Nepal home to everest
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2006
1
5
93
Trip End
Aug 13, 2007
Pokhara,
Nepal
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Within a few hours of arriving we have booked an 8 day 7 night trek on Annapurna circuit on west side of Himalayas. We have come to Nepal out of season - its very quiet which is great but not great for the views. We got a great view the first morning from Pokhara, this turned out to be our only view until we returned from the trek. The trek was fantastic nonetheless, we stayed in some great teahouses along the way and met some great people.
About 2 hours into the trek we met two very young Maoist army personnel (16 year old lads), they were looking for a donation (compulsary donation)- we were tempted to keep walking but were advised against it
01 Arriving into Nepal
. It was only 1000 rupees so not so bad - we learned later that they take these donations from everybody in the area not just tourists. Not easy to earn a living in Nepal as it is and then these lads want a percentage.We were rained on nearly constantly over the 8 days. Paul was eaten alive by leeches one of the days - they seem to take a particular liking to him nobody else was atacked so bad!
We trekked 150km by the time we had finished, the plan was to fly back to Pokhara from Jomsom but due to the bad visibility which had plagued us the whole way we could not fly and so began our dicing with death....20kms on the back of ancient 250 motorbikes with kamikaze drivers, 15km trekking along landslide riddled paths. The next day we and 15 others crammed into a jeep (four on the roof)for a half an hour of fun, next we had the pleasure of sitting on the roof of a local bus, ducking under electrical wires and branches and the last 70km we spent in a 20 year old rustbucket Toyota Corolla. But we managed to get back down in 2 days which was good going!
We would like to say our guide and porter were fantastic and only thanks to them God knows how we would have got back!
