point we had it, and apart from a brief spot on the 14th day when we flagged down a passing jeep and rode for an hour on its roof as we were so fed up of walking (kyle walked though) we were proud to complete the circuit, 220km long, in one piece with only a few blisters.
Getting back to a good shower and bed in POkhara was the best feeling ever we slept so well , pigged out, drank a helluva lot of cocktails and watched TV.
Once Amanda and Kyle left for Goa, we were sad and alone without our friends and found solace in the Kathmandu casino which was a great experience although we didnt make any money. Now we only have a few days left till we have to go back to Delhi to fly to Thailand - bring on the sun, sand and beaches!!!!