Sun, Oct 28th headin' home!

We were back to the airport at 11:30am to begin the marathon journey home.

The first three hours got us to Bangkok where we had a surprisingly good Thai dinner at the airport. I had joked that the Dairy Queen we saw in the airport probably had some interesting flavors, like a green tea blizzard and sure enough, they did have a green tea blizzard of which Becky happily partook.

A midnight departure from Bangkok got us to Korea early the next morning. There were no flights to Seattle that day, so we had planned on doing a couple bus tours of Seoul and staying at a hotel for our 35 hour layover, but we checked at the ticketing counter after landing and they got us onto an afternoon departure for Vancouver, BC. We did a short two hour bus tour out to a nearby Buddhist Temple in the city of Incheon. Despite the sleep deprivation, it was pretty cool to see the difference between a Nepali Buddhist temple and a Korean Buddhist temple. Had we actually stuck with the 35 hour layover, I'm not sure how we would've been able to rally for a full day bus tour of Seoul....maybe next time!

Around 6:30pm we took off for Vancouver, and got to watch the sun rise for the second time on Monday as we landed the next day (that same day?) in BC. A short layover, and a puddle-jumper to SeaTac and we were finally home!

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The Buddhist Temple we visited on our brief stop in Incheon...Grand Bridge in the background

Sat, Oct 27th, Mt.Everest & Boudhanath temple

Up at 5 and off to the airport soon after. There were lots of people lined up for flight-seeing trips! It seemed like every puddle jumper plane in Kathmandu was loaded with tourists, heading out for a mountain flight.  Over the course of the hour-long flight we saw so much amazing terrain; Shishapangma, Cho Oyu, Lohtse, and Everest. They even opened up the cockpit door mid-flight and let the tourists go up one by one to peep out the front windows.

Back in Kathmandu, we caught a cab ride out to Boudhanath temple. There was more gawking at amazing old architecture and a lazy brunch. We then ventured back into the zoo of Thamel that afternoon to buy gifts for family and eat our last dinner in town.

...the next day

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Mt.Everest!

and Cho Oyu too!

Fri, Oct 26th. Sightseeing in Kathmandu

We were out the door by 7:30, had breakfast at the Weisen Bakery, then took a cab ride out to Patan to see the ancient city out there. Very cool architecture, lovely gardens, and we had a leisurely cup of coffee at one of the museums. We also visited the Garden of Dreams, a beautiful collection of turn of the century western architecture and formal European style gardens. Then back in to Thamel for another dal bhat lunch and then a lazy afternoon at the hotel. After cocktails and cards in the hotel lounge, we hit a nearby Mexican restaurant for dinner and on our way back to the hotel picked up canned coffee and pastries for our early morning Everest flight the next day.

...the next day

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Thurs, Oct 25th, back to Kathmandu

Ongchhu left the hotel early. He was on the morning bus to Kathmandu and we were flying out later. We toodled around town that morning, found a good cup of coffee and some pastries, and walked out to a big park to take in the view of Fishtail Peak and Annapurna in the distance.

We also got our lodging sorted out for our return to Kathmandu. Since we didn’t know when exactly we’d be returning, we didn’t have reservations, and an email from the Hotel Nepalaya made it sound like they didn’t have room for us the day we’d get back so it was on to Expedia to see what we could find. I was pretty set on the Hyatt after seeing it on the map the day we arrived at the start of our trip, but Becky had a good point that it wasn’t particularly close to downtown, so we compromised and opted for the Yak & Yeti, which was still walking distance to the Thamel district, but it was supposedly Kathmandu’s oldest five-star hotel and should certainly be much cushier than the Nepalaya.

The flight to Kathmandu was ridiculously fast compared to the seven hour rollercoaster we would’ve otherwise endured to get back via the roads. While at the domestic airport in Kathmandu, Becky got us two seats on the Everest flight-seeing trip on Saturday. The afternoon rapidly burned away with a trip to the Nepalaya to retrieve our duffle of clean clothes we’d left behind, getting lunch, and vegetating in front of the tv in our posh digs at the Yak & Yeti.

That night Ongchhu met us as the hotel and we all walked over to Thamel to have a “farewell” dinner with Furwa. We found out along the way that we’d be joined by four other trekkers who were embarking on a Kanchenjunga trek the next morning with Furwa and Ongchhu. We all met at a very nice Thai restaurant and had a really fun evening getting to know the two French, one German and one Ecuadorian trekker. One of the French guys had been trekking in Nepal NINE times! We took great delight in the fact that despite being at a Thai restaurant the French guy ordered chicken Cordon Bleu and the two Nepalis ordered dal bhat.

...the next day

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Wed. Oct 24th. unwinding in Pokhara

After a long night of sleep and a late breakfast, we tried to put that epic drive behind us and we spent the day touring the sights of Pokhara. We visited a Hindu temple that was in a massive natural cave that had a river running through it, we took a boat ride out to a nearby lake, went to the national mountaineering museum, and had some of the best dal bhat of the trip at a place our cab driver recommended.

