The Nepali Himalaya

From the day I booked my round the world trip, there was one place that I was lookiong forward to most. That place was Nepal. The life long dream to trek in the Himalayas in the foothills of Everest. In the past two weeks, I made that dream come true, and it was the best two weeks of my trip without a doubt.

I began in Katmandu, and took the local bus to Pokahara. It was from this small town, that I begain the trek. Mountain after mountain, day after day, I climbed through the Himalayan range with my sherpa porters and guide. In the evenings, I slept in little tea hut farming villages hanging on the mountain cliff edges with beautiful farmed terraced mountain sides. Showers meant a bucket of boiled water, and toilets were simply holes in the ground. For dinner, I ate dal Baht- the traditional Himalayan meal of lentels, vegies, potatoes and rice - sometimes with a spoon, sometimes scooping the bowl with my bare hands like the sherpas. For two weeks, the 6am wake up rutine meant putting on my hiking boots and gators, coffee, brushing the teath, and then a full day of upward mountain momentum. Old rickity wooden bridges with holes of missing wooden planks, locals with huge man sized baskets of transported goods on their backs, and stairs- Thousands and thousands of rock carved stairs. About a week in I finally left the tree line and hit the snow.

As I walked up and through the glacier carved valleys, the views were so stunning that at times it didn't seem real. Straight out of Lord of the Rings. Waterfalls. Iceflows. Avelanches. On one day, in a matter of minutes, the mist moved in but left a framed little window of blue sky and mountain. It was one of the must amazing things Ive ever seen. Another day, I woke up early, and climbed a nearby mountain to watch the sunrise over the entire Anapurna Range. The peaks of the mountains lit up with an amazing redish-orange glow that slowly moved down the mountain as the sun rose up into the crisp clear morning air.

The Final destination of the trek was a place called Anapurna Base Camp, 15 thousand foot elevation, and fifty miles deep into the range. Surrounded by snowy capped mountains, and a huge glacier flow to the north at the bottom a a 2000 foot cliff, it was here, that we celebrated our accomplishment with a snowball fight- Sherpas vs Americans - Laughing and fallng over in the snow, It was an awesom day. Nepal is dope.