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When a Buddhist prayer flag flaps up in the wind, it carries prayers up to the heavens. When it flaps down, it carries blessings back to the people. The Nepali people need your blessings now. Less than a week after our trip, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Nepal, destroying buildings in and around Kathmandu and

Pokhara We had a full day to explore Pokhara, a very pretty town on a lake, with a large ex-pat hippie population. (What’s the difference between an illegal immigrant and an ex-pat? Money.) The hotel we stayed in was an emergency booking because of the change in itinerary, so those of us who were staying

Because a number of us wanted to ride unicycles instead of jeep seats, the tour leaders gave us the option to start off a bit early. We’d get to ride until the jeeps caught us; they’d give us about a 90 minute head start. Our view was that a kilometer ridden on unicycle was equivalent

The plan for today was to ride down to Tal, a town further down the valley than Bagarchhap, where we’d started the tour. This meant that we got to ride down past the spectacular waterfalls we’d seen on our first riding day, and through the sub-tropical forest where we saw the pitcher plants. The day

Our way up had been mostly climbing, so our way back was mostly descending. That made long distances much more manageable. We decided to do two days in one, about 30km from Manang to Chame. We’d lose about 900 meters of altitude, but also have about 500 meters of climbing to do. Nepali flat. Total

The snow that we had seen in the afternoon kept up through the night and was still going in the morning. It had been predicted as 3cm of snow but was clearly closer to 20cm already. The view upvalley was not quite whiteout, but the conditions looked bad. Also, seven of our porters were still

After acclimating in Manang, our plan was to prep for the push over the pass in two short days; today, just 11km and 500 meters of elevation gain. Most of that gain came in the first 5km; after that it was Nepali Flat. Because of the short day we had a relaxing start, with unicycle lessons

Having reached 3500 meters, we paused in our ascent to acclimatize to altitude. We’d gotten used to the feel of the mountain air, but not to the feeling of fatigue accompanying every exertion. Who knew walking up the stairs could be so hard? In the morning we had the Small World encounter for the day; our

Chris and I were up before sunrise on another crisp, clear morning. We walked up to a beautiful Buddha statue overlooking the town. This site serves as the funeral pyre for the town (Nepalis, both Buddhist and Hindu, cremate their dead), and the hillside above the statue was completely covered with prayer flags. I hung one for a