The great Annapurna walk! 20 days in the Himalayas

Arrived in Pokhara over 3 weeks ago after a very ropey bus journey. Pokhara is a very nice relaxed and touristy town at the foot hills of the Himalayas set on a 5km long lake with a string of nice tea shops with cake! fab. We went to the permit office after deciding to attempt the 20 day Annapurna circuit trek that climbs up to 5400 metres through the widest pass in the world apparently. A real test after our Indian experience, never mind the fact Rachel has never attempted anything like this before! Although it is only a walk, just a very long one. The only thing I was concerned with was the effect the altitude would have on us all. As it happened we were very short of breath at top (not surprising really), but we survived the pass and came back down after taking a couple of acclimatisation days.

We went to a trekking company and booked ourselves a porter called Gazindra Rai. It cost 10 dollars per day for him to carry our rucksack. Well worth it! Gazindra proved to be great company and very good at chess, and gave me a few lessons in loosing gracefully. I cannot remember the last time I played so many card games, as getting to bed by 8 o'clock was a impressive feat. We got up at 6 am and had breakfast at 6.30 and were on the road by 7 am after porridge and apple. We loved it. The diet consisted of Dal-Baht, the local staple diet of rice and a soup of lentils along side a chapati and spicy pickle that Rachel was a little sensitive to. The consequence of this was that Craig had to walk at the back making music out the way of the rest of us! It was like a wild west movie. chuckle.

The photos from the walk tell the story, but we cannot down load them yet.

By the way Mozza, the Him-al's means mountains in Nepali, so you were right you weirdo! chuckle.

We met lots of nice people (Paris from Greece, Jez from England and a Spanish and Israeli couple) along the way and hooked up with Shelly from Utah, in the U.S. It was a stroke of luck as her guide Ramish got along with our porter Gazindra and we got along with Shelly who was great company. We decided to do the walk at the same pace and lodge in the same guest houses.
The rooms varied from ensuite to under the stairs with the spiders, never mind the night we swapped with the cattle in a converted shed. A hot bucket of water was the order of the day for showers, chuckle.