around the world in 180 days

All three photos are from the day we crossed the pass; as you can see, we were lucky and had wonderful weather. Enjoy!

Well, everyone out there in blog land, sorry for the long lapse in posts, but Anna and I are out of the mountains and back at an altitude you can reach in MN. I wrote every other day or so while we were trekking, so I’ll fill in a bunch more details in the next day or so, but I wanted to put something up without having to mess around with editing text.

The Annapurna circuit was awesome. We began at about 1000 meters (3000 ft.) and we climbed for 11 days, when we crossed a pass that was over 5400 meters, or almost 18,000 feet. It was 2,000 feet short of Mt. McKinley. The views were incredible. I’ll try to post some photos here in the next day or two, but it might have to wait until we’re back in Kathmandu. It took us a total of 17 days to reach Pokhara (the end point and where I am writing this from) with one day off (yesterday). We met a bunch of cool people and a few that weren’t so cool, but overall, we had a nice social experience.

As a hike, it was very different from what we’re used to. It was much longer, of course, but we spent every night in a guesthouse and ate all our meals at restaurants along the path. The only way in to most of these villiages is by foot, so everything we ate, was carried by either a Nepali or a donkey.

Being the only way to reach these villiages, we saw tons of Nepalis using the path for their everyday life. We met a schoolteacher bringing his class to another town for an athletic competition and we saw dozens of Nepalis carrying loads of produce to market, loads of food for us to eat, and loads of other goods to buy or sell. It was cool to be a part of their life, even if it was a small part.

There is an active Maoist insurgency in Nepal, which has prompted the state dept. of the US to warn all travelers to stay away. We traveled through areas of heavy Maoist activity at the beginning and at the end of the trek and encountered no problems. The Maoists used to inflict a “tax” on tourists passing through, but have announced an end to this policy. We had been told that the Maoists also required all trekkers to be accompanied by one guide or porter, which we didn’t have, but we found that this wasn’t the case. We encountered more independent trekkers than those with guides.

We’ve now got 9 days to relax before we fly to Thailand for, uh, more relaxing. My uncle Steve is meeting us in Phuket and has agreed to show us around, which we are both very excited for. It will be nice to get to the beach and just relax. I think we’d be ready for Fiji now as well. 17 days of hiking is a long time.

More details to come, if you want them.