We're now in Thailand our third country of the trip. We flew out of Kathmandu yesterday and everything went surprisingly well, despite an upset stomach.
We arrived in Bangkok at 7pm and proceeded to head to China Town which was an experience, as we wondered down labyrinth like streets in the dark, while one old man tried to feed me sweets, very surreal!
The heat here is crazy compared to Nepal, and the humidity makes it feel very tropical.
The thing we noticed the most when arriving in Thailand is how much more money there is here, for the first time since leaving Europe we've seen good roads, and many skyscrapers. Everything seems to be so organised as well, cars even slow down to let you cross the road! We didn't notice it the last time we visited Bangkok, but i think India and Nepal show a much bigger contrast.
Today we sorted out our Laos visa, and just have our Cambodian visa to obtain tomorrow before we can leave Bangkok, and head to a nice island. We're not sure of our route through Thailand yet, but we'll add something later. Roughly we're heading south to the Islands, and then all the way back up to the north of Thailand where in one months time we'll cross into Laos.
We had chicken for the first time in ages yesterday, it was gorgeous. I also samples a curious flavour of crisps: "Garlic Soft shell Crabs", made by Lays (or walkers), that can only exist in Thailand!
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Paragliding, Buddhism and Holi
We've had an exciting and mixed time since getting back from our trek.
I (Christina decided against it) took advantage of the word class paragliding from Pokhara and took the leap from an over sized hill with an over sized kite. Paragliding is an awesome experience, although not utterly serene, as you have a reoccurring thought that if these kite strings break i fall 2000 metres to my death. Here's one photo i took of the view when i looked down (yes- those are my feet):-
The 30 minute tandem flight gave really nice views of Pokhara and the surrounding Himalayan mountain range, and gave me an experience as close to be a bird as i'm ever going to get minus feathers!
Straight after take off my camera batteries died (typical!) so while in mid-air i went about changing them, without dropping the batteries let alone my camera! Here's another photo just after take off whilst in midair:-
On Friday me and Chrissy started a three day Buddhist meditation retreat, which was really nice and provided a good foundation in Buddhism and meditation.
We finally left Pokhara on Monday and travelled to a small traditional Newari town called Bhandipur. This town was ultra traditional and didn't seem as though it had really changed in hundreds of years!
Yesterday was the Hindu festival of Holi, which is a big deal in Nepal and India, especially for kids, who throw paint and water at each other and hapless travellers like ourselves! Here's a photo after a good mornings paint fight with the locals:-
We of course armed ourselves with much powder paint to return fire, it was a very amusing morning. The laundry service are not going to be happy when i hand over my pain stained clothes though!!
Today we travelled to Kathmandu, and have 7 days remaining in Nepal before we fly to Thailand. I'm dying for some decent food, let alone some meat!!!
I (Christina decided against it) took advantage of the word class paragliding from Pokhara and took the leap from an over sized hill with an over sized kite. Paragliding is an awesome experience, although not utterly serene, as you have a reoccurring thought that if these kite strings break i fall 2000 metres to my death. Here's one photo i took of the view when i looked down (yes- those are my feet):-
The 30 minute tandem flight gave really nice views of Pokhara and the surrounding Himalayan mountain range, and gave me an experience as close to be a bird as i'm ever going to get minus feathers!
Straight after take off my camera batteries died (typical!) so while in mid-air i went about changing them, without dropping the batteries let alone my camera! Here's another photo just after take off whilst in midair:-
On Friday me and Chrissy started a three day Buddhist meditation retreat, which was really nice and provided a good foundation in Buddhism and meditation.
We finally left Pokhara on Monday and travelled to a small traditional Newari town called Bhandipur. This town was ultra traditional and didn't seem as though it had really changed in hundreds of years!
Yesterday was the Hindu festival of Holi, which is a big deal in Nepal and India, especially for kids, who throw paint and water at each other and hapless travellers like ourselves! Here's a photo after a good mornings paint fight with the locals:-
We of course armed ourselves with much powder paint to return fire, it was a very amusing morning. The laundry service are not going to be happy when i hand over my pain stained clothes though!!Today we travelled to Kathmandu, and have 7 days remaining in Nepal before we fly to Thailand. I'm dying for some decent food, let alone some meat!!!
