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I AM FINALLY HOME!

it has been the most amazing 15 days holiday ever (apart from grad trip of course).

trekked through forests, gravels, barren lands, cliff edges and reached our ultimate goal - ABC (Annapurna Base Camp).

Paraglided through the skies of Pokhara city, absailed down the waterfalls of Kathmandu, enjoyed an eagle's eye view of the snow capped peaks of Mount Everest and the many other mountains of Himalaya region.

Met many interesting characters along the way and overall, developed a deep sense of appreciation and wonderment at the majesty and grandeur of God's creation - nature.

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Day 1 - Arrival at Kathmandu International Airport

Addy smiling as we reached the capital of Nepal via Silkair - approximately a 5 hr plane ride.

Kathmandu City is by far one of the dirtiest and dustiest places i've ever been to. Pollution in terms of litter and waste is widespread and with the fall of the monarchy, the current government does not seem to be doing anything to clean up the city and even worse, fuel supply is inadequate and there is a national crisis in terms of the supply of electricity through the national grid (Nepal is facing up to 14 power cuts daily due to the low levels of water in the reservoirs of major power plants). even 5 star hotels experience frequent blackouts and sometimes, providing a constant stream of heated water may pose some difficulties.

Hyatt Regency, located at a cleaner, less polluted corner of Kathmandu.

in the other parts of Kathmandu, it would be best to bring along an oxygen tank or air filtration device...i half believed i was going to suffocate and die from the city's dust-filled air...

my travelling buddies :)

in Singapore, we have lan shops fully equipped with air conditioners and clean, sterile environment. In Nepal, well....you get the additional bonus of experiencing the dust filled and claustrophoic conditions of the video game parlour.

how fantastic.

a convenience store

city centre in the heart of Thamel.

 the hectic market.

Jaya, our city tour guide, showing us how to eat street side food. the above is a thin dough crust with salt water and potato.

Nepalese children :)

if ever in the future, i am unable to have kids/chose not to give birth, i'd wanna adopt a nepalese baby.

Dal Bhat, a typical nepalese meal, a rice combi with lentil sauce, pickles and curry chicken.

Raj, co-owner of Third Pole Adventures, our selected tour agency, showed his hospitable side by inviting us for dinner together with his brother and relatives.

Day 2 - Buddha Air (0.5 Hour ride) to Pokhara

all ready to begin our Annapurna Sanctuary Hike.

our porters (aka Shepas) tying our backpacks together and fastening them tightly.

mules are another way of tranportation up the mountains.

we started off at Nayapool and hiked up to the pleasant riverside village of Birethanti.

in order to climb the Himalayas, you will need a hiking permit. this was arranged by our tour agency.

lunch for the day. macaroni. surprsingly, it tasted not too bad :)

we continued hiking up to Hille and along the way, it started to rain and guess what we saw?!

a hail storm!

it was crazy cool. there were many "firsts" in this trip and this was one of it.

we sought shelter in one of the tea lodges and as the rain continued, hail stones started falling from the sky.

close up look at the hail stones.

alas, we were very fortunate, the hail storm did not last very long (about 20mins or so) and so we managed to continue our hike up to our first accomodation for the day.

after the rain, we saw a beautiful rainbow stretch across the village. i've never seen a rainbow so close up before, it was incredulous.

this is how Nepalese porters transport loads of up to 100kg (no kidding) up the treacherous steps of the Himalayan mountains. they mostly use a head strap (aka namlo) and let their neck and back muscles do most of the work. it amazes me to no end how powerful the human body is...

Day 3 - Ghorepani (2,850m)

day 2 of our hike (or otherwise day 3 of the entire trip) was probably one of the most testing in terms of perseverance for me. i was suffering from mild food posioning due to the bad sanitation practised during the preparation of food. suffered from diarrhoea, nausea and mild giddy spells as we trekked through the oak and rhodendron forests.

the previous day, the path was mostly flat but today, the hike was mostly upwards via steep steps.

Nepalese woman tending to her crops.

with Bikas, one of our porters who is the same age as me & addy! his actions during the trek were mildly entertaining and provided us a source for joke during the many nights. He was very helpful and chirpy throughout the trek.

