Happy New Year 2138

Hi All

Went up to orphanage again yesterday with loads of crayons, drawing paper and pencills. The older kids were doing math’s and the younger ones were doing the numbers and alphabets. The nepali (and Hindi I assume) alphabet sounds very similar the phonetic alphabet Chris was learning for his TEFAL course and I’ve heard from westerners who have learnt Hindi reading a word makes the pronunciation much easier. I met a paraglider and retired mushroom farmer from Lincolnshire there. We had a good chat on the hike back. He said that paragliding in Lincolnshire is a bit of a problem as they only have one hill. But south Wales is a really good place to learn.
In the evening I retired to Shiva café, played some chess, drank some beer and eventually ended up around a campfire by the lake with some Tibetans celebrating new year 2138 (yup I’m in the future dudes). They had guitars and drums so there was a mix of modern Tibetan sort of rock with some Credence and Neil Young thrown in.
Today a pan northern European group of us (some of whom I met before in Varanasi) borrowed a boat from Shiva café and paddled across the lake, hiked up the hill to the world peace pagoda, then down again and paddled to another temple on an island in the lake and finally back to Shiva in time for Tea. Good practice for the trek I’m going on in a couple of days to Annapurna basecamp. It’s a 10 day hike up to over 5000m so this might be last blog entry for a while. Annapurna itself is over 8000m and is the 10th highest peak in the world
Tomorrow Roberto (a Dutch 1600 rated chess player I’m trekking with) and I are sorting out permits and supplies. Then the following day off we go. He did the same trek 10 years ago and it’s littered with guest houses and chai stalls every few km so even I should be able to cope. And hay I’m a veteran of the black mountains (Welch and Irish) so the hymalyas should be a doddle, right?
I’ll let you know how it all goes in a week or two.
Wish me luck and good weather.

-Dan

If you look in the clouds you can see the Himalaya