Best of 2014 -- Part 1: The Southern Hemisphere

It goes without saying that 2014 was an awesome year.  After a month back in the States we've had time to reflect on our adventures and start putting together a few highlights.  Here's the first installment, recapping our six months in the southern hemisphere, through Chile, Australia, and New Zealand.  Enjoy it... we certainly did.

You can also view this video here on Youtube.  And if you prefer the traditional photo album format, have a look here.

Merry Christmas!

The Epic Sign Post

One thing we learned while traveling this year: there are a lot of signs in the world. Signs, we also learned, come in many flavors, from helpful to funny, and downright strange.  At some point, we started taking pictures of them.  So, without further ado, here are some of our favorites.

Australia

Mixing British sensibility and caution with the Australian devil-may-care attitude, road signs in Australia are both practical and entertaining...

They forgot about the sharks.

Many tourists forgot this, so these were quite helpful.

A disheartening sign, especially since we were biking and wine tasting.

New Zealand

We spent a lot of time at holiday parks (a.k.a. campgrounds) in New Zealand. While the people running these parks were almost always kind and friendly, they also invariably posted slightly crazed signs like the one below. Woe to the camper who doesn't obey the signs... 

Malaysia

Signs like the one below were common throughout Southeast Asia, where durian is a popular fruit to eat. It also smells strongly of trash and makes everything around it smell like trash - as we discovered on a very long train ride in Vietnam.

Vietnam

Speaking of Vietnam, it was the source of some of our favorite signs, from propaganda to helpful rules about which guests were allowed in your room.

These signs contained no sense of irony.

Picky guesthouse owners. No prostitutes?!

Their third bullet was inviting, but we did not eat here.

Thailand

Thailand had a more mothering tone to its signs, warning us about dangerous people out to take our stuff and hurt us. Thank you Thailand!

 

Unfortunately, this sign was posted in a Buddhist temple.  Where all the monks were dressed in red... 

Excellent advice for life on the last line. 

Japan

Japan also likes to provide lots of signs, though they often advertised their usefulness in English, then offered all the information in Japanese. Below are three of our favorite English translation signs  - they capture the friendly and polite spirit of the Japanese we met.

We never saw the bee. 

This sign would have been more useful in Mongolia. 

Yes, let's!

And so, the next time you're abroad, just remember:

Nepal Part 4: Trek recap and photos

As you might expect, we visited some pretty spectacular places and took a lot of photos while trekking through the Himalayas in Nepal.  Like this one, capturing the entire Annapurna range at sunset:

But as you also might expect, the internet in Nepal is pretty slow.  So it wasn't until now that we had a chance to get some photos online.  Out of over 1,000 taken across five weeks of trekking, we've tried to put together a manageable album from each of our two treks for your viewing pleasure.  To put the pictures in context, here's a quick recap of each of our two treks.

Manaslu-Tsum Valley: 22 days, 191 miles

This trek took us up the Manaslu Valley, with a 9-day side trip up and down the Tsum Valley.  Both of these areas are only recently open to tourists, are fairly remote, and have a strong Tibetan influence.  We spent a lot of time within a 1-day walk of Tibet, and the area reflects this.  The Tsum Valley also has a lot of monasteries (or "gompas") full of monks (lamas) or nuns (anis).  It's flanked by the Ganesh Himal (with several 7,000 meter peaks) and numerous minor peaks that form the border with Tibet.  It's a relatively untouched and beautiful place.  We even stumbled across a Buddhist festival at a local gompa:

And here's a typical early morning view from the trail:

The upper end of the Manaslu Valley is similar, and is an old trade route to Tibet.  The villages reflect this, and there's still a lot of trading, though less now because of China's influence.  To get there, we walked for five days up a narrow river valley, often perched on trails about 3-4 feet wide with a sheer cliff on one side and a hundred-foot (or more) drop on the other, down into the raging river below.  It was tough walking, but rewarded at the upper end by views of the Manaslu Himal, which contains one of the world's 8,000 meter peaks (there are only 14), Manaslu.  Unfortunately, due to a recent storm and remaining icy conditions, we were not able to cross the Larkye La pass into the Annapurna region and instead had to descend along our original route down through the river gorge.  The last 4-5 days were a bit frustrating as a result, with a busy trail and repeated downhill days taking a toll on our knees.  But the trek was still very scenic and diverse, with changing landscapes every couple of days.  Here's a shot of Mt. Manaslu:

A photo gallery from the Manaslu-Tsum Valley Trek is available here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/103829313469224560701/albums/6088721278173380593

Annapurna: 13 days, 99 miles

We had a guide and porter for the Manasu trek, but that's a double-edged sword.  There are a lot of hassles dealing with a guide, who has his own ideas about the route you should take.  And porters can be ill-equipped and are usually not that experienced in the mountains (oddly) so it can limit your high-altitude options.  For the Annapurna, we opted to just go out on our own, which was a great call.  We got a chance to take some very remote and unused trails, explored high ridgelines, and over 13 days managed to almost double the climbing of our Manaslu trek, ascending about 26,000 feet in total.  It helped that we were well-acclimatized.  The trek was a lot of fun, and the Annapurnas are stunning.  Annapurna Base Camp itself, our highest point in our entire time in Nepal, is an amazing basin hidden behind fortress-like mountains rising over 25,000 feet.  Here's a late-day view of a few peaks:

A photo gallery from the Annapurna Trek is available here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/103829313469224560701/albums/6088921645973869873

We're not sure if we'll ever make it back to Nepal, but we're glad we visited.  The scale of the Himalayas is hard to understand until you've stood at the base of an 8,000 meter peak and stared up in wonder at those who climb to such heights. It's a place of amazing natural beauty, interesting culture, and great outdoors challenges.  Including a lot of dodgy bridges...

And we're back...

We're back in Florida after a fairly interesting 45 hour trip.  It started off inauspiciously, with dense fog in Kathmandu and a closed airport.  Luckily, the fog lifted and we managed to leave Nepal with only a 2 hour delay and some chaos at the airport.  Next, it was a 12 hour overnight from Bangkok to Frankfurt.  That flight left on time, but Thai Airways managed to give Erin food poisoning.  So not much sleep that night, yet we arrived in Frankfurt in relatively decent shape (by this point, we're pretty used to long bus/train/plane rides and OK operating on 2-3 hours of sleep).

As it turns out, the Lufthansa pilots had chosen that day to strike.  Meaning 1,400 flights cancelled and 150,000 people stranded throughout Europe.  We were just starting to look forward to extending our trip by a week or two (hey, Germany and Switzerland?  why not!) when we found out that the only flights not cancelled were about a dozen to the U.S. and Japan.  Our final 10-hour flight left Germany on time, US immigration and customs was a breeze, and -- miraculously -- all our luggage made it.  That's something like 25 flights, a dozen trains, and countless bus rides with no lost bags and no theft.  Sort of amazing.

So now we're relaxing in Florida at Brook's sister's house, somewhat disoriented but in pretty good shape.  It's good to be back, but we're still in denial about facing reality.  Things like phone bills, car insurance, and jobs seem like such a hassle... but we really can't complain.

Walking Downhill

It began about ten days ago, when we started walking downhill from Annapurna Base Camp.  As we hiked through Himalayan villages, caught our last close glimpses of their ice-shrouded guardians, and navigated our final ridges, we both knew that we had started down a long but inevitable path back. First back to Pokhara, then Kathmandu, then the airport and the strange limbo of international transit, finally arriving again on US soil after nearly eleven months away. It was then, during those first steps downhill, that we began to feel a sense of ending.

It's strange and hard to explain, ending.  This year we've seen amazing things, met great (and horrible) people, had adventures, gotten lost, gotten found, drank too much wine then not nearly enough, climbed things, lost things, found things, and have if anything grown to love and appreciate each other all the more for having experienced it all together.  And we don't really want it to end when we board our flight home tomorrow.

At the same time we miss everyone back home. This year we've really missed friends, family, and being part of life events and celebrations, big (congrats, Emily!) or small (go Pats!).  We also miss decent sandwiches, good beer, laundry machines, BBQ, paychecks, and the comfort of sleeping in the same place more than a few nights at a stretch.  But we don't miss the office or vacation parceled out a few days at a time.  