According to Ram (our mountain guide), Bikas will take about 4-5 years before he becomes a guide as well. it's pretty interesting to see that there is a progression level even for porters. Mountain guides start off as porters and are trained under their mentors (who are guides themselves). After about 7 years or so of being a porter, they would have gathered most of the necessary skills of the trade. However, that is not merely enough, they would need to know english as well and they are supposed to pick up the language merely by conversing with the customers and hearing the many conversations between their mentors and the trekking customers. If they wish to learn the language more in depth, they would have to pay for the english courses at the lanugage institutes, no subsidies are given to them.

Rhodedenron petals scattered all over the forest bed. The flower is the country's national flower and is also depicted on their currency notes.

as you can see, we were wearing our ponchos cause it rained yet again.

we finally reached our accomodation for the night - The Sunny Lodge. and made it just in time for the spectacular sunset view of Poon Hill.

finally ended the ardous journey for that day. was a happy gal for the day. and having witnessed one of the most gorgeous sunsets, i was more than satisfied.

Day 4 - Poon Hill (3,210m)

woke up at 4.30am to the freezing cold temperatures of the early morning. took our headlamps and set off for the climb up to Poon Hill to catch the sunrise.

however, the 3 of us, being such slow coaches, took a million years just to wash up...and eventually, missed sunrise by a mere few minutes :(

Ram even made the commment that we were lazy cause we are always so slow in preparing and always late to set off!!! Rawr. felt so insulted. we paid him to bring us up the mountain and not to insult us! and damn him for saying that we probably need a 20day hike to ABC instead of 10 days. well,we proved him wrong! despite still taking a million years to get up and set off, we gradually improvised and decided to wake up 2 hours before the scheduled time of set off. lol.

but on hind sight, Ram probably did that to push us to be more focussed on reaching our goal. there was a very tight schedule as this trek was meant to be a 14day trek, but we requested for an accelerated hike hence he was under pressure to deliver it to us as well.

and darn the stupid "15mins ahead" signboard up to Poon Hill.

this is a perfect example of misrepresentation.

it would have been better if they added a disclaimer....

 "This applies only if you are Nepalese, otherwise, please expect another 30-40 mins of more ardous climbing" 

once we were up there, we were greeted with the breathtaking view of the Himalayan mountains - Dhaulagiri, Tukuche, Dhampus Peak, Nilgiri, Annapurnas and Machapuchare.

the jumpshots were no easy feat...after a few jumps, i was almost breathless cause at that height, the air was so thin that every exagerrated action was causing me to pant in exasperation :S

super loser.

we also met a buncha ladies from China and a group of Spanish people from Mexico, Spain, Argentina who are currently working in India.

it was then and there that we decided to go for the Everest Mountain Flight, as the China ladies had just taken the flight and were raving about it.

making our way back down to Sunny Lodge for breakfast and after which, we quickly packed up and left off for Tadapani, trekking through open grasslands and deep forests.

these photos are probably a bit misplaced but i love ladybugs, so pretty! and there were just so many of them around the crevises of the fallen tree barks.

stopping for our lunch break and still finding the energy to cam whore. haha.

and finally TADAPANI!! with yet another awesome view of errr.... Annapurna South?? gosh, tooo many mountains, i can't tell one from the other already.

Ram, the rolly polly guy in the camouflage jacket, our mountain guide for the entire 10 days was cooking in the kitchen. He has 4 years experience as a kitchen boy and had accompanied Edmond Hilary on one of the mountain hikes. Ram has almost 30 over years of mountaineering experience, he'd climbed to the peak of Annapurna South (approximately 7000+m high) and reached the 4th camp site of Mt Everest (just one camp site before the summit) before experiencing bad weather conditions and was eventually forced to turn back.

Day 5 - Chomrong (2,000m)

woke up really early, about 5am Nepal time to catch the sunrise at Tadapani.

beautiful isn't it?

lol,k, you don't actually see the sunrise in any of the photos...but the spectrum of colours that turned out in the pictures was just so breathtaking...

(to be continued....)