my so-called trek

Why, hello...I didn't see you standing there. Oh, me? This is my 6th day in Nepal and, well, could I ask you a favor? Could you just chop of my legs, for see, I am by no means a 'trekker' and walking up that mountain has made me to feel as if someone was beating the shit out of my lower half all night.

Ok, ok, it's not that bad. In fact, going up the mountain wasn't too bad at all...it was coming down that did me in. Every time I would stop to rest my legs would wobble and almost give out from underneath me. I know, I know, these things would not happen were it not for my poor shape. However, if you had the choice of paying half a dollar for a ride up/down to/from the unbelievably gorgeous mountain town or walking up/down the mountain to get there, you'd walk too...right? Well, maybe not.

Ok, I'm getting ahead of myself. As I have said, we had a layover in Sharjah, UAE. A very clean fishing town on the Arabian Gulf with ABSOLUTLY nothing to do. Nothing. There are only so many times you can eat, drink or go on the internet in a day before you go batshit crazy. But, we did see a movie (Dan in Real Life) and managed to obtain a picture of the ease at which Arabic is translated into English:

We got into Nepal, got a hostel in Kathmandu and slept...for a while. This traveling stuff sure makes me sleepy. Exploring Kathmandu is a bit stressful, for everyone is desperatly trying to sell you something and the streets are packed. Really, not all that different from Cairo actually. I am getting the impression that because of the political instablity here (there is an ongoing civil war betweetn the Maoists and the Government) the tourism sector has taken a huge blow. But nothing has happened lately and it all seems pretty safe for us travelers, so no worries. We wanted desperatly to get out of Kathmandu for it was much too polluted and stressful for us. I will, however, be posting some fine pictures of the city (and the rest of our trip) as soon as I get back to Cairo, because connection is slow here and it costs money!

Taking a 6:30 am bus out of the city, we reached a town called Dumre, small with nothing much to see but directly below another town called Bandipur. Bandipur may be my favorite place I have ever been. We hiked up the mountain to get there (hence this painful feeling in my legs)...and man, there is nothing quite like the view of the Himalayas from atop a mountain, even if its one of the small ones! I tried to get a good picture of the snow-capped mountains in the background, but the air was foggy and a good picture was not to be had.

We reached the top and spotted a small village of great little Magar huts, animals, and little children running everywhere. There was a small, old guesthouse nearby, so we got a room and, you guessed it, took a nap. That night we simply took in the town, met some fellow travelers (Canadians...they were the only ones around!), ate some great food and drank some not-so-great beer. FYI- Everest is a watery ghost of a decent beer. They also enjoy Oranjeboom and Lowenbrau here. I take the Lowenbrau, every time.

The next day we decided to take the hour long hike to Siddha Gopa, "the largest cave in Nepal." Two hours later, we reach said cave. Two hours of constand downhill, my god did we have the shakes. The cave,however, was worth it. We found a guide just sitting in front of the cave with a fire and a beginners book in English. This guy's job is to sit on top of a mountain, sometimes walk around in a huge cave and occasionally learn some English for the sake of his communication with tourists.

The cave was amazing. Huge, really, huge. There were some natural formations in the shapes of trees, lions and cobras. We saw a flock (is that the word?) of bats sleeping on the ceiling. Though we would have been happy simply looking at the first room of this monstrosity, our guide insisted we follow him down tiny little latters, up rocks wet from the small waterfalls flowing over them, and inside a terribly hot tiny room that you need to crawl through the smallest of spaces to enter.

The next morning we took a bus from Dumre to Pokhara, another touristy city with a great lake and beautiful view of the Annapurna mountains. We are going to take a boatride today and maybe tomorrow head down to Chitwan Park for an Elephant Safari or two.

I promise, I will post all of my pictures in due time!

I hope all is well with you. I miss you all.