Our trek was incredible. The pictures speak much more about it than I could, but I'll give the basic outline. The trek runs three-quarters of a circle around a number of 6000-8000+ meter peaks, including Annapurna I, II, III and IV, Annapurna South, Gangapurna, and Machhupuchhare. It starts at 800 m (2,600 ft) and hits a high point of 5,416 m (17,770 ft). At the end we connected with another trek, the Annapurna Sanctuary, which heads up into the mountains to the Annapurna south face base camp, at 4,157 m (13,635 ft).
It took us 22 days to complete it, which included two enforced rest days while Jacqueline recovered from some kind of stomach ailment. Outside of that, the only problem we had was at the very start of the trek, when we somehow managed to lose our ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) trekking permits. They cost about $28 each in Kathmandu, and you need to produce them at a number of checkpoints on the route. If you don't have one, you have to buy another--at double the price. Fortunately, we got it sorted out, thanks to a friendly ACAP employee who walked with us to the nearest phone, two hours up the trail, so we could call Kathmandu and get it straightened out.
By the end of the trek, particularly after having descended over 10,000 feet in two days, we were very happy to get back to "civilization"--defined in our case by beer and internet access. But after four days of traffic, pollution, and haggling with merchants here in Kathmandu, we're longing to be back in the mountains again. We're already talking about possible treks in the French Alps.
It's a good thing we ignored the U.S. State Department warnings about Nepal (and that we didn't tell our mothers about them). Over the last few years the Maoist insurgency has been increasingly bad, and now not a day goes by where you don't read in the newspaper of people being killed. Just two weeks ago there was a huge attack on the town of Beni, which is pretty close to the trek, and over 500 people were reportedly killed. The Maoists also regularly enforce strikes and blockades that make it impossible for people in more rural areas to get supplies, and tourism is down drastically from even a year ago. The so-called "People's War" is ironically really hitting the people of Nepal hard.
Fortunately, tourists are generally left alone. In the past, however, Maoists were known to ask trekkers for "donations" to their cause--usually 1000 rupees, or about $14. They reportedly stopped this practice this past Fall, however. We didn't encounter any Maoists, nor did anyone else we'd talked to. Still, a number of Nepalis we talked to told me not to tell anyone that I'm American; the Maoists have a particular hatred for Americans, probably partly for ideological reasons, but I think mostly because the US is helping to train the Nepalese army. So I started telling any Nepali that asked that I was Canadian (Jacqueline being French, of course), and never had any incidents.
Hopefully the Maoist problem will be resolved soon. Nepal is a beautiful country and its people are among the friendliest we've encountered on our travels.
So our year of travelling is over. Tonight we board a flight for Paris, and when we get down to Marseille we have to face reality again--apartment, jobs, wedding planning.
I'm not sure yet what we'll do with this journal. I imagine I could update it from time-to-time with news from France. We're not sure how long we'll stay there. One thing our year of travelling has made us realize is how much we miss the San Francisco Bay Area. We'd always planned on going back there eventually, but now we're really jonesing for burritos, Zachary's and Cheeseboard pizza, bagels, big coffee drinks, climbing gyms, wireless internet access (Brad), running and aerobics (Jacqueline), and most important, family and friends. But we'll give France a fair shot first.
Enjoy the new photos. We've added a few more to India, and captioned them (so you can figure out why we were covered in paint), and gotten about 3/4 of the Nepal photos up.
We hope you're all happy and healthy.
Take care,
-b & j