around the world in 180 days

The scale of the Himalayas, the sheer size, is impossible to imagine and impossible to describe. It is something that must be seen, must be experienced in person. A photograph of one mountain that towers 16,000 feet above your head though you stand at 10,000 feet already can’t capture how it dwarfs you, it can’t convey how insignificant such an enormous chunk of rock makes you feel, and it can’t show the other gigantic mountain 90 degrees to your right, or the thrid one behind you, or the massive slate wall stretching smooth and unbrokan, 4000 meters towards the sky. Please, I encourage all of you to visit Nepal. There is truly no place like it on earth.
We’ve been in the mountains before. We’ve seen Denali, we’ve climbed (easy) peaks in NZ, we’re not new to the alpine experience, even if we are from a state that makes mountains out of hills because there is nothing taller to be found. Still, the scenery we’ve seen today has left us breathless. Nepal is a land of staggering beauty.
We sleep tonight above 10,000 feet for probably the first time in our lives. In Kathmandu, and two days back down the trail, the heat is sub-tropical: daytime highs push into the upper 90’s on a regular basis. Up here, though, the weather is comfortable during the day, perfect for hiking. At night it drops towards freezing. Last night was cold, this night will be colder and tomorrow will be colder still. Our sleeping bags aren’t warm enough and we’ll be sleeping in our clothes for the next few days. Tomorrow we’ll reach Manang, a largish town (for this part of the world) that has an airstrip. If we need to, we’ll pick up another blanket or a sweater, for which the Manangis will charge us an arm and a leg (in Nepali Rupees, of course, so it still won’t be as much as in the US) and rightfully so, as everything has to be carried in on the back of a Nepali or a donkey.
Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m writing about anymore. In sum: the mountains are very tall and very beautiful, the nights are very cold and we are very happy to be on this journey, even if we are very uncomfortable from time to time.

Tags: Annapurna Circuit, Nepal, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.