Chitwan National Park, Nepal – October 23rd – 26th, 2016

Rather than endure two overnight 20+ hour bus rides to Bardia National Park (where we actually wanted to go), we settled on the more touristy, but conveniently located Chitwan National Park. Since everything in the park has to be guided, we felt forced into taking the advice we received in Pokhara and going with an all-inclusive hotel with a tourist itinerary. Added bonus was that we did not have to plan anything for 4 days and the price was definitely right. Serious downside was that it turned out that we had to attempt to curb our type A personalities substantially because the hotel was so unorganized! We spent most of the time wondering what we were supposed to be doing or asking questions to each other attempting to reason out the way things operated at the hotel. However, like most things type A personalities try to control, everything worked out fine and we had a fun couple of days.

On our first full day we did a canoe ride and an 8 hour trek through the jungle. Within the first 10 minutes we saw a rhinoceros! It was so much bigger than either of us remembered from our previous experience with rhinos (at the zoo). We found out later that wild rhinos are actually very dangerous and the technique we should employ if/when a rhino chases us is to run erratically in a zig-zag pattern, every man for themselves (another example of some not very confidence inspiring advice from a guide). Lucky for us we never had to find out who is the slowest runner and our two guides flanked us through the entire trek. Along the jungle trek we saw many deer, two different types of monkeys, domestic elephants, many birds, crazy red bugs that shed their skin like snakes, peacocks (which can fly! who knew?!), man eating and non-man eating crocodiles, and my personal favorite, three toucans! We also saw footprints and other evidence (including poo) of sloth bears and tigers. The guides were impressively knowledgeable, spouting off bird names just based on the sound of their wings.

Along the jungle trek. 

Some of the animals we saw at Chitwan. The top-left photo is not a rock, but a man eating crocodile!

The next day was all about elephants! In the morning, we went on an elephant safari (in other words, an elephant ride through the jungle). Apart from it being super cool that we were riding an elephant, the fauna was not afraid of the elephant so we saw deer and moneys up close and personal. The only downside was that the mahout (elephant trainer) could be a bit aggressive with our timid elephant. When the elephant was not going fast enough or afraid of mud or a small hill, the mahout would hit it on the head/ear with a curved piece of rebar! After the elephant safari we took a bath with an elephant. You ride on the neck of the elephant while it sprays you with water from its trunk and eventually lays down, throwing you into the water. SO MUCH FUN! Again though, the experience was hindered by the rebar stick used to poke the elephant… Lastly, we did a bike ride to the elephant breeding center, where we learned some of the history and practices of breeding and training elephants. Oh and we also hung out with the elephant babies and saw a wild boar too! We made friends with a 4-month-old elephant that was clearly already a handful because he continued to knock over the fence post to join us on the opposite side of the fence. The training process occurs when the elephants are 2-3 years old and basically consists of breaking the elephants spirit. Downer moment… not sure that we feel good about ourselves for supporting the elephant culture.

Elephant activities. 

The morning of the 26^th, we took another very grueling bus ride back to Kathmandu. The 6-hour bus ride became over 8.5 thanks to the quality Nepali roads and Andy was not feeling well for most of the journey. He had been battling a cold since Pokhara and appeared now to be losing the fight. With only two full days in Kathmandu before leaving for Malaysia, we hoped he would feel better quickly. Spoiler alert: hoping didn’t work.  

Pokhara, Nepal – October 18th – 23rd, 2016

After yet another grueling bus ride, we shared a jeep with some other trekkers for the last leg to Pokhara, a touristy lake town and perfect place for a little R&R. Our time in Pokhara was mostly spent eating, sleeping, and hanging out with the friends we had made on the trek. It was glorious. Though, after four days of this, we were starting to feel pretty antsy and ready to start using some muscles (other than our mouths) to see more of the beautiful country we were lucky enough to be visiting.

I suppose we did actually do some notable things in Pokhara, first of which was splurge on massages! Set up through our amazing hotel (The Mountain House, if you ever go to Pokhara, stay here, the owners are unbelievably kind and helpful, and the rooms are enormous and clean). The massages were at a legitimate spa, Serenity Spa – unlike our massages in Peru a few years ago which were in a not-so-legitimate storage room. For ninety relaxing minutes, the masseuses rubbed away some of the aches and soreness from our exhausted bodies. Dani also got an interesting and hilarious “chest” massage surprise! Though on the pricey side, we were glad we gave ourselves the spa gift.

