The Scenic Route: mountain

This set of photos bring us to our highest point, the town of Deurali, and most of the way back down. We climbed to 3700M, and by the time we got there it was cold, very cold. It rained on us a few times but we were incredibly luckily. Every time we stepped under the awning of our lodge for the night, it started to pour buckets, most nights it hailed. We must have had someone watching us, we chalked it up to good karma.

Warmth in many fashions.

Stream side chocolate and water break.

"We're in the mountains, this is great"

Crossing over eerie Avalanche chutes, with a stream running through it.

Fuel.

Mid mountain mending.

Suspended stone steps.

Spot the lizard!

Beautiful butterfly.

Green valley.

Bootless rest stop.

Ridiculous suspension bridges.

"Wait, where are we?"

Vintage hiking ad.

Storm's a brewin'.

Safe from hail, cold from shower.

Hail madness.

Big ice cubes.

Note the Umbrella...

Looking down towards Pokhara, low lying rain clouds in the valley.

Storm's still going strong behind us.

Our last clear view of the "fishtail moutain", any guesses how it got the name?

These are from the highest point we climbed to, no more trees, lots of snow, bare rock faces on both sides of us. It was also cold and windy, until the sun poked its head over the mountains.

We have still more photos to share, we will put them up as soon as we can.

We miss you guys at home a lot, but we will be home to see you all soon!

We have survived our adventure in the Himalayas, fairly unscathed. Other than a few minor bumps and scrapes, a little bit of a foot infection on ginger's feeties, and both of us catching a cold. All said and done we spent fifteen days in the Annapurna mountain range, we got ourselves up to 3700M, walked up ten million and a half stone steps, stood with our heads literally in the clouds and saw views of mountains that pictures and words cannot even try to describe. The trek we did was a "tea house" trek, meaning we didn't have to camp or cook once, and we were rather pampered considering how remote the area is. Of course we packed more than we needed, and never wanted for much, but we also carried it all ourselves. Lots of people hire a guide and a porter for this trek, the guide is largely unnecessary and serves more as translator/waiter. The porters are the most overworked underpaid guys on the mountain. We saw many carrying three HUGE bags strapped to their heads with what looked like three hundred pounds of stuff, often wearing flip flops. We couldn't figure out why people could possibly need this much stuff, till we saw tour groups all wearing running shoes, jeans, regular street clothes and hoodies in the evening, then hiking boots, and expensive hiking garb the next. I'm sure they had an outfit a day. This was a sore spot for us. (If you've found this blog and are planning a trek with a porter, and if you can't even lift your own bag, you have too much stuff!). We being cheap and eternally optimistic, went without a guide, and felt very proud of ourselves for having carried our fairly light bags and navigating the trail all by ourselves without getting lost.

We had a ton of fun, took it slow and enjoyed the views, often standing around staring at butterflies, trees, waterfalls and mountains while people struggled by. We like to think we have more fun than most people.

Our first day, yea, we match.

Nepali beehives, all the cool kids have them.

Our first room!

We drank lots of water. We purified our own and saved a ton of money. It felt weird to drop chlorine into fresh Himalayan spring water, especially being able to see its glacier source.