Time is relative... isn't it?

Five months is not a very long time when you are grinding away at home, working, and not much exciting is happening... it seems to be hard to remember what you did three days ago sometimes... not when you are travelling, every memory seems so strong, vivid, and lasting.

Five months ago I flew to Singapore with certain expectations, but they were all surpassed by far, and now I am happy to be home for a short spell, to charge up the batteries and spend time with family.
This last part was very excitinglast and painful, as it goes sometimes. The last part didnt quite work out how i had planned and I had to come home 10 days early, what had happened?

We finished off the very nice trip in nepal by travelling from the trekking destination pokhara to the main city kathmandu via a big national park, royal chitwan, where we booked a jungle walk, river cruise and elephant ride to chase various animals (or get chased vice versa, we got told excactly what to do when encountering rhinos/slothbears/tigers, etc) ...once we got there I already had a strong case of flu and diarrhea, and had to stay home for most of the trip, but still got to do the elephant ride (saw several rhinos, a crocodile, etc)...

Streets of Kathmandu had some snake charmers too....

When we returned to Kathmandu, and met up with Joseph, a guy we knew from my hometown, who has been living in nepal for 10 years and is the head of a large aid organisation that builds roads for nepal (he employs 15000 people). We got a very interesting and thorough insight into his work...and since his wife owns a swiss restaurant there i got to have a terrific dinner, the best bratwurst outside of switzerland i have EVER had, seriously.!! He also showed us around the non-touristy parts of town and we got to see large stupas (holy shrines) and got an inshight into the almost medieval handyworks still carried out at the durbar square...

Buddha statue...

This is not for feeble stomachs, skip this section if you dont like gross stories or are about to have lunch. I like eating where locals eat in any part of the world, touristy restaurants just done have the charm I am looking for, 3rd world country or not..

We did this pretty much every time, but also forgot about the golden rule sometimes,....eating at a very sad looking and deserted restaurant (eat where a LOT of locals eat), i had Chow Mein, chinese noodles, when upon my second to last spoonful I noticed a big cockroach I was about to swallow, entangled in my noodles. I am used to lots of specialties but that was probably just some poor creature that had fallen into the pot and was fried to death... decided though to put it aside, eat the rest anyways, (was still hungry and decided if the food s been contaminated it was already too late anyways....) well that did not get me sick, but something did, days later....

Deli downtown... your usual New Deli street scene....

We decided on a whim to continue to India, and travel down from New Deli to Calcutta.
Well India sure was krass i must say... arriving there we soon realized that almost as many people in much less space than china makes very overcrowded and polluted cities... there is a lot of suffering on the streets, its extremely hot, enormous amounts of people hassle Tourists o­n the streets (the only way to make money for most), trying to lure you into obscure buys, transports even if you dont need any, or just trying to convince you of something you dont need... We were quite toughened up by our travels, and the many quite colorful reports of other travellers, and not so easily intimidated, but it was still difficult traveling at times. Overall, we were really enjoying our trip there though, visited many beautiful sights such as the Red Fort in Dehli, the Amber Fort in Jaipur, and most extraordinary, the marvellous Taj Mahal in Agra.

The beautiful Taj Mahal

However, all good things tend to come to an end and so they did a little too early... while eating, what else: Manfred and I are very different with different opinions and personalities, so when it came to eating, he would never eat something that was not peeled or boiled, while I, on the other hand, over the first four months, enjoyed many great salads, fruits and local specialities, even when those turned out to be unboiled, cooked, or peeled,....

At the Taj....

I was aware that I stood a greater risk of getting sick, and so in India I finally did... I am feeling a bit better now, after having had severe stomach issues and high fevers for the last 12 days. I visited a Doctor in Calcutta, and was told that its best to go home and get treated in Switzlerland since they could not really figure out which bug(s) were in me.....

I was easily convinced... I had spent 3 nights in two different overnight 3rd class train squat tiolets (sometimes up to 45 minutes at a time, barely being able to unlock myself from the squat position)... hey s@#$ happens!

The doctor in calcutta was working with a drug in an FDA approval framework of an american company which produces an antibiotic against travellers diarrhea, so I got paid to use it,.. not a bad deal!

Home now, I feel like i have learned a lot on this first part of the trip, and cannot wait for my 2nd.... my grandmother is dying so I will stay here a few weeks to spend time with her and then head out to South America....

Life's adventures at 10000+ feet

So i have been in Nepal for a good three weeks now and my feelings are mixed, just like the reports in the newspapers.... the country is very beautiful and though i generally feel pretty safe the reports say otherwise, and many tourists have already left the country. Maoist attacks almost every day, bombs going off in Kathmandu, and police and army presence by the hundreds, fully armed, among the beautiful and calm mountain sceneries make this trip here almost surreal, no tourist has been harmed by maoists in ages and still i believe we will leave Nepal a bit earlier as expected.

