We arrived back home last night and we’ve been trying to get both cats off us ever
since. Usually, they’re mad at us for days but not this time.
The flights home went well, it was just long. Sheri is fine, she slept most of the time. We visited 8 airports on this trip; Vancouver, Toronto. London, Delhi, Kathmandu, Abu Dhabi, Bahrein and Paris.
Now the fun part starts, reading all my email and going through my feeds.
We’re on our way back home and we’re on our first stop in Abu Dhabi. I talked myself into the first class lounge to use the internet but I feel somewhat underdressed. And if you know me, you understand what that means. We continued our airline bad luck streak by having a 4 hour delay right of the start in Kathmandu this time. As a bonus Sheri got violently ill last night (probably food poisoning) and believe me, the Kathmandu airport is not a good place to feel sick. Now you probably ask yourself why I’m hanging out in the first class lounge and let Sheri vent for herself with the plebs. Well, she’s feeling a lot better at the moment and the Abu Dhabi airport is a very nice place to sit anywhere so don’t worry; she’s fine. They even have a pharmacy so we got some killer drugs to keep her fluids under control and it seems to work.
We spend the last couple of days in Kathmandu not doing all that much. We just did some shopping and watched a lot of movies in the hotel to be honest. We felt we deserved it after the trek. So we didn’t venture very far. We did spend some time with our guides and their boss. I never expected I would leave Nepal with 3 new friends, because that’s what it feels like.
We should be back in Vancouver late on Thursday but there’s still 3 flights to go. If everything goes bad, hopefully it will be in Paris because I miss that city so much, you have no idea. But we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
William in Abu Dhabi
We took a lot of pictures, here is a small selection.
The bus that took us to the start of our trek.
Sheri and a porter carrying chickens up the mountain. Sheri wore dresses out of respect for the locals who greatly appreciated it.
Some of the many, many sheep we saw.
The Daulagiri was the highest mountain we saw at 8,167 metres (26,794 feet), the 7th highest mountain in the world.
Kagbeni in the Mustang district. Still well above the tree line. We visited a very nice Tibetan Buddhist monastery there.
The food around the trek was very good, with many local specialties…..
The beautiful fields around the village of Ghandruk.
The higher we got, the colder the nights got.
William, after 3 weeks of trekking.
The trek is over. We’ve made it and we’re both in good condition. We hiked for 19 days all together. Over 300km and about 90 hours of hiking. I cannot describe the experience in a few lines, it wouldn’t do it justice. I enjoyed every second, ever meter up and down, every freezing shower I took, every time I had to blow my nose because of my cold, every sheep and goat, every insanely high mountain, every time I turned a corner and the landscape would change, every person I got to interact with and I’m happy I had Sheri there with me. I’m planning to create a little section of this website when I’m back in Canada to detail our trip (but I’ve planned things before that never materialized).
We took over 1100 pictures. The connection I’m on right now is too slow to upload pictures so stay tuned over the next few days.
We’re on day 9 (I think) of the trek. I’m sitting in a town called Kagbeni in the Yak Donalds (no joke). They have a satelite internet connection. That’s really something because most towns I’ve been don’t have electricity. We started our trek at about 600 meters and we crossed the Thorung La Pass (5416 meters) yesterday. That was a long day, it was freezing cold and the whole pass was covered in snow. But it was awesome. We’ve had the best time so far. There is so much to see and take in, every corner we turn is different again. The people are amazing and the scenery more then spectacular. Our guides Mukti and Rajan are great, they are our guides, porters, waiters and personal assistants. And they tought us a new card game we’re playing every night.
Near Manang
On top of the Thorung La pass.