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Trekking in the Himalayas and the art of surviving
We've just successfully finished our Annapurna base camp trek within 10 days and are now resting up in Pokhara, quite frankly thankful to be alive.
Based on our understanding and stubbornness we rejected offers of porters and guides for our trek and decided to do it independently, which is quite a decision when you're both carrying 15kg backpacks for ~7 hours walking a day!
The trek started beautifully with nice warm weather, and a lot of climbing up and down hillsides at relatively low altitude, four days in we reached Machapuchare base camp (MBC) (at 3700m), this is the day the trek got serious as it snowed all day from 11am, this was on top of already deep snow. As the storm clouds had well and truly gathered we had to stay here for 2 days and 2 whole nights (with the effects of the altitude disturbing any kind of sleep!), we sat out intense snow with all day thunder and lightening right above us, and the very real risk of avalanche in the back of our minds. After the second night we woke up at 6am and to our delight the storm had cleared meaning we could do the last climb to Annapurna Base camp (ABC) (4130m!), this entailed endless falling into snow up to our waists and complete wonder as we could finally see all the
mountains that surrounded us.
This is a picture of the lodge we were staying in at MBC (snowed in!):-
The mountain range at Annapurna base camp is a 360 degree panorama of some of the highest mountains in the world let alone the Himalayas, we stayed at Annapurna II base camp, with the mountain behind us at 7,937m! Life is different at this altitude, you can't breath very well due to the thinness of the oxygen, you're surrounded by the most alien landscape and nothing really grows or lives, except for a group of backpackers well out of their depth!
Reaching base camp was a massive achievement for us, and ranks up their as one of the most important things i've done in my life, let alone the most beautiful, and it also provided the biggest high (in both senses) of our lives. Here's a picture of me enjoying a beer (well deserved!) at base camp. Alcohol has a much bigger effect at this altitude, so only one beer :)
After 11am that morning the storms came in again, with much more snow, thunder, lightening, and the constant rumble of avalanches. This is the type of situation that me and Chrissy haven't faced before, the type of situation where you could very much live or die based on your decisions. Psychologically it's quite tough, but we just had to sit it out and hope for the best.
At 6am the next morning we all woke up and observed that it wasn't still snowing, we made the decision of getting back down at least to MBC if not further. We were the only people at ABC, so we had to rebreak the path down, which was filled in with deep snow, this was made only trickier by the chances of avalanches, and a big avalanche having already fallen over the previous route. We took it in turns to break the path, which involved testing the ground to feel for yesterdays icy path with sticks, we re-routed at times to avoid causing avalanches, most of the trek down was exhausting as you continually lost a leg or two to deep snow, sometimes you had to pull half of your submerged body from the snow to continue. We also had a guy with us who was majorly ill, either AMS or some parasitic stomach bug, who kept curling up in pain, and looked quite close to death. We took it in turnsto carry him down. After all this a trek which normally takes 1 hour took s about 3 hours of hardcore effort to get down to MBC. The ill guy had to stay at MBC as he was going nowhere, and some of his friends stayed to look after him.
Me and Christina decided to press on down and not risk getting snowed in again, but we both knew the next part was a high risk avalanche zone and should be passed before 10am, it was 9:50am! We decided to take the risk, as if it snowed again it would just become even more dangerous the next day. We essentially ran through this 2 hour trek, listening out for avalanches and moving even faster when we saw them starting near us. The ironic thing was this was some of the most beautful winter scenery i have ever seen in my life, but also some of the most dangerous, as a number of people have been caught in avalanches here. We trekked for a huge amount of time this day (~9 hours) without break to get out of the snow covered areas.
We finally reached a lodge that was out of the snow, and were thankful to still have our lives intact!
Michael Palin also did this trek for his Himalaya series, however he had 35 porters and guides, got dropped off 3 days into the trek, picked up from annapurna base camp (by helicopter), and didn't have much snow to contend with. I've just read this section of his book, and he moans a lot about the difficulty of it, Michael you were lucky! As were the people we've met who did the trek prior to us, their experiences were very different, and a lot easier.
We got unlucky with some heavy end of winter snow storms, it was just the timing that was wrong, but now we're safe in sunny Pokhara, i'm glad it all happened as we're both still alive and we have a hell of a story about the time we went trekking in the Himalayas!
