I'll take you in my backpack

Up early trying to steal one last sunrise (and maybe a hopeful glimpse of some wildlife...tigers, bears oh my!). Met some people yesterday who are on a year long world travel adventure (also heading to Pokhara tomorrow) We also learned that helicopter transport is an option, like leaving steps outside of our hotel door, hmmm. So the helicopter didn't pan out, but that's ok, because the flight not only wasn't delayed but it left early. I won't lie, I was a wee bit nervous when I saw the size of the plane, only 7 freaking windows! When I got on the plane I was even more nervous, it had absolutely NO overhead bins, this meant all hopes of shoving my bag and attached sneakers in there was shattered. So I crammed them under the seat in front of me and did my best for the very quick 15 minute flight. Much to my surprise the flight was incredibly smooth, way better than the one to Chitwan! Arriving in Pokhara the weather was stunning. Bright blue sunning skies. S...

So getting to KTM isn't horrible, but it was exhausting! I left at midnight from Tokyo, took the red eye to Bangkok where I had about a 6 hour layover before finishing the final leg of my trip on to KTM (another 2.5 hour flight). The last bit of the flight was technically 3.5 hours because when we reached KTM (at 15,000 feet) we then proceeded to do loops for an hour. What I didn't know is that KTM has only one runway at their airport, as you can imagine that causes some traffic on the ground with planes departing and in the air with planes attempting to land. What I also didn't know is that a week ago (in what seemed like a serious case of pilot error due to leaked communications between the pilot and the air traffic control tower) a plane crashed coming in to KTM and the majority of the passengers died. I'm glad I didn't know this, because I would have needed a xanax, and some alcohol. I'm told that usually when you fly in to KTM you can see beautiful views of...

12/29/17 The alarm went off so damn early today, but in all honesty, my body woke me up first. 1:30am is what it was set for, but my internal alarm woke me up promptly at 1:20am. I went to bed way later than I intended, for a variety of reasons, which resulted in a few hours of sleep at best. Made was there promptly at 2am for our scheduled pick up, just as chipper as always. There was a winding drive to get there, I remembered this from before when I went to the observation point to take pictures of Mt Batur (what had initially put the bug in my ear about wanting to do this trek), and just when it was starting to make me car sick, we arrived at the meeting point. You are required to have a mountain guide for this trek, there's no way around it, you can't get into the mountain area without one. That of course comes with a fee. Honestly the fee didn't bother me since the experience is what I was going for and there is no price tag for that. The restaurant meeting point s...