Nepal: Pokhara & Annapurna Base Camp 16-31 July

I left Delhi late morning on the 16^th of July, the day my Indian visa ran out. When going through Indian immigration, I got a man of senior years who peered at me over his spectacles with disapproval. What was my job? Well, I don’t have a job at the moment, I’m travelling. Alone? Yes alone. Am I married? No, I’m not married. Not married? Alone? Peer, sniff, shakes head. Why are you alone? How old are you? You are not married? Sigh, why is this relevant, can I go now. Eventually he let me go, and at times like that I feel lucky to have the freedom my Western society allows me to revel in.

I left Delhi in the scorching heat from slick new Terminal 3 for the hour long flight to Kathmandu, Nepal. We landed in thick cloud that reveals the scenery just minutes before the plane touches the runway, allowing a short glimpse of a valley thick with green and wet, and rain still pouring making the fields look like little square ponds. It was monsoon in full swing, and a blanket of cool moisture enveloped me as I stepped off the plane, so welcome after the dry clingy heat of Delhi. The landscape, culture, language, atmosphere was completely different after only an hour flight, it always amazes me. The airport is tiny, a simple, low red brick building with no frills.

On a UK passport it’s possible to get a visa on arrival, one month for $40 and you can also get two or three months.

Nepalese Rupees (Rs) 100 is £0.70 GBP - Rs140 is £1.

In Kathmandu most guesthouses have a free pick up service so if you walk outside you’ll see a huddle of drivers holding up signs with the name of the guesthouse they’re from, just pick the one you want and they’ll take you there. I called one, Hotel Silver Home, from the free phone in the arrivals hall to come get me which they did happily. I sat and waited outside on some benches and got a few waves of taxi drivers approach me until they waned in enthusiasm when they all found out I was being picked up. A man sat down beside me and after shooting the breeze a bit he told me he was a guide and offered his services. Some others watched in bemusement as he chatted away to me in fluent English. One of the things that instantly struck me about Nepal and stayed with me throughout the trip was that everyone felt part of a really big family of uncles, aunties, cousins, brothers. Everyone milling about the airport like drivers or guides seemed to know everyone else, ‘ah’ they said, ‘Hotel Silver Home, they were just here, but will be back to get you soon, it’s Tom who’s fetching you’ and things to that affect. I felt safe instantly, also the lack uncomfortable staring that I got in Delhi helped. After people approached me to see if they could offer a service like a taxi or guide and found I didn’t need it, they still stuck around to help me in any way they could. Maybe it’s partly because there are so many trekkers coming here every season, and they rely so heavily on tourism as a huge part of their economy, but after spending five weeks in Nepal I think it’s just the Nepali way.

From what I’d read about Kathmandu I expected it to be hot, dirty and chaotic with out of control traffic and streets busting to the seams with people, rubbish, cars and bikes. It was busy, but nothing like I expected and to me a lot less of any of these things than Delhi. Okay, the streets were smaller, and there was a bit of traffic but really it’s nothing as bad as the guidebooks make out. Thamel (the main tourist district) is quite tightly packed with guesthouses, tourist shops and bars but definitely still has its own charm, although watch out that something doesn’t ride you over, and when it rains hard you can be knee deep in murky brown water mixed with untold city grime.  Hotel Silver Home is tucked away up a side street in central Thamel. It was okay, nothing special although Lonely Planet recommends it highly for some reason. You can get a nicer room and atmosphere elsewhere I found, although they did pick me up from the airport and the private room with bathroom was only Rs300. But when I went back there a couple of weeks later the same room had gone up to Rs600 for some unknown reason, maybe because this was the season for the Chinese tourists to descend.

I planned to go straight to Pokhara the next day, Nepal’s second biggest city and around a six hour bus ride away, to go to a Sadhana Yoga Retreat for a few days. A friend found them online and sent the details to me. It appealed to me because you get to stay in a beautiful house, where they cook organic vegetarian food and your day is made up of early waking, meditating, yoga, some walks and just complete calm and healthy peace. You can go to Yuuki Treks in Thamel to discuss all their packages and get them to arrange it all for you from there if you’d like to speak to someone in Thamel before heading to Pokhara. Yuuki also booked me a bus ticket to Pokhara with Blue Sky Travels for Rs500 which is pretty much the lowest you can expect to pay for a good tourist bus to Pokhara, that bus company was a good experience each of the four times I went between KTM and Pokhara so I can recommend them. You can book bus tickets at any tourist agent or guesthouse in KTM but don’t pay more than Rs500, they’d just be trying to get as much commission as possible. Go straight to the bus company office if they insist it’s more.  I was told not to take local buses long distance; they’re just too dangerous in Nepal which I had confirmed when I counted around six upturned local buses during my time there. Even the Nepali’s who can afford the extra Rs100 take tourist buses.