Our luxury tourist bus...

But thats not really what i was looking forward to writing you about... after a very quick stop in Kathmandu we headed out to Pokhara to drop off about 25 lbs of our travelling gear and limit backpacks to sub 30lbs, makes trekking a whole lot easier and its amazing how little you need when you need to carry it around for 10-12h a day on your back! We headed out in the morning to catch a bus to Besi Sahar, the starting point of the Annapurna trek.

New and older crop to feed the many hungry mouths of the valley

On the 5 h bus ride to the start, we immediately started talking to Lucas, a swiss mountaineer and recent medical doctor, and Wendy and Natalie, two travelers from New Zealand on a round-the-world trip, not knowing that we would be spending the next two weeks hiking together....the bus hosted some overly loud and obnoxious israeli traveling group with scores of guides and porters. To escape being trampled down or deaf by sundown, we immediately started the trek to start ahead (we had now guides or porters).... As we hiked it became more and more apparent that we had the same interests, hiking speed and got along really well. I had never hiked longer than 3 days in a row so the planned 14-16 days were posing some interesting obstacles (blisters from hell, that could only be treated with second skin and lots of cussing and swearing, tired legs, and hella stinky socks!!)

Our hiking group

Mani stones, beautiful carvings....

Funny substitution for a prayer wheel... whatever works!!

We ended up working so well together as a group that the trek took a lot less time than anticipated.... for the 12 days we were out there, we usually got up around 4-6 am, hiked until lunch-time, then relaxed for 1-2 hours in the sun (as its dry season and always sunny), then hiked for another 1-2 hours to arrive around 3 pm at a lodge, where we would secure a room for 20 rupees (no joke, between 15-25 cents per person!!), and order Dahl Bath (traditional dinner) for the whole group. Dahl bath is the nepalese natioal dish and is eaten EVERY day by locals, usually for an early lunch and for dinner. Its all-you-can-eat rice, curried lentils and vegetables, doesnt taste like much after the second day, but conserves energy (very important to have a low impact while trekking there) and fills the stomach.... We were all very keen on following the excact guidelines from the annapurna conservation project, as in the year 2000 about 80,000 people did the annapurna circuit and left hundreds of tons of garbage up the mountain while using so much firewood that whole wooden areas were cut down (to heat showers, and cook special food ordered by foreginers, as lasagne and cordon-bleu are not really ideal meals to be cooked up there... I was fine accepting these guidelines, but not being able to drink much coca cola was the hardest one!!!

One of my favorites... Annapurna in the back

Lucas being threatened by a goat...

Anyhow, to finish the story of the trek, after an acclimatization day in manang at 3500 meters, (to avoid altitude sickness or even worse a lung or brain oedema), we hiked up to thorong phedi where we trided to sleep at 4500 meters, (no luck there for me, did not close an eye at this altitude), then got up at 4 am and started the most strenuous day from 4500 meters to 5416 meters (thorong la, the worlds biggest pass).... and then descended down the pass to 3800 meters extremely exhausted to find sleep come easy (after a more than 8 hour hiking day.....

Made it to the top of Thorong La! (5400m)

Up the pass manfred and I were in very good shape, probably due to the altitude acclimatization from tibet the weeks before, so we were able to help others over the pass, especially Natalie, who was suffering from frost-shakes and exhaustion, but with her i-wont-give-up personality still made it up the mountain.... Lucas, by the way, who brought lots of medical supplies, was able to use the stuff he brought and help rule out pulmunary oedemia (water in the lungs) and treat a sick swiss couple along the way, so having a doctor along with us was certainly very comforting.... Anyhow,up the valley, the green rice fields and vegetable gardens gave way to higher altitude forests, then bushes and only rock-landscape, and on the way down it happened vice versa, and this over several days. It was so pretty, no wonder each year travelers return to do the same annapurna trek yet again, leaving behind all possibilities of communications (telephone, internet, heck electricity alltogether) and the better part of luxuries, accepting the fact that blisters are a part of hike just as sore muscles, but hiking through mountain sceneries such as the 5 annapurna peaks, or a dalaugliri icefall that compares to the worlds most stunning mountain pictures....

Curious faces...

Lamb too tired to walk...

On the way down we stopped in Tatopani (translated: hot water), hot springs and cold beer, no need to say more! We spent a day relaxing, sunbathing and drinking/eating like we hadn't done in weeks (well we really hadn't actually). After Natalie and Wendy offered a couple of bottles of wine for our help (I hauled up their packs the last few miles when the pass was almost reached and their altitude sickness kicked in), so we drank a bit much and got up with a slight case of headache, hiking our last day down to Beni and catching a bus to Pokhara, where we now have been for a few days, doing nothing but relaxing, eating great pastries and lots of meat, and planning our next few weeks....