The Treks Begin...

Hi All
After our Dedication Ceremony on Wednesday, which was for all of us, both a rewarding, exhausting but particularly personally motivating experience, I headed out to the airport with Sarah and Rajesh to meet Mike. It was difficult to say good bye to both Sarah and Rajesh as I so thoroughly enjoyed their company, but of course I'll see Sarah in a month or so and Rajesh, my Bi (brother in Nepali) and I will keep in touch via email.

Today is Good Friday and Mike and I were supposed to begin our trek today. Jon and Annette headed off yesterday and the others headed off this morning. Mike and I eagerly waited for our Guide/Porter, Krishna outside the hotel at 5:45am while the others had another three hours before they began their adventure. Unfortunately for us (Mike and me), there was yet another strike today in the town we are to begin our trek, Besishahar, so there was no transport going to that town today and our trek was regretably delayed by a day. There are Nepalese elections on tomorrow so the country has been a little 'tense' and some political activists seem to have the power to cause quite a bit of upheaval. It's all WAY too complicated for me (I have trouble keeping up with Australian politics!) but never-the-less in some designated towns all things stop during strikes and that's the way it is.

However it turned out to be an excellently fantastic day after all!!

After checking into another hotel (the Hotel Blue Heaven) - not alot better than the Hotel Shikar, but much much cheaper - Krishna suggested he take us up to the World Peace Pagoda which included a lovely leisurely boat trip across the river and a frigin' long and steep walk up, up, up and more up to the Stupa.

With absolutely perfect weather today, we had clear and sensationally awesome views of all the mountain ranges, which were particularly unreal from the Stupa. We were so thrilled that I can only believe we were meant to stay the extra day in Pokhara today to see this amazing sight of the highest peaks in the world - it still makes me quiver to remember the sight (it might be sleep deprivation, I can't tell!). We gooed and gahed for absolutely ages and finally decided to return to Pokhara and spend the rest of the day resting up for our trek tomorrow.

When we arrived back in town, some three hours later, after Krishna took us on a walk of the entire city, we were greeted by Nepali New Years Eve Celebrations and the town was absolutely jumping!!! Music, people, more music and more people. Rest was impossible so we decided that if you can't beat'em, join'em and off we plodded into the throng. We had a lovely dinner and a walk around the place, mixing with the crowd and it was quite a lot of fun.

However, we've now been awake for more hours than I care to think about, have walked our arses off and are pretty shattered so it's off to bed for hopefully a decent sleep and tomorrow we're off!

Woo Hoo!

Love to everyone, especially my lovely Lucy, Jade and handsome Adam, Mum, Wendy, Carol, Robyn, John and Diane and all our great friends following this blog. Hopefully as the days go by and we arrive in towns with technology, we'll be able to keep you updated on our adventure. By the time we complete the Annapurna Circuit and then the Mardi Hamil we will have apparently trekked around 450-500 kilometres. Wish us both luck!! Especially, "BaBa" ... Krishna and I have nicknamed Mike "Baba" ... it means old man (0r father) --- I can tell he's thrilled!! Ha!
He came back with a story that in some countries Baba refers to Beer, so it can't be all that bad. We're not sure we believe him but if it makes him happy we'll string him along.

Love
Christine