Last stop

Nepal. I got there about 3 days ago, after a 20h bus journey from Darjeeling. I am in Kathmandou at the moment. Let me think of what I did these last three days? I asked a lot of people about the best treks to do, and how to do them, that was the first day. The second day I had made the decision to do the Annapurna circuit, and to go on my own, and with no porter. I started buying all the equipment: gloves, socks, long johns, water purifier, sunglasses, technical t-shirt, stuff to put in my shoes against the snow, waterproof trousers, water bottle, a buff to protect my nose from the dirt. Today I extended my Nepalese visa to the 8th June, I bought my trekking permit for the Annapurna, arranged the bus to get to the first village, bought some food, a map, a book and now the last thing I have to do is go back to the hotel, pack, and tomorrow I will be on the bus at 6 to get to Dumre.
I am not sure exactly how long it will take me, but I suspect I will be back in about 3 weeks. It is a long trek. I met an English guy called Andy on the bus from Darjeeling, a lovely man, 37, who used to be a managing director in a consultancy firm and quit to go traveling. He just spent 6 months in India, where he qualified as a yoga teacher, having never done yoga before. He is going to the Everest base camp. It is probably the most interesting time to go to the base camp, because all the teams are there at the moment, and they usually start summitting the Everest around mid to end of May. So if you’re there you can see the climbers coming back down to the base camp, hopefully after they reached the summit. There’s about 60 teams there at the moment. It must be a serious buzz. So I almost went with him, but I decided to stick to my original plan. I have come all this way to walk the 300 km all around the Annapurna, the first 8000m peak to have ever been summitted, and that was actually achieved by a Frenchman and his team, Maurice Herzog in 1950. Do not worry, I am not going to attempt a 8000m peak just now, the highest pass on this trek is 5416m, and that is actually the highest I will ever have been, if I make it.
Anyway, all that to say I will be away for the next 3 weeks or so, and when I come back I will only have a few weeks to go before going back home. My flight is on the 10th June!

~ by jenniferldp on April 24, 2009.