Our many pictures of Fewa Lake

We also did this fun little activity called PARAGLIDING!! It was such a blast, riding thermals and soaring higher and higher above Pokhara, the lake and surrounding hills. My pilot even allowed me to fly us around for a bit and do some aerobatics! It looks easy, but you have to pull pretty hard on those strings to deform the parachute enough to make a turn. I am also having a hard time suppressing my smugness about my flight lasting longer than Dani’s.

Our Pokhara paragliding extravaganza!

On one of our last days, we took a crappy two-seater kayak out onto the lake, which was very frustrating as it was missing a stabilizer fin and rudder and we kept going in circles and circles for no apparent reason. Much finger pointing ensued, but we could laugh about it in the end. The next morning, we caught a surprisingly nice tourist bus (again arranged by our spectacular hotel owner) to Chitwan National Park. 

Annapurna Circuit, Nepal – September 30th – October 17th, 2016

Our first impressions of Kathmandu were in contrast to what we had heard from others about the massive capital of Nepal. After coming from Delhi, Kathmandu was not at all busy, noisy, and dirty, it was actually, SO CLEAN!!! We excitedly pointed out trash cans and managed to make it the entire way to our hotel (~45 min.) without seeing almost any waste (human or otherwise) on the streets! We instantly felt more comfortable. We spent our first day and a half in the Thamel district aka the “tourist ghetto” gathering the necessary permits, bus tickets, and gear for our upcoming trek around the Annapurna Circuit. This did not exactly go smoothly since it took us over 3 hours to find the bus station and buy tickets (even with the help of a local). Regardless, on the 2^nd of October we were bright eyed, bushy tailed, and ready to start the trek.

We took a local bus from Kathmandu to Bessisahar, the starting point of the trek – BIG MISTAKE! Although we saved a whopping $12 compared to the tourist bus, it took us about 9 hours in hell to get to our destination (side note: it was supposed to take 6 hours). We got stuck in a massive traffic jam leaving Kathmandu, stopped for anyone who needed a ride along the way, it was hot and humid with no A/C, we inhaled dust, dirt, and engine fumes the whole trip, the bus seats were appropriately sized for children under 5 feet tall, I was car sick for about 6 hours of the windy, bumpy journey through the mountains, we both had splitting headaches, and to top it all off I had a Nepali’s armpit about an inch from my face for the last 3 hours.

Bus Pain.

In Bessisahar, most trekkers take a second bus on the dirt road to one of the first villages to stay the night, but you could not have paid us to get on another bus, so we started walking. After a 2-hour trek through beautiful terraced rice patties, we arrived at our first guest house. The accommodations were… what you needed and nothing more: a metal shed with thin foam mattresses on plywood and a squat toilet/cold shower next door. I was able to overlook all of this, still excited for the trek, until the following day when I got food poisoning. I have never been more violently sick in my life and to add to the fun the bathroom was a communal squat toilet that you dump water down to "flush". Let’s just say, marriage really does mean for better or for worse. While attempting to recover the next day, I discovered that my blood had been stolen by a leech. The day after that I was stung by a… something and the following day we walked in the rain for most of the day. Admittedly, Nepal was not getting off to a great start. I may or may not have shed a couple of tears.

Days 1 and 2 on the trek: hot and humid with lush greenery!

Days 4, 5 and 6: Beautiful villages and trails cut into rock faces.

Luckily around day 6, things started to improve significantly. I got stronger and started eating almost normally again, despite the food aversion to rice, vegetables, eggs, and Nepalese spices (which by the way made up pretty much all of the food options). The guest houses also turned out to be much nicer than the one we had stayed at the first night. For 14 days, we strapped on our backpacks and followed the guide book through the Himalayas and over the “biggest pass in the world” at almost 18,000 ft! Being the closet nerds (“closet” may be up for debate) that we are, we put together some graphs for you with some of our trek stats. Figure 1 shows the elevation on the y-axis and distance on the x-axis with our overnight stops along the way shown as red dots. The dashed line indicates where we took a bus because we were too tired to keep backpacking.

Figure 1: Elevation vs. trekked distance.

