Annapurna trek I

I'm damn sick of internet after spending hours and hours on it in the last couple of days - ready to run back to the hills and become a hairy mountain man again! With that in mind I won't spend ages writing up silly stories about our trek - it was too monumental for that and I'll be here forever. Instead here's a whole whack of pictures to give you the idea.

On arrival at Kathmandu airport



First few days of the hike, here's some of the random things you see. Cute kid brandishing spoon



Full grown man trying to ride a goat


Eerie scarecrow



The views









One of the many times we nearly got trampled by huge herds of goats being led from village to village where people pop out and buy them for imminent slaughter in the upcoming Daishan festival



Every village has a bunch of these beautiful prayer-walls with a long set of prayer wheels engraved with the Tibetan Buddhist chant "Om mani padme hum" in sanskrit. You them give them a twirl as you pass by and every revolution sends off a prayer.



Some prayer wheels are slightly holier than others...


The people here carry amazing loads from one village to another, here's a couple of old gals carting huge bushels of firewood around. Kind of humbling when were struggling with our little packs.





Meeting the locals




First views of the Annapurnas














Collapsing at the end of a long long uphill day



Upper Pisang - an amazing collection of drystone houses on a steep hillside



The view from our room there



The local temple



and our landlady



Mobbed by local kids - "Hello sweet? Hello school-pen?"





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