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Jeff Robson's Travels
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Location Date Pakistan 1707091200 South Korea 1531004400 India 
1530918000 Thailand 1529967600 United Arab Emirates 1503097200 -
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Location Date Tue, 29 August 2017
1504016932 Fri, 25 August 2017 1503670194
- Woke to the sounds of someone throwing up in a different room (for a change)!
- A little later, could also hear the gentle sound of donkey bells on the path outside, which was much nicer!
- Packed up everything, had breakfast, took some group photos, then headed back down the mountain.
- Even carrying my pack, it was so much easier going down compared to going up! The km seemed to fly by!
- Sandeep was in an especially good mood and was dancing with Jagmeet constantly!
- A group of us walked together for most of the trip: Sandeep, Nitin, Latika, Agitha, Hasneet, Natasha, & Jagmeet.
- Sandeep made the mistake earlier of mentioning that (a) he was finding it hard to find a girl due to his line of work & the ensuing bathing habits, and (b) he was hoping to find out that day about something big that was happening for him.
- So Hasneet & I spent a good proportion of our trip trying to figure out answers & solutions to both of these!
- We suggested he could work something into his initial briefing.
- He could put himself on a dating app (I take the profile pic & she writes the profile). We both agreed that he should leave out the part where he goes for up to 9 days without taking a bath while trekking and that his grandmother lives in a house made of dung (quite literally a s*** house!)
- We also came up with a great reality show concept (with him as the star) which would be a combination of Survivor & The Batchelor. Take 20 girls out on a trek, have them complete various challenges to see which one goes on a date with him that evening. It's obviously a winning idea so now all we need to do is find someone in Bollywood who wants to produce it for us!
- A little later in the hike when it was just Sandeep & I, he role me that his news was that he'll be training as a scuba instructor. Coincidentally, something that Hasneet also wants to do!
- Hardly any rain on the way down so by the time we reached the bottom, everyone was still in high spirits.
- Huge sense of accomplishment at having finished the trek, having been possibly the only person out of our group who carried their own pack the whole way & completed every part of every trek! To be fair however, others probably would have if they hadn't fallen ill.
- We jumped into the 4WD & headed down the road for the last 4km, back to our hotel, dumped all our stuff then had some lunch. It felt like it had been ages since we'd been here as so much had happened!
- Angitha had some other places she knew of that were further north, just before the China border. She wanted to visit them so we all jumped into a taxi van & headed up to Badrinath & Mana.
- Mana is a tiny village in the foothills of massive mountains where they do sheep farming, knitting, and not much else. The army has a base there & there's a waterfall ... and that's about it. Oh, and apparently, they're famous for "Momo's at Mana's", Asian dumplings with an Indian twist ... unfortunately we didn't get to try these.
- The people look Tibetan or part-Asian up there & you wouldn't think you're still in India!
- Bought a hat, mainly so I could photograph the lady making them, tasted some amazing fresh masala that a lady was grinding in a rock out in the open air, then went to see the waterfall.
- Back to the van, then off to Badrinath to visit a really important Hindu site. It is the most important of the four sites in India's Char Dham pilgrimage - it seems like the harder places are to get to, the holier they are.
- Lots of guys in orange, begging for food & money plus heaps of shops selling all kinds of things you can wear (gold/silver bangles etc), food, or things you can take & use as an offering.
- You can't take photos inside the holy place, but that's fine as personally, it wasn't that interesting to me. Others from our group described the vibrations they felt there as "quite amazing" so I guess it's a matter of perspective. I was more interested in all the people outside!
- There's also a hot spring there which provides an extra attraction for the town. It would've been great if we'd had a little more time as we all needed a bath by that stage!
- Took a photo of Nilkantha, one of the peaks nearby which is 6,500m tall & hardly ever visible ... but it peeked its head out just for us!
- Also found some porters who can carry up to 100kg on their backs! Very impressive! I put one of their baskets on my back ... that was heavy enough for me!
- Back in the van, then headed back to the hotel as it was getting dark. Several sections of the road had collapsed or been washed away by landslides so I was very happy when we made it back past these.
- Stunning scenery throughout the whole region & could easily rival Alaska or Switzerland - especially if they removed the rubbish, improved the roads, and had some better standards of accommodation. The current state means however that you have to be pretty dedicated to get there so that keeps out the casual tourists & bus-loads ... which is also kind of nice.
- Had our last briefing, an awards ceremony (each person received a certificate plus I got a "Spirit of Trekking" award, which was a huge surprise), then had dinner.
- I wanted to go out & dance since the guys had gotten me into this on the way down but no one had any speakers & there's no nightlife in town (no alcohol either). We eventually found a guy with a TV who had some Indian music DVD's so had fun dancing to these in the street outside his stall, much to the amusement of the locals!
- Came inside, played UNO & Mafia again, then went to bed around midnight. What a day!!
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