Annapurna Circuit here we come

Tomorrow morning at 5:45 am we get on the bus to the beginning of the Annapurna Circuit trek. We'll be out for 19 days without any internet access (I believe) before we get to Pokhara which is the second largest city in Nepal. There will obviously be no updates here for a while so do not fear the worst! The bus ride should be interesting. We're taking the "local" bus as opposed to the more efficient tourist buses. This saves us around 8-9 dollars but it may mean I have to ride on top of the bus. I can only hope. Most likely we'll end up inside the bus and it will still be a nerve-wracking trip between the crazy drivers and the worries about keeping an eye on our gear.

We'll be going over Thorung La Pass at around 18,000 feet elevation, dealing with Maoist insurgent checkpoints, and doing our best not to get any gastro-intenstinal issues. Should be a good time. Look forward to hearing from you all around the 17th or 18th of November.

Namaste!

Monkeys

We headed over to the monkey temple today. It has some fancy Nepali name that Casey had on his blog but I don't know what it is. The monkeys could be thoroughly intimdating but we navigated through without incident. It was certainly interesting. Lots of steps and some seriously old buildings.
We also dropped a bunch of money on setting up the treks to Everest Base Camp and the Annapurna Circuit as well as down into Chitwan National Park. There are new laws that say you have to have a guide on the treks so we succumbed to this supposed neccesity which is where most of our money went. The guide is a steep $8 a day. I know, It's pretty rough. We're hoping we can find another person or two with whom we can split the cost of the guide. That would bring it down to around $2.75 or $2.00 each which is far better than the $4 each we are at now. We did manage to talk to the guide cost down from $12-$15 a day to $8. Annapurna is a 19 day trek and Everest Base Camp we decided to extend to the longer trek of 24 days so we could take a bus to the lower beginning point instead of flying (for a few hundred dollars more) to the higher starting point at Lukla. The two treks together however require a guide for 43 days and that adds up!!!!

Made It To Kathmandu

I arrived in Kathmandu last night after a relatively uneventful series of flights out of New York. It totalled around 37 hours in airports and in the air. I didn't have any of the problems that Casey had fortunately, but the 14 hour layover in India was pretty exhausting. The seats had dividers between them so there was no way to really lay down and get comfortable plus you have to wait until a couple of hours before your flgith to get the boarding pass for the connecting fligth to Kathmandu so there's always the nervous feeling that something is going to go wrong there. Highlights so far: ferla cat roaming the Indian International Airport, the beverage offered with lunch on Air Sahara (India to Kathmandu) is a can of beer (I passed), Kumar the 71 year old religious guy sitting next to me from JFK to India with the skethcy history, and just being in Kathmandu. I'll write more later when I have actually had time to come up with something interesting. Till then.. Namaste!

Kathmandu Garden House

I just wanted to add this info on where I'll probably be staying upon my arrival in Kathmandu. My New Zealand friend Hamish reccomended it to me. Looks pretty damn nice.

Here's the website for the Kathmandu Garden House..

http://www.hotel-in-nepal.com/

I'm headed to Nepal

Purchased the plane tickets last night. I'll be leaving October 22nd and returning January 11th.











should be amazing