We did it!!!
We spent the last 17 days trekking the Annapurna Circuit in the Himalayas. After a few flights, and a couple interesting bus rides, we made it to day 1 of our trek. Starting in the low country of terraced rice fields, we trekked our way up to Thorung La Pass (17,768 feet above sea level) without altitude sickness! The trail passes through villages that are untouched by the outside world (except for trekkers). We passed through Hindu and Buddhist villages, visiting some really neat gompas (temples) along the way. Don't worry, we didn't convert.
After the first few days of cloudy skies, the Himalayas began to appear, one at a time right in front of us. We have met some awesome people along the way and had many fun evenings with friends as we relaxed at the teahouses. The trail passed through many different climates, very hot and wet to sunny and clear/cold skies. After 10 days or so, we reached Thorung La Pass (that was hard!!! We huffed and slowly puffed our way up the mountain, incredible feeling!) and began descending through a completely different landscape. Straight down, for 4 hours, we quickly made our way from 17,768 ft down to 12,500 ft (so that day's total alone was 8,000 ft of climbing/descending!) Once down, we were in a desert like setting. Since we had a long trip, the next day we took it easy and went 5 miles or so to the next village - Kagbeni. Which we'll have you know, has the only "Yakdonalds" in the world! We enjoyed yak-cheeseburgers with fries and the freshest apple juice we'll ever have! Delicious - sure, not quite what we'd call fast food, but much better in our book! Continuing on, we eventually returned to lush, green fields and even got to spend some time with our friends in the hot spring at Tatopani... but after Deena's RN eyes started to scope out the water, we decided, "Ok, time to shower!" But it was relaxing for our tired muscles : ). The next day was yet another tough climb up, and up, and up... you get the point! We reached Ghorepani, a village that is supposed to have Spectacular views, they call it the "Curtain Call", the Himalayas last chance to give an encore presentation if you will... however, we arrived and it POURED! 2 days, we stayed in a quaint little cottage and tried to wait out the rain, no luck. BUt we did enjoy catching up with our buddies (Al, Perry, and Eric - thanks for the entertainment buds!) So we made our way down, however slowly.. due to the days on end of rain, the stepped way down was flooded, like a constant stream at times. It was tricky enough due to the soggy conditions, and then Deena's right knee problem decided to visit! Yay! 9 hours later, when we thought we could go no further down, we made it out. Woohooooo! Took a taxi to Pokhara and are spending 3 days here before we leave tomorrow for India. It's been a nice relaxation period for us and we're having a blast hanging out with our group of trekking buddies. We'll be on a bus early tomorrow morning to the border of India, which we pray will be nice and smoooth (To my Lodwar friends - the roads here are even WORSE than Kenya!)
We miss you all, and hope that our photos will load successfully, we're having some trouble. If not, we PROMISE to figure it out and post some soon!
