It's been too long

At the start of this trip I fully intended to blog frequently and give everyone the option of keeping up to date with my adventures. It’s taken a long time to get round to doing it. Now, a month and a week into my trip, I am writing my first entry.

I guess the main reason why I have been lax is because, and here I must confess, I never read people’s travel blogs. Generally I find them pretty boring (sorry!) and so I guess saw no reason why mine would be any more interesting. Obviously now I am here I can’t see any reason why anyone wouldn’t want to read about what I’ve been up to! No, seriously, I’m beginning to realize now how much I miss everyone and really want to stay in touch, so perhaps this is the best way to communicate with you all.

Over the next few weeks I’ll do some backtracking and add in some of the funnier anecdotes or some shocking detail on the events from earlier in the trip. I’ll start now though with a brief summary of what I’ve been up to until now.

The first thing I did was join an organized group in Kathmandu to do the Everest Base Camp trek. I was in a group with some fantastic, diverse people from all over the world. The trek was wonderful, but pretty hard. It started with a flight from Kathmandu to Lukla airport - where one start of the runway is 60m higher than the end. It was pretty scary on the way back. The landscape changed significantly as we went up and I saw the most amazing views. I don’t expect to see anything that beautiful again. The mountains were stunning.

The difficult part was the freezing cold in the evenings and as we climbed to above 5000m, hiking with only 40% oxygen. I was at the back of the group most of the time - really should have done some training beforehand. Along the way we past many Buddhist Stupas and were lucky to be at a Buddhist monastery during a major festival. The last leg of the journey to Base Camp was along glacier, which was pretty cool.

After a few days in Kathmandu I went west to Pokhara, a touristy town on the edge of a beautiful lake. There I hired a mountain bike for a couple of days to see the surrounding area. I got completely lost several times and almost fell down a mountain. The highlight of that was when I cycled pretty high up through rural, hilltop areas where tourists were a novelty, there the people were so friendly and all the children in a school playground stopped to gawp and wave as I cycled past.

From Pokhara I took the bus to the jungle at Chitwan National Park. It was great seeing and riding an elephant, but beyond that the most exciting animal I saw on both a canoe and walking safari was a wild chicken. The tigers, rhinos and panthers clearly have something against me. After two nights there I took a bus from there across Nepal to the border with India. After a grim evening in the border town I crossed over into India, taking a jeep up to Darjeeling

Aside from the tea, the highlight in this area was going to visit the village of Barranumber (three jeep rides from Darjeeling) where I stayed with a local family. My friend Tom had volunteered there a few months ago and his host family warmly welcomed me. Although it is in India, the people there are ethnic Gurkhas and speak Nepali. After having spent a few weeks in Nepal it was great to experience the culture first hand.

I took my first sleeper train from there to Kolkata (Calcutta) and went to meet the organizations that I am volunteering with next day. I’m due to stay here until the middle or end of January. More on my experiences here, shortly – I’ve got a lot to say about it!

Along the way I have met loads of travelers and Indians and haven’t actually spent much time alone. They’ve mostly been pretty nice and interesting people and definitely a highlight of the experience.

I have been thinking a lot about everyone at home and miss you! Keep in touch.

daniel