Nepal

My apologies about this post - for some reason the spacing is all off so the text and pictures don't line up as I had prepared them. I tried to fix it, and I failed. Hopefully you can figure it out. Sorry!

My friend Craig invited me, well I think I kind of invited myself, at a dinner party in Australia back before I went to Papua New Guinea. I wasn't sure if I would be able to go because I knew I would be working in Redwood National Park in the spring, but fortunately my boss was kind enough to let me start a the end of April which gave me a month to go to Nepal and get my hind back to California in time to start work on April 27.















I've been a lot of places in a lot of countries (I think my total is at 23 now) and I've met so many people that they are all beginning to look familiar. Thus, I think I have the authority to say that Nepal is awesome! - Aside from its air pollution in the 'low'lands, which is pretty shocking.Nepal is beautiful. The people are generally very very nice, extraordinarily strong/fit, and extremely helpful. The food is good. The wildlife is diverse and unique. The mountains are amazing and...well really sodding tall. There are still lots of places where cars aren't - so food and supplies ride in on donkey trains or on someone's back. Oh, and sodas come in glass bottles (like in the old days) so they can be re-filled and re-sold without the energy waste of recycling. Oh yes, and most importantly, Nepal has yaks.

I arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal on March 27th, met Craig, Rachael, and our guide Yadab at the airport.

We headed to our hotel in Thamel to drop off our stuff, then headed right out for some momo. Momo are Tibetan/Nepali steamed dumplings that can be filled with meat, potato, or mixed vegies. I had had them in the Tibetan/Nepali district (Maj nu ka Tila) Delhi, India when I was there a few years ago. We spent the rest of that day and the next acquainting ourselves with Thamel, running errands, and seeing a few of the interesting cultural sites with Yadab. We also did some shopping for the necessary knock off cold weather gear we would need for the trek. Yadab took us to the monkey temple and showed us around the old parts of Kathmandu where some of the buildings are decorated with ornately carved woodwork. Kathmandu has an incredible history and a vibrant cultural and spiritual life.

After our short stint in Kathmandu we took a bus to Besisahar where we began hiking the Annapurna Circuit. We hiked the circuit counter clockwise toward Jomsom and then toward Pokara. It was about 250 kilometers and quite steep in many places which got us huffing and puffing. We saw so many beautiful vistas and met many kind people and friendly domesticated animals along the way. The birding was pretty good too. It took us about 20 days to hike the whole circuit and our maximum elevation was 5416 meters (about 17,500 ft.). Here is a map: http://muktinath.org/images/travelfolder/annamap.jpg
I will let the picture captions do the rest of the explanation....

The terrain along the trek was varied and beautiful...

Around Tal

Around Chame

Near Manang

Artwork painted on walls inside a temple in a town called Upper Pisang

Still Around Manang

Heading over the pass
Reaching Thorong Pass was quite a challenge as the altitude made it much harder to catch your breath and Rachael and Craig were getting quite severe headaches. I don't know how I managed to dodge that bullet but I did. Nevertheless, we soldiered on and it was very beautiful.

Near Muktinath

Near Marpha

Near Tukuche
Craig and Rachael opted to take a shortcut back to Pokhara via 4wd jeep. I couldn't change my tickets home, so I preferred to keep going on foot. After they left, I got a little lonely so I hugged a cypress tree :)

Around Tatopani and Gorepani

Super Yadab retrieving a Rhododendron flower for me. Yay!






































Archery competition in Ghorepani

Ghorepani to Ghandruk

We ended our trek in Birethanti and took a local bus to Pokhara for a few days of rest, good baked goods, lake side strolls, a bike ride to the local cave, and numerous failed searches for descent lassis (a yogurt drink).






























































There is a big effort underway to build roads into the Annapurna area. In some areas (from Muktinath to Pokhara) the roads are already passable by 4wd. On the Besisahar - Manang stretch, work crews are blasting and removing rock by hand along steep cliffs. Roads are both a blessing and a curse. They enable more efficient movement of people and goods, and their construction provides much needed jobs; but they also cause serious erosion, expose people to lots of dust and bad air - causing respiratory problems, and trekkers usually don't like walking along roads being dusted by local jeeps, so they may stop coming to the region, or they may move through it more quickly (not visiting as many hotels and tea houses), which might put it in economic collapse. We'll just have to wait and see. I hope for the best.

















This hammer and sickle graffiti is a reminder of the Maoist extremists that terrorized Nepal's countryside till about two years ago when they won seats in the election. They used to use force and violence to intimidate country people and make them provide free food and shelter to them. They even threatened people to coerce them into voting for Maoists in the election. All is fairly peaceful now, but I hope extremist groups will not become a problem again in Nepal.

















Wildlife was generally allusive, but w did see a few langurs in the lower parts of the trek, and blue sheep (wild native 'sheep' - think bighorn.




















In the lower elevations, we saw lots of donkey trains carrying everything imaginable up the trail - blankets, toilet plates, cokes, rice, etc. I don't have pictures, but some of the things porters carried up the trail were pretty interesting to - chickens in 6 or 8 cage units, 6 foot tall book cases, roofing material.















We passed a lot of sheep and goat herds. I even found a few kindred black sheep :)

The dogs were all very friendly.

As we got higher up, the livestock got hairier and yaks replaced cattle and water buffalo.

I saw plenty of birds!

Himalayan griff0ns!

I saw lots of new butterfly species.