Nepal two

trekking is much like that paula abdul video with that stupid cartoon cat. for every three hours of elevative process that you think you have made, you go back down for two hours. paula's steps are substituted with my grueling hours of walking upwards and downwards. when you go, go big right? i had exactly zero trekking experience on my resume before i decided to take on this trip and didn't really have any idea what trekking was. so deciding to start off in the biggest, most intimidating mountains on the longest trek that was offered was probably not a good starter course. it will be impossible to decribe all of the events and crazy thoughts that have traveled through my head during these last elevation induced phsycosis and food poisoned weeks. i will do my best to atleast share some extreme highlights and lowlights. like the mountains, times were up and down. so what is trekking? trekking is like walking up the steepest hill you have ever seen while giving a small person a piggy back ride at the same time struggling for every breath. my pack was reasonably light but after a few hours of dragging it, the weight increased dramatically. i kept turning around to make sure some crazy little mountain person wasn't following me with a sack of rocks and sabotaging my pack. we traveled a total of almost 200 miles in 16 days through the annapurna mountain range. the views were absolutely spectacular and the trip was a constant reminder of the term "stop and smell the roses." you have to concentrate so much on every step because the terrain is so rough and the trails are littered with jagged rocks and an exorbite ammount of yak and mule feces (have you ever stepped in a pile of fresh feces that was higher than an average persons lower shin height? i can cross that off my list of things to do... about ten times over). much like life, sometimes we become so distracted by all the crap and rough spots that we forget to pick up our heads and enjoy all the amazing views and the beauty of it all. i have never been much of a mountain person but seeing the himalaya up close has been an absolutely moving experience. it is impossible to describe the size of these mountains.