Lisa in India (4)

Namaste!

My left knee is now buggered from the descent and stepping down hills/stairs, my arse is feeling better and I no longer have any Delhi Belly (love those antibiotics). Life is good.

Whoa, what a great trek! A helluva an adventure too.

It certainly did not go as planned which added to the adventure and we have arrived safely and happily in Pokhara again after 6 days....just had a shower (whoa, did I stink!!) and did some hand wash so I am a very happy camper now. I was really getting a good handle on learning to bathe on a few cups of warm water twice daily (a.k.a 'washing water, please' camping/trekking style). I won't know what to do with a full force hot water shower "Princess Western Style" when I return home.

Our Nepali guide Vishnu announced on our first evening in Pokhara th! at the Maoist extremists were planning a General Strike on the 12th and 13th. This would have eliminated all available means of transportation and most people would have closed shops and services. This forced Vishnu to change our itinerary so that he could be sure that, if required, we could walk back into Pokhara rather than rely on other transportation. So, our itinerary changed and we ended up on a trekking route that is seldom done by tourists anymore.

This proved to be rather advantageous because we met many villagers and children who were not accustomed to seeing many tourists and once again, we were the centre of attention much like were were in India.

The addition of the 3 new women - Jane, Jan and Annette - turned out to be wonderfully refreshing. What a fabulous group we had! I was pleased to give up my position as the "oldest and the slowest' in the grou! p and happily handed that over to Jan and Annette (both 56 yr, from Australia) who are two of the most incredible troopers ever! Wow, they were just fabulous. They were always at the back but never far behind and what incredible attitudes and wonderful sense of humour they have. I can only to aspire to be so adventurous when I am in my late fifties. Okay, I probably will be like them one day since I am not a five star vacation kind of woman!

(Norboo: I showed Vishnu your photos on my camera including the "Mr So So Serious" photo of you that I took in Jaiselmar....he thinks he met you a year or two ago when you were in Nepal taking the course with Jim Duff....will send you a disc of my Nepal pics for fun but don't laugh too hard at the "Full Moon Photo" that I convinced Nigel to pose with me for.....that is, if you even know what a "full moon" is and I am not talking about the full moon in the night sky, honey.....you wi! ll just have to see the photos....).

Besides the significant itinerary change, I had not really counted on us getting rained on. Well, I did consider that it might rain - a little. But, I did not anticipate or imagine in my wildest dreams that we would get 30 fu**** hours of straight piss pouring rain including torrential downpours and a little bit of hail for good measure.

It started to rain lightly on Day 3 during our climb up to Panchase Peak which is about 2600 metres. Fortunately, I had my Gortex with me and even though I was wet, I was warm. We had Vishnu chanting mantras to make the rain go away but this did not work in a timely enough fashion.

We awoke to continuing downpour of rain the next morning but we all met the challenge happily and with good attitudes. I started to lose my good attitude after that next full day w! alking in continuous rain. I was wearing my quick dry Rad pants, my left knee was killing me because it was strained from the down climbing and I was soaked to the bone. I was warm though and kept thinking about the one pair of warm dry clothes that I had to change into....this positive thought was quickly cancelled by the thought of getting into a soaking wet tent that I knew would leak like a sieve!!!

Alas, the wonderful mantras were heard and we were able to secure some rooms in a Nepalese lodge in Australia Camp. We did not have to sleep in the tents !!! The rain worsened (yikes!) while we warmed ourselves by the fire heater, had a few beers and sang some songs and danced. We were feeling like the luckiest group of trekkers in Nepal since we had a warm fire, beers, a place to dry our clothes and a dry lodgings!

The rains stopped at 5 pm or so and we start! ed to get some clearing. By nightfall, under the moon lit sky, we had the most spectacular views of the Annapurna southern range. The next morning, I heard the cooks getting our tea ready and noted we had the most spectacular clearest mountain views you could possibly imagine. I banged on every ones door and woke them up for 'Beautiful Mountain Views'. I am sorry, but this is just not something I can capture on my camera. You will just have to come here yourself. It really was all worthwhile and believe or not, I would do it again. Perhaps I will trek to Bhutan, or Sikkim next...hhhmmmm....

We had lots of fun meeting many locals, going into some village homes, taking pictures of children. I have so many photos to print and send back here to both my India and Nepal guides so they can deliver them to the families who were so kind to invite me into their homes. I have so many pic! tures of children. They just love to have their photos taken and see themselves on the Digital camera screen.

We are now off to Royal Chit wan for an Asian Safari.

Hope all is well. I must Zoom Zoom (let's go!).

Love Lisa
xoxo