Figure 2 shows a breakdown of the 63 people from 18 different countries that we met and hung out with on the trail. Besides the ridiculously beautiful scenery, one of the coolest parts of the Annapurna circuit was getting to converse with amazing people from all over the world. We met many people that were traveling full-time in the exact same situation as us – frustrated with the work life balance and wanting a change. They gave us some great ideas, inspiration, and motivation to keep with it, even when things aren’t exactly going your way (refer to 2^nd and 3^rd paragraph of the post).

Figure 2: Frequency of nationalities encountered on the trek.

Over the 2-week trek, we were shocked at how much the scenery in the Himalayas changed. We started in the tropics surrounded by rice patties, jungle, and bugs and summited in the desolate high alpine. In between, there were pine forests, colorful deciduous trees, deep canyons, and arid desert. We were even convinced at one point that it could have been Colorado, minus the towering 26,000+ foot peaks. The weather also varied from hot (in the 90’s) and humid at the lower elevations to freezing your ass off and dry above 15,000 feet. Thanks to the knock off sleeping bag and down jackets that we rented, we were freezing cold for about half of the trek. Some of the trip highlights were the towns of Tal and Upper Pisang, a side trek to Tilicho Lake (proclaimed as the “Highest Lake in the World” at 16,400 ft), going through Thorung La Pass at 17,765 ft, and the countless suspension bridges along the trail!

Days 6, 7 and 8: less hot and humid, and beginning to look a lot like CO!

Days 9, 10 and 11: Tilicho Lake and high alpine views.

Days 11 and 12: Continuing towards the pass!

Day 13: Thorung La Pass, 17,765 feet! In the bottom left photo, Andy is pointing to the pass from the other side.

Day 13 and 14: Heading down and down and down from the pass.

Day 14: Continuing our decent through the town of Kagbeni with its unique sculptures.

Day 15: Our last day of trekking. The wind was throwing dust in our faces all day and our legs were so tired that we decided to take a bus down the following morning.

Day 16: Views from Tatopani, the last place that we stayed on the Annapurna circuit. We soaked in the hot springs and gorged ourselves at the guest house restaurant. 

In addition to the amazing surroundings, we got to experience the culture of Nepal. We saw stupas, gompas (aka monstaries – this by the way took us over a week to figure out), prayers wheels, Tibetan prayer flags, Hindi temples, traditional mountain villages, and talked/played cards with many locals. The Nepali people are ridiculously nice and always agreeable. Even if they don’t understand you, they’ll agree just to please you. This however, resulted in some frustrating, yet hilarious situations. For example, I asked a woman at the guesthouse restaurant what the “Mixed Potato” was on the menu. She said it had vegetables. I then asked, “Ok, what is the difference was between Veg Potato and Mixed Potato?” She answered with a warm Nepali smile, said, “Okay”, gave me the Indian head nod (hereby renamed the Indian/Nepali head nod), and walked briskly away. My Mixed Potato dinner arrived a half hour later. It included, potatoes, vegetables, eggs, and canned tuna all mixed together… Andy the saint swapped meals with me.

Some of our accommodations along the trek

The Annapurna Circuit was amazing and we would recommend it to anybody, but there are some definite negatives about Nepal. First and foremost, everybody smokes here! You can’t get away from it and even if you could you would instead be confronted by trash and/or dried cow/yak poop fires, which is admittedly very resourceful, but smells as you would expect: like burning shit. Also, the road conditions leave much to be desired. Even if the road is pseudo paved, a bus ride in Nepal is like getting on the Indiana Jones ride at Disney Land: Its super fun for the first 10 minutes, but the fun ends when you realize you can’t get off. The bus rattles you around like a rag doll for hours on end and we are convinced that many of the drivers are actually rally car racers in disguise. Lastly, the Nepalese people are super human when it comes to high altitude and body temperature regulation. This may seem like a positive, but, really, it translates to uncomfortable living conditions for all of us mere humans. They do not seem to be affected by the cold at all. They may light a measly fire to heat the dining space (or “dinning” space, as they like to spell it), but leave the outside door wide open just to mess with you. At one lodge, I must have gotten up and closed the door 30 times!!!

In 14 days, we hiked about 113 miles and gained 25,750 feet of elevation! This does not include the everyday up and down (Nepali flats). We are not usually ones to brag, but before we go on, let’s all take a moment to let us toot our own horn: TOOT TOOT!!! Perhaps walking really is a valid mode of transportation (said like a true American) :)