Another early flight, and we landed in the rainy city of Santiago. This city of the final destination of the Camino de Santiago, a famous collection of walks from across Iberia. 1000 years ago, Saint James took a walk from Saint Jean Pied de Port across Spain to Santiago to establish a church. This Camino …
Sometimes you make plans and think ‘this is a reasonable option.’ Then the day comes and it is fact, not a reasonable option. But you power through anyway. Welcome to our day in Athens. We started the day in Thessaloniki, and ended it in Madrid. Yes, I know this blog is called Athens. It was …
Form Thessaloniki, we took a day trip out into the heartland of Greece. On the mainland, there were two things we wanted to see, Mount Olympus, and the monasteries of Meteora. We hit both. We got on a tour bus with 40 other people early in the morning to go the three hours to Meteora. …
We had a very painless overnight bus across the border to Greece. Of course, you can only sleep so well, so we were quite tired when we arrived early in the morning. Our first impressions were quite interesting. We were walking down a main street. 8-9 story commercial and residential buildings were towering either side …
Quite literally, a breath of fresh air. It was an arduous journey from Nepal that included one of our last overnight airport sleeps. But Istanbul awaited us with all sorts of new charm and discovery. Right away, we could tell we were going to love it here. The airport had a layout that made sense. …
Our time in Pokhara was rest, friends and relaxation marred by smoke. The second largest city in Nepal is technically the tourist explorers hub. Located at the base of the Annapurna himal, it’s the base for all Annapurna, Ghaludiri and Mustang regions. Many treks have their start and end in Pokhara. So the lakeside hub …
Day 20: Dharamsala to Bimthang via Larke PassLength: 16.11kmElevation: 807m Well, this was the big day. The crux, so to say. Larke pass, the highest point on the trek, and our exit out of Manaslu valley was our challenge this morning. We had all gone to bed by 7, so when the alarms rang at …
Day 17: Samagaun to SamdoLength: 7.73kmElevationL 600m The morning was once again lovely. A nice cool temperature, good sun, and great visibility. We left Samagaun to head up the valley more to SAmdo, which was promised as a stopover place on our way to Larke pass. The morning started out with a wonderful surprise. Scoots! …
Day 14: Ghap to LhoLength: 17.37Elevation: 1530m Another big day. Everyday at this point feels like a big one. It doesn’t help if you have 3 cups of coca cola before bed, like Cam did, and don’t sleep till 2AM. She will be the first to tell you that this was her roughest day so …
Life on the trek (Written Day 13) I want to write a bit about what our day to day life looks like hiking this massive 23 day trek. Hari is our guide. He has been a mountain guide for 15 years, with previous work in Sikkim, India. His main areas of expertise now are the …