Nepal and Running
First off, There hasn't been much time since I've been shooting, so keep in mind that these journals are very raw.

I didn’t really know exactly what our plans were upon entering Kathmandu. After arriving an hour late, it took me a good 45 minutes to an hour to get through customs and get my visa. Finally, I make it through and head out to look for my friend Ned. Couple minutes later, he’s calling my name and he says, “Hurry! we’re late for our plane to Pokarah!” so we quickly hop over to the domestic departures and jump on our 10 passenger plane to this amazingly beautiful town next to the Himilayas. The view from the plane was incredible. It was such a small plane, that we flew lower than the mountains. The rice fields on the hills are stacked like staircases with the Himilayas salted in the background.

We are picked up by a man named Chudaman, a nice Napali man. Then we drove down to the lake and met up with some fishermen for a few shots as the sun was setting.. behind the clouds.

This morning, we woke up for sunrise and went to a look out. Pokarah is on the west end of Nepal on the south side of Annapurna. The lookout was a view to remember. Himalayas stretching from east to west. After drinking some Nepali tea, we walked around a bit. We found a group of teenage Napalis, mostly girls. They turned out to be a pretty fun bunch. They were quite fashionable in the Napali attire. As we walked down to where the taxi car was, there was a little tea restaurant where they took a seat and were hanging out. They invited me in for a cup of tea. Ned speaks Napali, which has turned out to be a great asset. It’s helped break the ice and create interesting scenarios along the way. We have a cup of tea with them and chat for a bit. Then, they all wanted to get their photo taken with me. It was really quite amusing, but I still felt like a rockstar. It was really great to meet these people. Napali people are mostly pretty friendly. As I was shooting, a drastic thing happened. I dropped one of my lenses and busted it. Not a thing you want to do in a third world country.

As we head back down the hill, we were rounding a corner and another taxi driver wasn’t paying attention and crunched into our taxi. It turns out that both taxi drivers know each other from a long time ago. That was probably good considering things would have gone haywire if not. The second it happened, the whole village was out on the scene. It was the talk of the town for a little while at least.
Finally we were all able to settle the differences with the accident, and we headed back down to town. The next priority was to get my lens fixed. Sounds a little sketchy, I know, but somehow we managed to find a little camera repair shop and they managed to fix it.

We then went to a Tibetan refugee camp. We took a walk up to the hills through a farm of Tibetan prayer flags. For some reason I have a fascination with these things for some reason. They fly in the wind, and it’s said that as they are tattered from the wind, the pieces that float away into the breeze are the prayers floating upwards. The colors, blue, red, yellow, green, and white become faded from the sun, and semi transparent which glow beautifully behind the sun. After passing through the prayer flags, we entered into a vibrant rice field. The other side of the rice field turned into a beautiful canyon with a river running through it. As we walked around taking it all in, a family of monkeys showed up.

We walked back down to the refugee camp and walked around the village visiting the people. As we walked down we came across the Tibetan prayer wheels with some old Tibetan women walking around spinning them. These wheels are cylinders with intricately carved words and prayers on them. By spinning them, it sends the prayers up. The village kids were wonderful. Tibetans definitely have a different look than Napali’s.

As we were driving, one little piece of information I found completely interesting is that if you hit a chicken running around you have to pay 500 rupees to the owner. No joke. Better yet, if you hit a cow, you basically go to jail. It’s a huge part of the Hindu belief. Imagine being a foreigner, renting a car and hitting a cow in Nepal while on vacation. Then going to jail. Not fun. It makes me wonder if that is the case in India because Hinduism is way more prominent in India than Nepal. Hinduism originated in India and migrated to Nepal.

To finish the day, we drove down to the river where we found people with probably one of the most interesting and bizarre jobs I’ve ever encountered. These people make gravel.... By hand. They sit there with a little hammer all day breaking rocks down to gravel size for concrete or what have you. That’s just one of the bizarre jobs I discovered that I would never want to have.

Back To Kathmandu
We decided to take a van back to Kathmandu instead of flying. I wanted to see the scenery on the way back on the ground. The Nepal countryside is incredibly beautiful. We got up for sunrise once again and began our journey. The road winds along a river and in through the rice fields. Everything is lush and green.

Lunch was an interesting event. We stopped at a place that is known for their fish. We got to eat these small fish, about sardine size. They very well could have been sardines. They kind of deep fried them so the whole fish was a little crunchy. You basically eat the whole thing, head and all. It was actually pretty tasty especially with the special spicy sauce they had as well.

Just after we headed out from lunch, we hit a complete stop in traffic. If this happens in Nepal, you basically just get out and walk around because it’s going to be a while. So we got out and walked up towards where all the commotion was going on. It was about a kilometer up there. Come to find out, there was a protest going and the village people blocked off the road because the army took some people without giving reason. It turns out the reason was some passing of drugs. There were people in heated arguments at the road block. They seemed to go on till the army finally came and announced on a loud speaker why they took the people away.

I’m seeing this trend in nepal. Everyone protests a lot, or likes to involve everyone else in their cause. I understand the protesting that can be going on in this country because there is still a lot of corruption and unrest. I don’t understand why they need to keep us innocent bystanders caught up in their parade.

Friday evening I got to see a little bit of the night scene with some friends of my new friends. They took me out to a couple different bars, and the last one we stopped at was quite interesting. They had Baliwood music. It’s quite fascinating as it is similar to American pop beats, but it has some Hindi instruments and flavor. It was really quite cool. It seemed like a modern version of a traditional dance.