The drive to Pokhara is on good roads (which isn’t the norm at all in Nepal) and is pretty, following a river all the way as it winds around the mountain valleys. Everything was very hot and muggy that time of year, also very green. I sat next to a Nepali girl who at first took some sideways glances at me, and my old Western huffy self would be annoyed but now I smiled at her and she fell into easy conversation with me, pointing out landmarks and talking of Nepal’s politics, her studies and how they weren’t allowed to celebrate the Dalai Lama’s birthday that year properly. She spoke fluent Hindi too from her time in Dharamshala, and told me all about the large Indian group on the bus taking a pilgrimage to Manakamana temple in Gorkha, where the most popular temple of that Hindu goddess lies. You have to take a cable car to reach it, and as we pass the site people selling huge sliced cucumbers and pineapples line the sides of the bus sticking the sticky plates through the windows. The bus stops twice for food, where big fresh pots of chana (spicy chickpeas), potato curry, vegetable noodles and boiled eggs with tea await. All the buses to Pokhara from KTM leave at the same time of 7.30am, so they all descend en masse at the stops and everyone grabs a plate, although its only 9.30am. I had chana, and it became an instant favourite food of mine. The bus stops again around 12:30 for lunch, where you can munch down some dal baht, vegetable thali or momos.

When I get to Pokhara, the driver meant to pick me up for the Yoga retreat isn’t there. All the buses (around ten I guessed) arrived in the bus park at once, so there is a flurry of activity of taxi drivers and guesthouse touts. Once all the tourists are safely bundled into taxis and are driven away, the left over taxi drivers and workers gather in the waiting area and are curious about why I’m still there. ‘Waiting for someone? Ah yes, Sadhana Yoga, Mr XX will pick you up. He’s usually here. If he doesn’t come I can take you for Rs300...’ and the Nepali family continues in Pokhara. I’m surrounded by gruff taxi workers, who quiz me in good English they’ve learnt from tourists and then eventually ignore me, sitting in the middle of their waiting area and begin a heated discussion in Nepali about some local gossip. In India, sitting amongst a group of men in a bus station would have made me uncomfortable, but here they all felt like well wishing uncles, there was no gropey kind of staring. It might be unfair to make that comparison but I just say what I see.

Tourist bus park, Pokhara

Eventually after an hour my lift arrives. He drives me through Lakeside (the main tourist area) and then crashed over the bumps and potholes to the West of the town, where Sadhana Yoga sits on a hill overlooking the beautiful lake. He takes me as far as he can, and then it’s a small climb up the hillside to the house. I arrive sweaty, the reception and house seem empty but for some small children watching something on the computer. They call someone when they see me, a boy who seemed around sixteen with long hair who looked like a pixie. I decided to do three nights and two days. (All the courses and prices are here), but you have the option of staying longer if you want to continue. He checked me in and showed me to my room. The place was pretty, very quiet and empty, and as the afternoon heavy monsoon had started everything darkened with no lights working because of the frequent blackouts. I got a room to myself but only because the retreat wasn’t full, when more people arrived I shared with and Australian guy.

The house was nice, a newish build of four floors set around a courtyard and in a beautiful setting. There were rooms, a small yoga hall, and on the top floor a kitchen and then a dining room with a balcony with a great view. It felt like a home rather than a yoga ‘centre’ which is very different idea to the one we’d have in the West. The family lived there and the children ran about the place. When you think of retreat you think of quiet, with yoga instructors in special yoga outfits, apart from everyday life I suppose. So it took me a little by surprise that this was run like a home, but it was a pleasant surprise. The only thing that put me off a little was that the yoga instructors (who were young guys) while very composed and professional in the classes spent the rest of the time joking and horsing around outside my room which was on the lower floor in the courtyard. It kind of killed the mystique and respect I wanted to feel for a mediation or yoga instructor. It was only my own mental projection that they weren’t conforming to, so I tried to adjust my thinking to accept it and be happy with it how it was and that worked, it was a very warm and open place.

