Traveling

We are a little more than 2 months into our trip and are really enjoying our time.  Thank you to everyone who sends us notes and comments, we truly appreciate them.  We really miss all of our friends and look forward to seeing you all again soon (sooner if you come and meet us somewhere!); we also miss Elke tremendously!!!  Amy, you are so great and thank you so much for taking care of our girl, we really owe you. 
The different cultures and people are amazing!  Adjusting to the many languages takes time, but we try to pick up the key words, such as, 'thank you', 'please', 'hello', etc... wherever we go. 
Spending 24/7 with someone can be stressful at times, but it also creates a bond like no other and we love that.  What we really really like though is that everytime we see something on our travels it makes us think of specific friends, we just laugh. 
As we sit here in Hanoi, Vietnam (at time of writing) it is HOT and HUMID and we can't help but think of how the leaves must be turning and the weather becoming cooler in Colorado...we miss that (our favorite time of year). 
We are going to go on the Halong Bay tour in a day or two and it's said to be incredibly beautiful; 3 days and 2 nights, a night on the boat (Junk) and a night in a bungalow, and more monkeys on 'Monkey Island', can't wait!  After Halong Bay we are going to buy a open-ended bus ticket to travel down the whole coast of Vietnam from Hanoi to Ho Chi Min City which will take us about 3 weeks or so.  We will stop along the way in a few places and stay, then get back on the bus to continue.  We are really looking forward to chillin at the beach on quite a few different islands in Thailand, getting certified to dive in Ko Tao, and taking Thai cooking classes.
Anyway, hope all of you are doing well and we miss you.  Until the next post...

Amsterdam (Final day), Istanbul, Abu Dhabi, Nepal

"Fishtale", The Himalayas, Nepal

Amsterdam (final day), Istanbul, Abu Dhabi, Nepal

Amsterdam – 8/30-31 (Cathy)

For our final day in Amsterdam we headed to a small village called Zaanse Schans located roughly 15-20 minutes outside of the city on the banks of the Zaan River. The village once called the Zaan District had once grown rich through trade and fishing, and built their first windmills around 1600s. Known as the windmill society, Zaanse Schans was founded to preserve the windmills for future generations and has developed into a small industrial area manufacturing dye for fabrics, paper, rice, barley, etc. with the windmills as well as making wooden clogs and manufacturing cheese in other areas.

The area is incredibly charming with small houses located on the banks of the river surrounded by patches of flowers, waterways, walking paths, small bridges and fishing boats. Sheep and goats roam freely through the tall green grass as the windmills churn in the background – it truly is adorable and a must see if you visit Amsterdam.

Abu Dhabi- 9/01/10 (Adam)

So, I made ‘Abu boo,’ Abu Dhabi is NOT Dubai, it’s about 2 hours away. I don’t know if I thought ‘Abu’ was a prefix for city names or what, but I made our plane reservations to fly from Istanbul to Abu Dhabi, not Dubai, however, I made our hotel reservations to stay in Dubai; we realized this during our flight to Abu Dhabi. So what does this mean? We had no place to stay when we arrived in Abu Dhabi. Rather than pay 300 dermas (about $70) to take a cab (one way) to Dubai for only 18 hours, we found a hotel in Abu Dhabi and ate the loss of the $60 hotel we had booked in Dubai, make sense? Not a huge loss, but still kind of a bummer.

Did I mention it’s HOT in Abu Dhabi? Try 100 degrees at midnight, how do you like them apples? The short time we were there we found it to be enough. Here is what we know: Abu Dhabi is LOADED with money (this city is the one that bailed out Dubai when they over spent by about 30-40 BILLION when doing their recent building), it’s a huge desert with man-made everything, the Zayed Grand Mosque is the most beautiful thing in the city and is truly spectacular, the oil reserves in Abu Dhabi is speculated to last for the next 150 years, whereas the oil reserves in Dubai are only said to last for the next 15 years. Ramadan is wild, not party wild, but very different wild. Everyone fasts during the daytime hours, no food or water at all, no smoking at all, no booze, no public displays of affection. If a person is caught doing any of these things they get taken to jail immediately; once night time arrives everyone indulges. Glad we got to visit, but happy to be heading to Nepal the next day.

Nepal 9/2-9/14

Arriving into Kathmandu was exciting! We were finally going to the Himalayas, a place I have wanted to visit for many years. Before our arrival we set up a 7 day trek starting in Pokhara heading towards the small village of Ghorepani in the Annapurna Range (west of Mt. Everest). I was recommended this trek by our friend Ang Teshing Lama who has been guiding in Nepal for nearly 20 years -thank you for all your help Ang!

Kathmandu is the capital on Nepal; it’s a busy town with many small streets (mostly dirt) and filled with shops and bicycle taxis; it’s also a dirty town, but there is a charm about it that we really like. When we arrived it was raining (as it would for most of the time we were there) so most of the streets turned to mud and made commuting a bit hectic.

Upon our arrival and after we got our visas, we were happy to see Arun (the representative from Trail Finders-the trekking company we used) holding a sign that said ‘Adam Rongey’. He was there to pick us up and take us to our hotel. Arun is extremely nice and very helpful; he made sure we got to our hotel and answered any questions we had. Being our first time to Nepal, it was a good idea to have someone pick us up at the airport as it is pretty crazy with many people who wanted our business (and everyone wanted to give us a ‘good deal’).

We stayed at the Ambassador Garden Hotel for our first night and were given masala tea (which is incredibly tasty-similar to Chai) as we were checking in for the night. Our place was pretty nice and located right in the middle of town, but as we would find out later, a little more expensive then we probably needed to pay. Cath and I went out for dinner and had great pad thai, spring rolls and green chicken curry, it was delicious!