That afternoon Ongchhu surprised us with the news that we’d be flying from Pokhara to Kathmandu. The itinerary stated we were supposed to drive, but I think since Furwa knew we had paid for an itinerary with a flight that we didn’t get, providing us with a forty minute flight to Kathmandu instead of a seven hour bus ride would make us happy. And it did.

...the next day

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Tues, Oct 23rd. Pokhara or bust....

This trip seemed to alternate between really good days and somewhat tough days….this was a tough day.  Since we had no plane tickets to get from Jomson to our next stop in Pokhara, and Furwa hadn’t arranged a backup plan to have a private jeep take us down the road to Beni and on to Pokhara, we were put on the ‘local bus’. The first few hours were rather comical. Becky and I both wore dust masks as the road dust and diesel exhaust was pretty bad, but the scenery was a great distraction from the pot-holed single-lane road, and some thoroughly entertaining Indian tourists on the bus danced in the aisle to the blaring music. After a couple bus transfers and break for snack, we arrived mid-afternoon in Beni, covered in dust, with our guts thoroughly scrambled from the rough roads and Becky’s nerves frayed from peering out the bus window down into the abyss of the gorge that dropped away from the roads edge.

We took a break, had a late lunch of dal bhat and were very happy to hear that we’d be getting a taxi for the final 2-3 hour drive into Pokhara, but as we left the restaurant the cabbies saw they’d negotiated a rate with Ongchhu for ‘locals’ and refused to drive us for that price once they saw we were tourists. So, the taxi ride disappeared and was replaced with our final leg on another local bus. This was no longer a small 20 person bus, but one of those huge, brightly painted school buses packed to the gills with locals. I wasn’t a particularly good sport,  having a woman’s purse smacking me in the face with every pothole and a gentleman next to me resting his posterior on my shoulder as if I were a barstool burned away any humor I had left for the day.

About an hour out of Beni, the bus came to a halt and we could see traffic had stopped. There’d been an accident - a motorcyclist crashed into a jeep and died. For the next five hours we sat on the side of the road, the police came and went, the sun set, and Ongchhu kindly delivered us a large Tuborg beer to us to help take the edge off. Ongchhu explained to us that in Nepal, no one has insurance so when there’s an accident, the police facilitate the financial negotiations right there on the spot. The motorcyclist’s brother arrived and there was a heated debate/argument/something in the distance as they attempted resolution.

Well after dark we saw a bright flash of flame in the distance. Ongchhu explained that when the police get cold, they usual light tires on fire. We weren’t sure if they were the tires of the crashed vehicles or what, but sure enough in the distance they were burning some old tires.

Finally at 10pm, five hours after we’d stopped, traffic began rolling again. Two more hours of bumpy roads and we finally pulled into Pokhara at 12:30am, 18 hours after we’d left Jomsom.  We got to the hotel, tried to clean the days dirt from our flesh and hair and promptly went to sleep on a bed that felt like it was a block of wood covered in a thin sheet of foam. The next day we’d notice that the place was called the Hotel Bedrock….coincidence?

...the next day

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  it was dusty...really dusty.



the cops are cold.... time to burn some tires!

Mon, Oct 22nd Alubari to Jomsom (9000 ft)

Amazing what sixteen hours of sleep at a lower altitude does for one’s energy level. I felt much better this morning and we packed up for our last day of hiking. The descent into Marhpa passed through some very diverse foliage; scrubby juniper bushes up high, then big gnarled old pine trees, and finally the valley bottom with its vineyards and fruit tree orchards.

We visited a Buddhist monastery in Marpha. Ongchhu was a great tour guide! He showed us around the place and pointed out the closed off buildings high above where some monks live in solitude for years at a time.  We also got to sample yak butter tea…it tasted pretty good…more like a milky, salty soup than tea, but my stomach was still a mess, so I only had half a cup…Becky had her cup, my other half, and then had one more cup!

By early afternoon we’d hiked into Jomsom, a small town at the tail end of the Annapurna circuit thus it had lots of westerners, hotels, and the only airport within a day’s drive. Because Jomsom is in such a deep gorge and the afternoon winds are so strong, there are only a few flights in/out each morning, and given that it was trekking season, it wasn’t looking very likely we’d be getting that plane flight out that was on our itinerary. Tickets hadn’t been bought in advance since we didn’t know exactly which day we’d finish so we were probably going to be bouncing home on the jeep trail back to Beni.

Nima’s final night as our cook brought a dinner of fried chicken and a cake for dessert. Our whole gang sat in the hotel dining hall eating cake and we did our best to kill a bottle of local apple brandy. We gave out our envelopes containing the tips to all our staff and then it was off to bed to get a good night’s sleep before the rough ride out tomorrow.

...the next day

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