Chanting is fun

The schedule was waking up at 5:15 – meditation preparation and meditation for an hour – herbal tea – nasal cleansing which is pouring warm salty water into your nasal passages and blowing out fiercely - yoga practice one hour – breakfast of a very yum mixture of fruit, grains, curd – walk if it isn’t raining – steam bath which is a big wooden box which just your head sticks out filled with hot steam for seven minutes. In the afternoon its more meditation – lunch of some delicious organic Nepali food like dal bhat or dal roti – more yoga – more herbal tea (their own mixture from seven different types of herbs in the garden) – chanting of mantras which turned out to be really fun with the lady of house – dinner and then bed by around 8pm. The full schedule is here. It was a very relaxing, well thought out schedule. There was time to relax and walk if you wanted between things. But my old rebellious self found that any kind of schedule made me uptight. Obviously I’ve been doing my own thing for too long! Just having to do things on the dot at certain times even if I didn’t feel like it made me a little uneasy, although I realise this was the point... to condition your body and mind into a flow. If you didn’t want to do it they didn’t force you though. I think its that old ingrained thing, if I have to do it I find it a bore for some reason, silly girl.

It rained nonstop the full three days I was there, so I spent my time reading (which actually wasn’t too peaceful because of the kids playing outside my door, sweet but not really great for a meditation retreat) or going across in the rainy garden path to the next door guesthouse which had wifi, sometimes if there wasn’t a blackout. If they didn’t I chatted to the four young brothers who ran it, a couple of them were guides. It was a beautiful secluded spot on the forested hill overlooking the serene, beautiful Pokhara Lake. Because of the rainy weather the hills and lake were obscured most of the time by heavy grey clouds, but that leant a sense mysticism to the place. The other people at the retreat were not yoga buffs by any means. All were very clean cut Canadians or Americans volunteering in Nepal, without a hippy bead or beard amongst them, quite conservative, although they must have had some interest in spirituality to be there. I didn’t click with any of them spontaneously (around ten in total) although we made pleasant small talk, and they left me thinking what wholesome people they were, going back to their lives in finance or medicine.

As I wanted to go on a trek after the retreat, I searched online on trekkingpartners.com for a trekking buddy. Being low season and monsoon, I only saw one person who wanted to trek that area at that time. Kritika is Nepali but lives in the States, and wanted to do the Annapurna Base Camp trek before she went back there. We arranged to meet the day after I finished my retreat in Pokhara, which gave me some time to buy all the stuff I needed for the trek. Waterproof shoes, waterproof trousers, socks. I also hired some things, a sleeping bag, a huge poncho and a walking pole. It was going to be very wet! I bought quite a few things including a new pair of really good waterproof hiking boots and all of it came to less than £40. When I left the retreat, I stayed at Nepali Cottage guesthouse in Lakeside. It’s a small, cute, family run guesthouse with a nice garden, but be sure to have the rooms in the front because there’s a late night bar around the other side that keeps you up at night. Rooms are nice for Rs400 (low season probably). The helpful young manager of the guesthouse, Hemet, recommended a guide to me and also where to buy gear and gave  me some other useful advice.

Garden of Nepali Cottage

I met Hari, the recommended guide and when Kritika arrived a distant relative who worked in the tourism industry also came over to check Hari out for us, and it turned out he was a very experienced and reputable guide who had done our trek hundreds of times. He charged $15 a day, and we had to pay our own accommodation on the trek and food, his was taken care of by the guesthouses he took us to which is how it worked for guides on the treks. It wasn’t a legal requirement to have a guide (although this is set to change soon, all trekkers will have to have a guide in Nepal to get a permit apparently) but because it was monsoon with landslides and some bridges out, and neither of us had trekked Nepal before, I wanted to be safe. I would say in high season you definitely don’t need a guide for the ABC trek, there are so many people to follow, it’s actually overcrowded.

After sorting out our guide, our gear and all the particulars, Kritika and I wandered to the Lake for a beautiful sunset with no rain clouds in sight. I was really happy, it had rained for four days solid since I had arrived in Pokhara, and now it was warm and sunny. We got to know each other a bit better and found we were around the same age, had loads in common and she had a great sense of humour too, so this meeting of a stranger online to go trekking with turned out very well. The next morning we set off bright and early with our minimal-as-possible backpacks, taking a taxi to the local (not tourist) bus station and leaping onto a bus as it pulled away, squashing ourselves and our bags right into the back of the bus between the rice bags and boxes of bananas. We were going about an hour outside of Pokhara to Nayapul where the trek started, I think it cost around Rs100 each.

