Namaste

Namaste, " I honor the spirit in you which is also in me", a beautiful greeting that introduced us to the people and glorious mountains of Nepal. We spent 15 days in this beautiful country. Two days preparing, eight days trekking and 5 days recovering. After climbing Uluru, tramping the Abel Tasaman & Queen Charlotte and hiking the hillsides of Sap pa we really thought we were ready for the Himalayas. Boy were we mistaken. Even with a porter carrying the brunt of the load, in flip flops, we still were huffing and puffing after three hours straight up hill and that was just the beginning of day one. Each day there after was pretty much the same until the last day when we started our decent, 3200 steps down in just the first hour. There were rewards, sunrise at the top of Pune Hill (killer 5:00AM climb) with a magnificent, panoramic view of the Annapurna Range including Machhapuchhare, known as Fishtail and the Dhaulagiri, peaks towering over 24,000 ft., beautiful rhododendron forests of red and pinks and tea houses cooking up delicious Tibetan bread smothered in honey. Our stay in Kathmandu was short but a great place to recuperate, eat a little western food and visit Bhaktpur a UNESCO World Heritage site, the most well perserved medieval city which turned out to be an unexpected delight anda great way to end our adventure in Nepal. So we say to all of you NAMASTE!