I'll take you in my backpack

Up early to catch the Jeep safari into the Chitwan National Park. A quick coffee (making sure not to consume too much liquid because I was told it was four hours in the bush with no toilet. Yikes!) Sunrise was stunning this morning, granted I missed actual sunrise, but what I did catch was beautiful! To get to the jeep tour you take a small wooden boat across the river and board the jeep. The jeep safari was amazing. I was hoping to see big cats, wild elephants and basically all of the crazy shit you see on discovery. While I didn't see that, I did see an endless amount of rhinos, which is a gift because they are on the endangered species list. I was able to see many mamas with babies too, which is nice for that very reason, hopefully reproduction and their existence in a nature preserve will ultimately protect them from poachers and extinction. One can only hope. At one point during the jeep safari we were attacked by horse flies, I'm not talking a cou...

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...

7/13/16 I'm not sure how you begin a post about an experience like this so I think I'll start by giving a little background about the epic Fuji-san. A volcano in Japan, it was officially registered as a World Heritage Site in June of 2013. It stands 3776.24m (12,389 ft) high and is the highest peak in Japan. It is considered one of three holy mountains (along with Mt Tate and Mt Haku). More than 200,000 climb to the summit of Fuji each year. The last eruption was in 1707-08 but in 2000/2001 there was increased seismic activity under the volcano, raising concerns about a possible reawakening. So let's get down to it! We arrived via highway express bus, it dumps you at the 5th station, where everyone starts their ascent. Now that I look back at that I had no idea what I was getting into (thankfully). It was pouring down rain when we got off of the bus so it was a quick dash into one of the shops to get our gear on and everything straightened out, purchase our sticks an...