There are many, many resources to read about the ABC (Annapurna Base Camp) trek, so I won’t bore with all the details like walking times, but give just an overall feeling. It was warm and sunny when we started off, we wore shorts and my green cotton shirt was drenched in sweat within minutes. It was very muggy. There are about a million stone steps leading up, up and more up into on this trek, a walking pole was essential to me. The walk took us through bursting green rice fields and villages, all nestled and carved out into the mountainsides. The trek hugs a river valley almost the entire way. Everywhere you look there are little cottage guesthouses selling drinks, chocolates, home cooked food. It’s incredible (and got more so the higher up we went) that these people carry everything they need in baskets on their backs up all these steps so high up into the mountains, and we were huffing with our tiny backpacks. It was the way of life for them. No cars, no delivery, carry everything, or be carried down if you’re sick.

The first night we stayed in a charming old house in our first stop, Ghandruk. If you can stay there and not in the concrete new builds. It’s the oldest house in Ghandruk, and there is an elderly couple running it whose children have settled far and wide. It’s homely with a big old kitchen where the Grandma who did all our cooking absolutely fresh let me stand in and watch her and ask her questions about her children and grandchildren, while the afternoon rain came down. She made us delicious fresh momos and dal bhat with all the trimmings, with veggies from the garden. One of the best things about trekking in Nepal has to be the food. Every place we stopped at, with exception of the places at the very top of the base camp, were homes of people who cooked fresh food for you for every meal. There were things like pasta obviously, but there was no microwave or reheating here.

On the second night we met three Danish lads; Mattias, Erik and Soren. They were also going to the base camp, so we sat down for a chat around the big table in the guesthouse. They turned out to be thoroughly amusing, energetic, fun and intelligent. They were professional musicians (Erik jazz piano, Soren jazz saxophone, Mattias classical piano) and had been training for years but decided to take a break from that and study further academic subjects. They kept us entertained all evening with their humorous Danish chatting, which was flowed between them spontaneously and effortlessly like a river. There was a book where they wrote down topics to discuss while they were trekking, which included stuff like politics, mutual friends, ideas. They bounced off each other energetically, and when the rice wine or chhaang beer came out we had a cheerful night of it. One of the guides started singing and dancing to some Nepali pop music coming from the telly.

Soren, Erik, Mattias, Farigo

Hari, the other guides and Farigo

Farigo on the Danish boy's list of discussion topics

Early morning elusive glimpse of Annapurna at Excellent View Guesthouse in Chomrong

Mama Annapurna - from Excellent View Guesthouse in Chomrong

On the second day it started raining and didn’t stop until the fifth day. We got all our waterproof and sweatproof gear on (it was hot under all that plastic) and walked up what was more like rocky rivers than pathways. Water came out of everywhere...the sky, the ground, the mountainside. It cascaded down in alternating waves and torrents, white water rapids, thunderous rivers or in a series of dainty waterfalls that decorated the mountains like veins with every now again a roaring daddy waterfall crashing by. The path was rocky and sometimes muddy, the thick roots of the big forest trees that crossed the path were worn smooth like marble from all the trekkers. Along with the three of us (Krititka, Hari and I) and the Danish boys there was an English couple Alex and Imma, and a Dutch and Irish girl. The group of us more or less stuck together. Our guides were all old mates or ‘brothers’ as they called each other, they happily chatted amongst themselves but then were also really friendly and sociable in the evenings when we drank rice wine together or played chess or cards. Nepal is the only country I know of that I would ever go into a mountainside with a strange man as a guide alone, I trust Nepali men implicitly. They have strong values, take their work seriously as guides and I have a lot of respect for them. I’ve never heard of any instance where women are put into a dangerous or seedy situation by Nepali guides, although I know that many single Western women, probably for the very reason that they’re such decent guys, end up hooking up with them. There are many businesses around Nepal and I know for certain in Pokhara that are set up by a Western/Nepali couple, usually Western women with Nepali men. And great, why not!