So it's going to be a balancing act.  Between restarting careers we both enjoy and carving out a life that lets us keep adventuring.  Between the comforts of home and the challenge of exploring. We're looking forward to the next stage, and to seeing all of you again and sharing a year's worth of stories over a beer or three.  Just as soon as we survive our three-flight, four-nation, 45-hour trip home.  See you Tuesday.

Nepal Part 3: Route finding in the Annapurnas

Two days ago we wrapped up a 13-day trek in the Annapurnas, and it was a very different experience than the Manaslu region.  While the Manaslu and Tsum trek was largely a matter of following large river valleys, the Annapurna sanctuary is a gnarled area of ridges, gorges, and minor peaks. And this time we went out on our own, with no guide or porter, intending to explore some more remote areas on less popular trails.

Over thirteen days, we did manage to find wonderful, off-the-beaten-track areas.  With much of the main Annapurna circuit and sanctuary area under development with (very bad) roads and power lines, there are new trekking routes springing up that use local trails and visit more remote areas. We linked two of these areas, the Mohare Danda and Koprah Danda (danda meaning ridge), both of which have newer community-run lodges, with proceeds going to local schools. They also have amazing views. Here's the view from Mohare Danda, where we spent our second night:

From left to right, you can see Fang, Annapurna South, Hiunchuli, and Machhapuchhre, ranging from 7647 to 6441 meters high.  

The major trekking routes tend to follow old trails that sprang up ages ago as transit routes between villages. But these often follow rivers or valleys, avoiding unnecessary climbing but also missing out on views. By contrast, the newer ridge line hikes are more spectacular, more remote, and much less heavily travelled. During our day and night at the Mohare Danda lodge, which we found with the help of a local man hired as a guide for the day, we saw only two other trekkers, but plenty of peaks and stars.

While remote and exciting, these treks do necessitate some route finding, and have plenty of hard climbs and descents. We did pretty well over six days, then found a nice quiet spot for a rest day before pushing on up the main trail to Annapurna Base Camp.  Appropriately enough, it was called Little Paradise and again, we saw few trekkers but did make friends with a girl from Colorado and a group of Nepali guys up for a few days from Kathmandu. Here's our rest-day spot, with a good view of Annapurna South and it's fortress-like ridge:

From there we pushed up to Machhapuchhre Base Camp in two days, and the next day had a short one-hour hike up to Annapurna Base Camp (usually just called ABC) at 4,130 meters (13,500 feet or so)  At that point, we'd been trekking for about 30 days, with over 10 of those spent between 3,000 and 3,600 meters (roughly 10,000-12,500 ft.). It was gratifying to take advantage of our acclimatization and cruise uphill during the last stretches, not feeling the altitude, and enjoying a mostly sunny day rambling around ABC. It's a beautiful mountain sanctuary, where you're completely surrounded by huge mountains towering well over 25,000 feet, with hanging glaciers, and a real sense of the size and majesty of the Himalayas.  We got up at dawn for a last look at the mountains:

Then we had a knee-crushing 10,000 foot descent over three days, a short taxi ride, and a pizza dinner back in town.  It was a fun trek, and we really enjoyed being on our own, making decisions daily and not bound by a guide or itinerary.  

Between the Manaslu-Tsum valley trek (22 days) and our Annapurna trek (13 days), we spent five solid weeks on the trail.  We spent this morning putting some numbers together, so here they are:

Manaslu-Tsum Valley, over 22 days: 308 km (191 miles); 6,490 meters of climbing and the same descent (21,287 feet each way).

Annapurna, over 13 days (including a rest day): 160km (99 miles); 7960 of climbing and about the same descent (26,109 feet each way)

Total distance hiked: 468km, or 290 miles. Total elevation gained: 14450 meters, or 47,396 feet. Plus another 47,396 feet downhill.  Our knees feel it, and we're both a couple pounds lighter, but otherwise we feel surprisingly good. 

We're headed to Kathmandu tomorrow, where we have a few days before flying back to the US on December 1, landing in Miami on December 2. We're looking forward to getting back and seeing everyone, but also dreading the 40-hour trip and feeling a bit sad that our travels are nearly over. But more on all that later. Right now we've got to get back to the hard work of relaxing in Pokhara...