Wednesday, June 19, 2013

First solo travel - Nepal

Just returned from my solo travel for leisure for the first time. My trip spanned a duration of 2 weeks, of which 10 days I went hiking around the Annapurna region.

It's a truly enriching experience and I'm convinced enough that I wanna do more things of the sort. I thought Nepal is an awesome place to visit. Apart from being a heavily religious and cultural, the country has an amazing and vast nature to explore. 

I did ask around to see if any of my friends would be interested to tag along, but none seemed to be interested for whatever the reason. So I decided that I'd do it myself. From the point when I touched down the Tribhuvan International Airport of Nepal, I came into contact with complete strangers until the end of my journey. This is one very interesting part about the trip. I got to know all sorts of people of different nationalities including Ecuador, Germany, US, UK, Ukraine, Switzerland, Sweden, Netherlands, South Korean, Malaysian, Japanese, Russian and of course Nepal. Among them, there is teacher, nurse, Nato ground force, DJ in broadcast station, professor, film maker, anthropologist and etc. Everyone at least taught me one thing or two. Many of us tend to make the statement "I'm too old for it", I tell you, you're NOT. 

Going around the places in Nepal, be it the Kathmandu valley, the Pokhara, the mountain area, and also during the transfer/commuting from one point to another, it painted out well to me what sub-standard way of live is about. So if you're still wondering all time how much more money you need to make to be rich, do a site visit in Nepal. I got told that the situation is much worse in India, to which I was struggling quite a bit imagining how miserable the place is. Anyway, money is still imperative, and make sure you've got enough of it.

It's a bloody awesome trip far exceeded my expectation. I stayed at couple of places such as Thamel, Pokhara, and around the mountain. I went hiking with a group of 11 people including the Nepali guide, Mahendra. We went to a waterfall at which time we discovered the attack of leeches. We had to live with the leeches throughout our hiking tour. We got to witness the snow-capped mountain, the Annupurna South and  Machhapuchhre and etc. We went to a hotspring. We had a party night in the middle of jungle. We had little rain during hike. We sat down talking, eating and laughing. I had got awesome photo. We had a cultural dinner. Some people had food poisoning. We checked out the night clubs in Pokhara. We got horses passing right next to us while hiking around the mountain. We made stops at tea house and enjoy scenic nature and the mountain range. We hiked through rocky road, sand road, jungle, grass, paddy field, river, stairs and bridges. We saw plenty of waterfall. We had the Nepali food. I had a very fantastic grilled chicken. Most of us loved the local green chili sauce. We stepped on bull shit. We had beers, the Everest and the Ghorka, and the Nepali whiskey. I did water rafting at Trisuli River. Some did paragliding. I was in the local bus for x hours during which I had no idea where the bus headed to. No one in the bus could speak no English. I had to walk through a neighborhood for about 40 mins from where the bus dropped me to my hotel. I did mountain biking with my guide around the Kathmandu Valley with the #Nepali #Highway and traffic. It's fun though.

Shit had to happen twice that I forget to bring my camera with me as I pushed off to the airport. I had to spend half the cash I'd brought to Nepal to buy another Camera. At first I didn't even bother to activate my credit card to oversea use because I thought I'd have enough of cash anyway. I finished up all my cash towards the end of my trip and I didn't even have enough cash to buy a nasi lemak. I thought that's fucking hilarious as I told the pretty cabin crew that I'd skipped that after asking the price of it. Well, a lesson learned. That makes a funny conclusion to my wonderful solo travel.

Can't wait to go for a second, third, xxxx time....