Based on our understanding and stubbornness we rejected offers of porters and guides for our trek and decided to do it independently, which is quite a decision when you're both carrying 15kg backpacks for ~7 hours walking a day!
The trek started beautifully with nice warm weather, and a lot of climbing up and down hillsides at relatively low altitude, four days in we reached Machapuchare base camp (MBC) (at 3700m), this is the day the trek got serious as it snowed all day from 11am, this was on top of already deep snow. As the storm clouds had well and truly gathered we had to stay here for 2 days and 2 whole nights (with the effects of the altitude disturbing any kind of sleep!), we sat out intense snow with all day thunder and lightening right above us, and the very real risk of avalanche in the back of our minds. After the second night we woke up at 6am and to our delight the storm had cleared meaning we could do the last climb to Annapurna Base camp (ABC) (4130m!), this entailed endless falling into snow up to our waists and complete wonder as we could finally see all the
mountains that surrounded us.This is a picture of the lodge we were staying in at MBC (snowed in!):-
The mountain range at Annapurna base camp is a 360 degree panorama of some of the highest mountains in the world let alone the Himalayas, we stayed at Annapurna II base camp, with the mountain behind us at 7,937m! Life is different at this altitude, you can't breath very well due to the thinness of the oxygen, you're surrounded by the most alien landscape and nothing really grows or lives, except for a group of backpackers well out of their depth!
Reaching base camp was a massive achievement for us, and ranks up their as one of the most important things i've done in my life, let alone the most beautiful, and it also provided the biggest high (in both senses) of our lives. Here's a picture of me enjoying a beer (well deserved!) at base camp. Alcohol has a much bigger effect at this altitude, so only one beer :)After 11am that morning the storms came in again, with much more snow, thunder, lightening, and the constant rumble of avalanches. This is the type of situation that me and Chrissy haven't faced before, the type of situation where you could very much live or die based on your decisions. Psychologically it's quite tough, but we just had to sit it out and hope for the best.
At 6am the next morning we all woke up and observed that it wasn't still snowing, we made the decision of getting back down at least to MBC if not further. We were the only people at ABC, so we had to rebreak the path down, which was filled in with deep snow, this was made only trickier by the chances of avalanches, and a big avalanche having already fallen over the previous route. We took it in turns to break the path, which involved testing the ground to feel for yesterdays icy path with sticks, we re-routed at times to avoid causing avalanches, most of the trek down was exhausting as you continually lost a leg or two to deep snow, sometimes you had to pull half of your submerged body from the snow to continue. We also had a guy with us who was majorly ill, either AMS or some parasitic stomach bug, who kept curling up in pain, and looked quite close to death. We took it in turnsto carry him down. After all this a trek which normally takes 1 hour took s about 3 hours of hardcore effort to get down to MBC. The ill guy had to stay at MBC as he was going nowhere, and some of his friends stayed to look after him.
Me and Christina decided to press on down and not risk getting snowed in again, but we both knew the next part was a high risk avalanche zone and should be passed before 10am, it was 9:50am! We decided to take the risk, as if it snowed again it would just become even more dangerous the next day. We essentially ran through this 2 hour trek, listening out for avalanches and moving even faster when we saw them starting near us. The ironic thing was this was some of the most beautful winter scenery i have ever seen in my life, but also some of the most dangerous, as a number of people have been caught in avalanches here. We trekked for a huge amount of time this day (~9 hours) without break to get out of the snow covered areas.
We finally reached a lodge that was out of the snow, and were thankful to still have our lives intact!
Michael Palin also did this trek for his Himalaya series, however he had 35 porters and guides, got dropped off 3 days into the trek, picked up from annapurna base camp (by helicopter), and didn't have much snow to contend with. I've just read this section of his book, and he moans a lot about the difficulty of it, Michael you were lucky! As were the people we've met who did the trek prior to us, their experiences were very different, and a lot easier.
We got unlucky with some heavy end of winter snow storms, it was just the timing that was wrong, but now we're safe in sunny Pokhara, i'm glad it all happened as we're both still alive and we have a hell of a story about the time we went trekking in the Himalayas!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
