Back in Kathmandu (again) after returning a couple of days ago from the Everest base camp trek. This was a 13 day affair with the same company I'd done my previous Nepal trip with. It was a similar set up to last time with a dozen of us in the group with a Nepali guide and then a number of assistant guides and porters on the trek itself to do the donkey work. Any lingering worries about the dangers and pitfalls of trekking in a remote region at high altitude were...

Trekking has been the order of the day of late (with the trend to continue). During the second week of my first trip in Nepal we embarked on a 5 day trek in the Annapurna region. The Annapurna range is a load of high peaks (some over 8000m) in central Nepal, out to the west of Kathmandu and is a popular area for hikers. We set off at the beginning of the week with our army of guides, porters, and cooks with the next 4 nights all being spent under canvas. Compa...

"You ver ze most German non-German I have ezer met". The touching last words from the big German Til from my Mumbai-Kathmandu tour group as I bade my farewell to them last weekend in Kathmandu (I kid you not, he actually said that to me without any prompting). The tour truck was continuing on back in to India on its loop around the country, I meanwhile was joining up with the group for the next trip I was booked on 'Nepal Adventure' with a company ...

As you can see I'm now in Kathmandu the capital of Nepal, which incidentally is brilliant. Over the last 2/3 days I've been gorging on the rampant commercialism that is the tourist ghetto of Thamel in the city, a welcome change from India.The last blog was from the town of Gangtok in the northern eastern state of India called Sikkim. Unfortunately due to a lack of willing participants amongst the tour group, I couldn't do a 2 day trek in the surrounding mountains...