Besides our group there were hardly any trekkers going up the mountain although we saw quite a few coming down. Apparently Annapurna is the most popular trekking area in the world, and you can really see why. The ABC wasn’t too strenuous, besides many stone stairs which you could take slowly if you needed it wasn’t a difficult climb at all. The ‘teahouses’ in the villages were so comfortable with great food made with love, and the scenery spectacular. Although, if this was low season I’d dread to be doing it in high season, just with the few people trekking in the monsoon it was still busy and it must be heaving in high season. I prefer to really get away from the crowds when trekking. But I thoroughly enjoyed going through the rain and the insane amounts of water everywhere, I just couldn’t get over how much it was. Apparently Nepal has the most water to person ratio in the world (vague statistic there, something like that!) although unfortunately the government didn't have the means to translate this into clean safe drinking water for everyone. They were building hydro electricity plants but then shipping the power out to India, while there were still powercuts every day in Nepal. I’m not sure on the politics of that one, my guide Hari told me about it. But here in the mountains, I drank straight out of the crystal clear mountain streams and it was heavenly. Everything felt clearer, my mind, my skin, my body, as is what most people feel a few days into a mountain trek.

Water

More water

Watery flower

Rickety bridges over water

Video of Hari explaining water

Walking across frozen glaciers of water

Getting inside frozen mounds of water (apparently these explode sporadically)

Looking at water

There were very wet, docile looking cows, buffalo happy in mud baths, goats eating the juicy plants, mountain village dogs who followed us for days at a time, the fattest happiest chickens and of course, the leeches. Tiny black slimy worms that hang off branches when they smell you come near (you can see them smell you, craning their bodies off the leaves to try reach you) and then if you don’t notice them they latch onto your clothes and crawl until they find an opening of skin. YUCK! Hari says, that they’re neither born nor die but just start to exist when the rains come, haha. They are the devil, you can’t feel them bite and then all of a sudden you look down and there they are, getting fat on your blood. When you tear them off it’s like a blood bath, if you don’t find them they just fall off from being too fat. Kritika was terrified of them but I was calmer until one night, I felt something cold on my butt cheek while in bed wrapped up in a sleeping bag and about three layers of clothes. I reached down and felt the cold squishy thing in my hand I’ve never leapt out of bed and got my clothes off so fast. Kritika and I were both squealing and jumping around, and there squirming across my bed was a fat monster leech, who had been happily sucking me dry from the most tender of areas. It looked like I had butchered a small animal on my bed. GROSS GROSS GROSS. We had to check and recheck and check again our entire bodies and clothes before finally settling down and getting back into bed. They aren’t dangerous, they don’t spread diseases or anything, just disgusting and leave sores on your body.

Alex's foot after a leech feast between the toes 

We decided to spend two nights at the base camp instead of one, as the clouds and rain had been continuous for days and we hadn’t had a view of the Annapurna mountain range up until then, except when the clouds cleared for a few minutes at a time. As we walked up the green sanctuary it was a cold and rainy morning, but the clouds cleared just enough for us to finally see, in part, the majesty of Annapurna and behind us Machapuchare. The walking up until then felt as if we were in close, small valley in the mountains, but as soon as the true enormity of the Annapurna range is revealed you can’t quite believe the scale or the magnitude of these mountains more than 8km high. It felt like, to be seriously poetic here, like I was looking at heaven peeking through the clouds. My chest welled up; it was an extremely poignant moment. I was far ahead of the rest of the gang and when I saw them in the distance I could see the smiles.

First glimpse through the clouds at base camp after lots of rain

Happy girls

We made it into the base camp’s cosy living room area and then the clouds closed in and a cold, drizzly afternoon settled in. We played cards, chess, read, drank chai and had a comfortable, relaxing afternoon of it, but all of us secretly prayed for sunshine the next day, the last time we’d be able to see the range this close. We were at 4130m and Annapurna and her sister mountains were all over 8000m.

