Sunday, November 29, 2015

Back to Kathmandu

The flight from Lukla back to Kathmandu was a sobering one. The sixteen-seater planes don't fly very high so it was pretty easy to see a lot of the damaged buildings. In most of the empty space or grass that was backyards and parks, you could see bright orange or blue tarps set up that people were living under since so many buildings were't safe to live in. At this point, there were still aftershocks with enough regularity that people didn't want to move back into their homes for fear of more damage/collapse.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Lions and tigers and rhinos (oh my!)

After spending some time getting to know Kathmandu, I hopped on a bus and went down south. Down some crazy sketchy windy roads back to the heat and sun. I was headed for a little eco-village pretty close to the border with India and to one of Nepals first national parks, Chitwan National Park. For the first week, I was staying with another WorkAway host.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

In which my trekking plans took an unexpected turn.


Day 8: Gokyo to Phortse (3643m)
We got an early start and headed back down away from Gokyo. The goal for the day was to walk down the valley a little bit so we could cross the valley below the glacier. If the snow stopped early in the day, we had a chance at being able to cross the Cholla pass and get over near EBC. If the weather stayed crappy, we would walk down the other side of the valley and around. We stopped to chat with a group of Irish and French on their way up to Gokyo.
The wind and snow made all the prayer flags over the river look super cool.

Climbing some tall pointy rocks.

After posting on a couple of trekking bulletin boards about the treks I wanted to do, I got an email from David, an Irishman who had essentially organized a trek that did all the things I wanted to do in the Everest region. It made it significantly cheaper for him to share the cost of the guide and porter with a second person. Yes, we had a porter. I had no idea what kind of shape I was in after six months of traveling, and we both liked the idea of putting some money into the local economy. When I go back to Nepal in the future, I will most likely just be hiring the same porter and not hire a guide.