The next morning we had a nice breakfast before Arun came to take us to Trail Finders to finalize the details of our trip that would be starting the next day. Two English girls (Esme and Ellie) were going to be joining us on the trek along with our guide and porter (Alok and Netra) and were already in Pokhara waiting our arrival. The trip from Kathmandu to Pokhara is about 7-8 hours by bus (which is probably a great trip), but we decided we have had enough long bus rides for the time being and bought plane tickets, which was only a 30 minute flight.

Our trek would be a 7 day loop starting in Nayapul (an hour drive NW of Pokhara) and staying in tea houses along the way, and ending in the same place we started. Each day our we would trek from 4.5-6.5 hours, and the total distance would be about 37km, with a total elevation gain of 2500 meters (about 8000 ft.), so not very long, but a good amount of climbing.

Pokhara is much more chill then Kathmandu which we really liked. Our $17 hotel was decent and the home base for our trek. We met Esme, Ellie, Alok and Netra and talked about what to expect for the next 7 days. The highlight of the trek was to reach Ghorepani, then hike 45 minutes up to Poon Hill at 5am the next morning to view the sunrise overlooking the Dhaulagiri in the Annapurna Himalayan Range (said to be the greatest view in the whole area).

Our drive from Pokhara to Nayapul (the start of our trek) was very interesting; we passed many families homes (little shanties built from recycled tin and cinder blocks), people working in their yards, children being washed by their mothers outside with a garden hose and soap, and cows walking around wherever they pleased (they are considered sacred and therefore get to do what they want); seeing these things made us realize how lucky we are to have what we do in America. It was amazing to see how little these people have (or need) to get by.

Our first day trekking began in the rain and took us to the small village of Tikhedhungga, about 5 hours away UP through the beautiful mountains; it was a fairly easy day, just long…and wet. We stayed in our first ‘tea house,’ which was really a plywood box with a bed and the bathroom out the door and around the corner; I should mention that bathrooms or ‘toilets’ are not the sit down type, but a hole in the ground with a bucket of water in the corner for cleaning. For dinner we had Dal Baht (which we would choose to have every night), which consists of rice, curry, vegetables and a spicy sauce; it was good! We hung out for awhile, read our books and went to bed.

Day two was our toughest of the trek (but it wasn’t raining so that was great), as we had to climb roughly 4000 steps or something like that up to Ghorepani where we would spend the night. This day’s trek was only about 3 miles or so, but we climbed 4000+ feet, so it was very steep the whole way (imagine hiking the beginning part of Mt. Sanitas, for 5.5 hours, seriously; I was a sweaty mess within 20 minutes. We made it to Ghorepani where we would have had an amazing view of the Himalayas if the fog and clouds weren’t covering everything; at this point we were at an elevation of 3100 meters (10,000+ ft). Because it is still considered off season there weren’t too many people in this small village and we had the ‘Poon Hill Guest House’ to ourselves. The highlight of the trek would be to wake up at 5am the next day and hike 45 minutes up to Poon Hill to see the sunrise over the Annapurna Range; it is said to be THE BEST view in the whole region. Unfortunately for us it dumped rain the entire night and continued through the morning (and most of the day), the result being all fog/clouds and no view, such a drag. Disappointed, our guide gave us the option of staying another night to see if the following morning would be clear and provide us with the view we had been waiting for; we took him up on the offer, but to our dismay we woke up to more rain and still no view; we would still have another chance when we got to Tadapani, the next village about 6 hours away.

We trekked up the ridgeline out of Ghorepani towards Tadapani. The rain was coming down hard and the wind was blowing like crazy. Our trek was all single track that consisted of dirt, rocks, steep narrow slopes, washed away trail, exposed roots, and a ton of mud; oh yeah, and leeches! Not the big fat ‘Stand by Me’ leeches, but the little bastards that would get into your shoes and then through your socks. We were given small bags of salt to rub on the leeches if they attached themselves; Cath and I had a few between us, but it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Once we made it to Tadapani the rain stopped, but the clouds and fog were still blocking any type of view of the 6-8000 meter peaks (18-24,000 feet), which were just across the way. We ate dinner and played cards before going to bed. The following morning at about 6:30 some of the clouds lifted and we got our first look at the INCREDIBLE Himalayas! Oh my, the most stunning mountains we have ever seen, even if it wasn’t the whole range. I was in awe and snapped a bunch of pictures, but really, no picture can compare to seeing these beauties in person; absolutely incredible! As we ate breakfast of oatmeal with fruit and masala tea, we watched the mountains fade back into the fog and clouds; next stop Jhinudanda, another 5.5 hours away.

The trek to Jhinudanda was more of the same BEAUTIFUL scenery that started off by taking us down 700 meters through the forest to the rushing river on the valley floor. On the way we passed many waterfalls, and got to see monkeys (called Langurs) playing in the trees which were really cool. Once we crossed the river, via the narrow swaying bridge, we had the pleasure of climbing back up (like very steep up) 700 meters and made our way through several little villages where we got to see locals going about their daily lives; it was a great experience. We reached the summit of this day’s trek and saw our tea house in the distance, another 700-800 meters down very steep steps. Once we arrived we all walked down to the river to enjoy the natural hot springs; it was a nice way to end our long day of trekking.

Our final day of the trek took us 6.5 hours, not difficult and mostly flat, but very long. I think by this point we were all a little tired and ready to be finished. We came upon a group of local men butchering a water buffalo and let me tell you, it was a sight. We couldn’t stay too long as Esme’s stomach couldn’t really handle it, in her defense it was pretty gnarly. As we were finishing our trek, we enjoyed watching many children walking back up the valley from school with their families. Sitting on the bus for the hour ride back to Pokhara was welcomed; it was a great week!