Soren and Kritika

The next day we were woken by excited knocks and running boots. It was a clear morning! At 5.30am the whole camp was up, running around and gaping all around. The clouds had completely cleared. The people working there said that it had been cloudy and rainy for days, and that many groups had come up the mountain, stayed for even two nights and didn’t see the range. We all must have had really good Karma, to get a clear morning like this the very time we were there was extremely, outrageously lucky. We ran up the hillside to peer over the ravine (gauged out by glaciers) and stood in utmost awe of the beautiful, epic Annapurna range, watching the sun come up and make the white snow at the top shine. We ran and jumped around like this for a couple of hours until a blanket of thick fog slowly started creeping up the valley and covering our view. But it didn’t last, the hot sun broke all the mist up again just for us and we walked in blazing sunshine through the green, flowering sanctuary in full glory of the peaks. Lucky us! The Danish boys and Kritika were so cute, overwhelmed with excitement and smiles and laughs in a continuous flow. I’ve never seen people that uncomplicatedly happy since being a child, I’m sure. The brilliant blue sky, warm yellow sun, the fresh green of the sanctuary and the colour and smells of the midsummer flowers, and most of all the might of the Annupurna peaks striking proudly into the sky. It really couldn’t have been better.

Very early morning first view, Machapuchre 

Go away mist!

Kritika, Soren, Mattias (poor Erik was sick) their guide and our guide Hari. CREW!

Happy girls!!

We left reluctantly back down the mountain on our journey home, always looking behind us to catch just one more glance. The clear sunshine only lasted a few hours and then the clouds rolled in, but it was enough. It didn’t rain as heavily on the way down, actually it was pretty much clear and got swelteringly hot at times, so there was no need for all our rain gear and we could wear shorts again.

Hari!

It took us four nights to get up, and two to get down. At Jhinu Danda there are some hot springs. It’s a square pool carved out of heavy grey stone, right next to the raging river. There is a heavy, warm shower coming from a pipe, and the stone pool is so warm and relaxing on your muscles after all the walking and stone stairs. Our group of friends and guides spent an entire afternoon in there, having a well deserved drink and getting prune-like. The warm spring water was replenished from underneath the pool so it was always clean with gusts of new warm water coming through the rocks. A very good way to spend an afternoon in the mountains!

As it was our last night on the trek, we had a very tasty dal bhat from Hotel Evergreen and then everyone got jolly on rice wine and our beers and had a night of dancing around to some Nepali music. Seriously nice people, seriously great trek.

I recommend low season trekking for definite. While the clouds and rain might mean that you don’t see all of the mountains all of the time, and you might get a little wet and a few leeches, the positives for me still outweigh those negatives. It’s less crowded, you get villages and teahouses all to yourself and the locals have more time for you. When you do see a peak through the clouds of the mountains, its extra, extra special and makes you feel more elated than you can imagine. There are bound to be sunny days as well as wet days, it’s not all rainy, and the season means the forests are densely green and flourishing, those virgin forests of Annapurna is a reason to go there in itself.

Some awesome peeps...

Our guide was $15 a day. Sharing a room in a teahouse on the trek is around Rs100-Rs200. You end up eating quite a lot; a meal is around Rs400-Rs500. This isn’t roughing it at all, the beds are comfortable, the food is varied and delicious and there are hot showers in most teahouses. Take a sleeping bag, towel, hat and layers. The temperature fluctuates wildly. Don’t even think about monsoon trekking without full rain proof gear too, otherwise you’ll spend all of it soggy and uncomfortable.

After the trek we all went out for some some drinks and pool in Pokhara, where Farigo was up to his bad antics again...

Imma and Alex

ABC July 2012 :) :)

Kritika went back to KTM with the Danish boys, she to get ready for her trip back to the states, and they to do a Vipassana meditation course there. Vipassana meditation is when you don’t talk or look anyone in the eye for ten days, while meditating most of your waking hours. It sounds quite gruelling and difficult actually, for body and mind as you have to sit in one position for hours meditating; you are not allowed to talk to anyone at all. People have serious revelations while doing the course and I’ve heard good and bad things about it, but it is a real test of the mind over body and I think it would be interesting to do one day. Erik told me afterwards that he wouldn’t do it again, and thought why would you do something that is so hard and uncomfortable when you’re so happy normally? Of course you get something from it at the end, but he has a point. I stayed in Pokhara for a few more days, spending my time in glorious solitude in leafy, secluded Yeti Guesthouse ( I bargained Rs400 for a nice big peaceful room with bathroom), taking walks around the pretty Lakeside, eating when and whatever I felt liked, reading, writing, chatting to local grannies and children. It was bliss. After three days of this it was time to head back to KTM to see what else I could get up to in this beautiful country.

Thanks Kritika, Hari, Mattias, Soren, Eric, Alex and Imma for making the trek so fun.

Here are the pics.