The days of pre-dawn queues to pick up bottle tops with little numbers on from the Indian Embassy are happily a thing of the past. In November 2012 a new online system was introduced. Here is how we got our…
Manaslu blues: Wrong way without a guide
We’d expected too much, maybe that was the problem. Guides had variously described the Manaslu Circuit as ‘the best trek in the country’, ‘the new Annapurna Circuit’, ‘Nepal’s best kept secret’, ‘an untouched gem’. Still on a high from Annapurna, we…
In Awe of Annapurna
Descending from the bleak desert of Dolpa the snowy mountains ahead enthralled us. Later, as we climbed up from Jomsom to the Mesokanto La North we were still feeling the effects of the previous fortnight and neither of us was…
Chilling in Dolpa
The 1970s Dolpa of Peter Matthiessen’s ‘The Snow Leopard‘ intrigued us. Though his writing style and long religious ramblings were hard to plough through, the descriptions of this wild land, its Tibetan people, yaks and God-awful cold were fascinating. In…
Swapping bikes for boots: beginning a trek across Nepal
Reinvigorated by a week in Pokhara, blending in with the throngs of other gringos and refuelling at ‘Hungry Feel Bakery’, we returned to West Nepal. 30 hours on rickety Nepali buses which were built in the 1950s and probably haven’t…