adventure

Nepal 67: The Morning After

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Annapurna South

I awoke late. My restless night hadn’t afforded me much chance for good sleep, so when I’d finally drifted off to sleep, mortified, I hadn’t wanted to wake up.

A perfect sunbeam from the bedside window hit me square in the face, and my memory of last night came rushing back to me. It was far too vivid to have been a dream. I opened my eyes and glanced out the window.

It was an amazing bluebird morning, only small wisps of clouds to be seen. The sky was an almost ethereal blue color: so perfect it almost didn’t seem real. Behind the nearby mountains, a huge snow-capped peak showed its face. I sat up and stared in wonder. Although only a tiny portion was visible, the mountain looked like nothing I’d ever seen before.

That’s what I came here for, I thought.

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Nepal 63: Slowly, Slowly

Daniel 6 Comments

“Slowly, slowly,” our guide says as we leave lunch behind, and step back on to the trail.

He doesn’t tell us this, but we still have 1,000 meters of vertical to gain today. On Day 1 of our trek. Of course, if he’d told us this—and if we understood what it entailed—we probably would have turned around and hailed the nearest taxi back to Pokhara.

Our guide was a pro though. He knew all he had to say was “slowly, slowly.” We didn’t need to know the struggles that lay ahead of us, We could overcome them, but if we spent too much time thinking about their magnitude, we would surely convince ourselves that it was impossible.

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Nepal 52: Something to Do With Your Hands

Daniel 12 Comments
Pokhara Cafe

I shook hands with my opponent across the chess board. Beams of early-afternoon sunlight broke through the roof of the Pokhara cafe where we were sitting.

My opponent grinned a toothy grin. He was dark-skinned, freckled, missing one of his front teeth, and had a big, bushy white beard. He wore a light scarf wrapped around his head. This was the Malaysian.

Fifty-one years old, professional itinerant, and damned good chess player.

He’d just taken four out of five games from me, smoking hash almost the entire time.

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Nepal 48: Paragliders Over Sarankot

Daniel 7 Comments
Sunbeams flying

I was sitting alone on terrace in Pokhara, Nepal, sipping coffee. My eyes stared out across a serene lake, looking but not seeing. My mind was far away, across the ocean.

Instinctively, I looked to the hills above the lake. The mountains behind the hills still remained shrouded in haze. I’d been in Pokhara for a few days now, and still not caught a glimpse of the famous Annapurna Range; the towering Himalayan massif I’d come to Pokhara to see.

The Lonely Planet guidebook I had plundered from the Hotel Snow Leopard suggested catching a sunrise from the high hill of Sarankot was the best way to see the mountains. So as I sat on the terrace, I looked to Sarankot.

Above the promontory, a swarm of paragliders circled.

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