Preparing the trek

With the festival over I and me not having done much preparation of the trek it was now time to start doing just that. Mikael and Mattias and I had decided we were going to do the trek together, without a guide. We were just not too sure which trek we were going to do. Annapurna Base Camp or the Circuit.

I had already shopped a bit for trekking gear (zip off pants, a proper jacket, some water purification and altitude sickness pills) but there were still bits and pieces missing. Most important of all were the permits. We needed two, one for general trekking in Nepal (TIMS permit) and one specifically for the Annapurna Conversation Area. Both of them could be purchased (for 2000 NPR each) at the Nepal Tourism Board.

Mattias knew the way, so he lead us there and the processing went pretty efficient (for Nepal). As the permit forms required to fill in which trek we were planning to do, (and dates and things like this) we made preliminary decision of going for the Annapurna Circuit but the final decision was still up in the are. I think all three of us are not great at making decisions :-).

About two hours later we had our permits and only needed to get some trekking food.

The ultimate source of Energy for trekkers here in Nepal seems to be Snickers. So we got 10 Bars each and some Cashew nuts. My crown jewel should be a can of Everest Beer, which I planned to carry up (to wherever we were going to go) and drink as a reward.

As you can imagine all the gear and food added a good bit of weight to my backpack.

I also had a chance to catch up a little bit on the blog. Although I was not doing much the last couple of days it was always busy. Whenever you are sitting on the rooftop terrace of the hostel (where I planned to write my blog), it is next to impossible to not get involved in a conversation with the other guest. I guess I have to hide somewhere in order to properly catch up (it's the 21st of October today and I am writing about the 4th).

As I knew I was not going to bring my Laptop I wanted to do all the laptop based things before we were going on our trek tomorrow.

This included to book the outbound flight to Thailand. After some trouble and help from my Parents (thanks for that) I had the flight booked and was ready to go on a great Adventure.

The assumption was that there was not going to be much western food for the next couple of weeks so we feasted on pizza and Burger in a place in Thamel (again with about 10 people).

The late evening program was filled with repacking my large backpack and deciding what was needed and what could be left at the Hostel here in Kathmandu.