slow and steady
Thursday, April 3rd, 20082 days after I returned from the kayaking trip I headed out on an 8 day trek to the Annapurna Base Camp (4130 mtrs.) There were 6 that started, but 2 had to drop out due to illness. I was trekking with the people that I shared a taxi with from the Nepal border to Pokhara; Sarah Kate and Rachel from Ireland, Doron, Michael and Dan from Israel.
To say the trek was breathtaking would be an understatement (to see some photos go to my flickr). 8 days of hiking up and down mountains, through villages so remote that supplies are brought in by porters carrying large baskets on their backs with a strap around their foreheads, through moss covered jungles, past countless waterfalls, over many rivers (or maybe it was the same river and we crossed it many times), through avalanche risk areas (where we had to run) and finally through a snow storm for the last leg to ABC. On the way back we stopped in a little village for some hotspring action. During the tough parts of the trek I kept hearing Mom and Isaac’s voices in my head…Mom: slow and steady wins the race, Isaac: keep pickin’ ’em up and puttin’ ’em down. As Isaac has always said, the hardest part is coming back down and boy were my knees feeling it and those days were the only ones where I felt sore the next day. I am quite proud of myself though, I was able to keep up with people 10 years younger than me…guess I’m in better shape than I thought.
After the trek we returned to Pokhara for a few days to rest and recover and the 6 of us made our way to Kathmandu…me to renew my Indian visa and for them as the easiest way to get back to India.
I satrted the visa renewal process this past Monday…5 hours of waiting in line to turn in a teletex form and then pay 300 Nepali rupees, all to return 3 days later to submit the visa application and then return again in the afternoon to pick it up. Unfortunately I was only able to get another 3 months. In the past three days they were unable to get the clearance from the Indian embassy in Houston, TX that I have to apply through…I’ll take it. Do not want to go through that process again.
Sunshine