Trekking Everest
Saturday we prepped to fly out to Lukla on sunday for our Everest trek. It’s pretty cool because you can find all this knock off gear for really cheap. It’s all Marmot and North Face outdoor trekking gear. I found a North Face fleece line for $3 and a good size day back pack for $8. Not bad considering we’re just going to be using them for 4 days. We went down to Tamal, and area in downtown Kathmandu to pick all this stuff up. Trekking is a hugely popular thing to do in Nepal, so the shopping areas are littered with trekking gear knockoff stores. You gotta love the always annoying vendors that try to approach you on the street and sell you many useless items.

Sunday comes, and we hop over to the airport to catch a flight to Lukla. Lukla is a small town on the Everest trail. Many people fly into there start their trek to Everest Base Camp. From this town, it takes 14 days to reach the base camp. A lot of this is due to the climatizing that needs to take place. Lukla is at 7,000ft and base camp is at 17,000ft. Once you get over 10,000ft, the air starts to thin and you can get altitude sickness, so you need to stay in each place for a day or two for your body to get used to the less oxygen.

The plane ride to Lukla was amazing. The north side of the plane had a vast view of the Himalayas scattered in the distance. Snowcapped mountain ranges precisely placed. The small plane gracefully lands on the tiny uphill airstrip that ends into a mountain.

The first thing you do when you arrive is look for some porters. Porters are the guys that you pay $5 per day to carry your heavy bags. It’s pretty amazing how much weight these little people can carry. Most are men that are at most 5’5“ tall. We finally have a cup of tea and negotiate our 15 year old porters to carry our gear up the mountain. It’s quite nice to not have to carry a backpack for the many miles we were about to hike.

This trek was completely amazing and not too hard, just long. The biggest trip is to see all these Sherpa porters walking up and down the trail carrying more weight than you could imagine, and with things you normally wouldn’t imagine. One thing I did learn is that Sherpa is a major tribe of that region. I always thought it was the name for the porters. Most of the porters had a vshaped basket attached lightly to their shoulders, then a rigged head strap that they used to carry all the weight. They were carrying anything from cases of beer, to bags of rice. Most of them were carrying around 80kgs (about 180lbs) but we talked to one guy who was carrying 120kgs (about 260lbs) Can’t believe these little men can carry all that weight.

Next to noticing the porters and how bizarre it is that they carry so much weight, is the Yaks. I think Yaks have to be up there on one of the coolest animals. They just mind their own business and carry a lot of weight up and down the mountain just like the porters. They can climb steep stairs as well. It’s pretty amazing. An interesting fact about them is that their blood only functions and they can only survive at a certain altitude.

We continued to hike through little villages until it got dark and proceeded to head to the village of Monju where we decided to stay for the night. Hiking in the dark is always an adventure. Luckily we had some headlamps. We reached the guest house where our friends had hiked ahead of us to. It’s very cheap to stay. It only costed 100 Rupees per room, which is about $1.40. Granted, it was a little wooden box with a couple of small foam beds, with no heat and a squat and drop toilet.

The next morning we were up shortly after sunrise and continued our journey. It took most of the day to make it to Namche Bazar which is a bigger town where most trekkers and climbers can buy gear for actually climbing Everest. It’s the last big town going up the mountain. It sits in a bowl shaped terrain with a magnificent view of the surrounding mountains. As we entered the town, we came across a Buddist monk shaving his head for the first time. Surprisingly this town has internet access, which blows me away because it’s so far out there and there is no roads or anything that go up there. We stopped for lunch, and a nap at the restaurant, then proceeded up the hill to the next town called Khumjung. This town was really cool. As we approached, it seemed like a deserted ghost town. It is a large flat town that sits inside this amazing valley. Some of the kids from Namche Bazar hike 2 hours over the hill to come to school here. At this point we’re all exhausted and want to find a guest house. The first one we went to no one was there, so we looked for another. We found a really nice one right across the path. The sign was classic. It read ”Hot showers Inside Toilets“ I love the Engrish in foreign countries. We went inside, and this place was a palace compared to the place we stayed the night before. Still at the rate of 100 Rupies. The food was a little more expensive, but still not a whole lot comparatively. It was pretty cozy and we chilled out for the evening.

The next morning we woke up a little before sunrise for a bone chilling surprise. We were surrounded by snowcapped Himalayas. It was something the cloud cover the night before neglected to show us. We then hiked out another mile for the view of everest. It was absolutely amazing! To be out there for sunrise was even more amazing as the sun slowly lit the snowy mountains into a soft orange glow. I ended up walking out a little further than my friends along this tiny little trail that accompanied a downward falling hill, which looking down made me dizzy. It was mind blowing to think of where I was. The Everest base camp trail is one of the top 10 best rated things to do in the world.

Nepal Recap
The last couple days in Nepal were spent doing odds and ends things in Kathmandu.

A lot of the time we wisked through the city on Ned’s scooter which was really fun. There’s nothing like fresh dirt in your teeth. The sounds and smells of the city are really quite interesting. There was talk about making a Kathmandu Scratch and Sniff board game. You have Fresh Exhaust and Polution, burning trash, raw meat, cow dookie, etc. It’s wonderful.

Thursday morning was spent down in the city square. It was really interesting and different than the normal city square. This one was really old and made of worn down bricks. The morning sunlight softened streets. Vendors scattered everywhere selling many things, and pigeons being chased and fed by little kids. We came a cross a little kid that was doing backflips off of one of the temple ledges.

I really enjoyed Nepal. The people were overall very nice and friendly. I didn’t feel threatened while I was there. The variety of people were different from one side of the country to the other.