Barny's World Dash

Nepali yesturday (they were celebrating a big festival) we got up at 5:30 this morning to go to the lake in Pokhara and watch the sunrise hit the Himalyas, it was absolutley awesome, the visibilty was as outstanding as they show in the brochures, and Dan and I got in some quick altitude training paddling accross the lake trying to beat the sun falling on the mountains!

Then we walked up the ridge next to the lake (well we tried but there was a [-ath every 100m and the map we had was 1:100,000 so it was a bit tricky and we ended up soliciting the help of 3 six year olds for 50p to show us the way up. However it was worth the effort as on top of it sits a buddhist temple "the world peace pagoda".

We returned to dry land via another boat when some ecitiment broke out because a nepali bloke had jumped (it appeared to be a sucide attempt) off an island in the middle of the lake which turned out to be quite deep, and he was quite unable to swim, and the gathering crowds of worried nepalis were also unable to swim, but sent out a man in a boat, from the landing stage at the other end of the island which was clearly unlikey to reach him before he surfaced for the last time (he was going under the water for some time and then briefly struggling up before going down) so Dan handed me his camera and jumped in grabbed the guy from under the surface and pulled him up and waited for the boat... the bloke appeared to be ok as he sat up again a few minutes later, but he had been some time under water and spent a bit of time in the bottom of the boat coughing. All seemed to be ok though.

We came back to shore and found at our hotel that our guide was back (a day early) and we have bought a bit more kit and are leaving tomorrow, to make a 21 day trek, around the annapurna circuit, with the possiblity of going to Annapurna base camp if we go fast enough. This will include going through the Throng La Pass at 5400m (Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Afrcia is 5900m, Mt. Blanc is 4808m) which will certainly be tough. Annapurna base camp is only 4200m or so.

There probably isnt any internet there so might be the last blog for a while!

Will write again on return.