During
the course of this year we were given two 10 day vacations. For my second vacation I had the amazing
experience of having my closest and oldest friend come visit me here. When we
were younger Katie and I did all of our traveling together including going a
trip cross country, Atlantis, the Canarie Islands, Ireland, and Scotland.
However we have not traveled together in quite awhile, despite our attempts
over the last few years.
While
I’ve been living in Nepal for nearly 7 months I have yet to see anything
outside of Kathmandu valley and the district of Ramachamp. With Katie coming
this would be the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the tourist
attractions Nepal has to offer. Nepal contains 7 of the tallest mountains in
the world, including Mt.Everest. 4 of these mountains can be seen from one look
out point, Pune Hill. After going
through all our options and weighing the pros and cons, we decided that we
would spend the vacation trekking to this look out point!
Our
itinerary would look like this:
Day
1: Katie arrives J
Day
2: Take Bus to Pokhera and enjoy the afternoon there
Day
3: Begin Trek
Day
4: Trek
Day
5: Trek
Day
6: Return from trek
Day
7: White Water Raft and return to Kathmandu
Day
8: Spend the day in Kathmandu
Day
9: Katie Leaves L
Pokhera is a cute
lake town that attracts a lot of tourists. It is where many of the outdoor recreation
activities in addition to a lot of view points of the Himalayan Mountains. We enjoyed our afternoon shopping, eating,
and catching up on the past 7 months.
We began our trek
early the next morning with our guide Bikash. Bikash turned out to be awesome!
He was easy to get along with, very helpful, and had a good sense of humor. He
also was very confident in our abilities, so when we finished our first day of
trekking early on in the day, he suggested that we continue on and combined the
first two days of trekking, this way we could have a full day in Pokhera at the
end to just relax. Motivated by Bikash’s excitement we agreed to continue
on. While the next section was extremely
difficult we made it to the next days guest house just as dark was coming.
Completely exhausted from the days hiking we both immediately passed out and
hoped our bodies would recover for the next day.
Our second day was
absolutely amazing. We were hiking through the forests and were able to see the
Himalayan mountains along the trail. On the trail it was awesome to see the
other trekkers and hear all the languages being spoken. It’s truly amazing how
big the world is yet there are places that have the ability to draw people from
every corner of the earth.
On our third and
final day we headed down the mountain with the image of our bed pushing us to
the finish line. While we had done the trek much faster then expected and felt
really good about our abilities, our bodies were beaten down and we were in
desperate need of a day of rest.
Over
the next few days we enjoyed spa treatments, restaurants, and exploring the
sites that Kathmandu has to offer. It is rare to have the opportunity to get to
share an experience like this with your friends from home. Having Katie here
was like having a little piece of home here with me. I know that this will be
only one of the many adventures we will have together in this lifetime, but I
know that this one will always remain particularly special and have a special
place in my heart.
