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PROLOGUE

Do I love trekking through the mountains for days at a time living apart from civilization as I’ve come to know it or do I just love the IDEA of loving trekking through the mountains for days at a time living apart from civilization?

While this could be construed as a silly question of sorts, it is one I took with me as part of my baggage when I decided to fly to Nepal, the “Rooftop of the World,” spending the better part of two months using good, old Bus #11 (my own two legs and feet) as my primary mode of transportation.  It is a question I will try to answer over the following pages. 

There are no guarantees an answer will be forthcoming, however.

When I started my “trip-around-the-world,” countries such as Vietnam, India and Kenya were at the top of my adventure to-do list.  The word “Nepal” was an answer to a Jeopardy quiz question, no more and no less.  If you had asked me to point it out on a world map, I would have lived up to the richly deserved stereotype Americans are given by the rest of the world.

“Is it here?” I would have asked, pointing to China.  “No, ok, how about here?” would have been the next guess, with my finger trailing along the globe over by Saudi Arabia.  Not a pretty sight.

While I was doing my best impression of a surfer off the coast of Bali, however, I came across a few backpackers wearing T-shirts referring to base camps they had visited, catching my attention.

“Where did you guys get the shirts?” I asked.

“We were trekking through Nepal and…” and that was the moment my journey to Nepal started to become cemented in my mind.  Words like Annapurna, Mustang, Goyko and Namche Bazaar were introduced to me for the first time, while others such as Everest had been there all the while.

I was going to go to the Kingdom of Nepal and trek through native villages on rickety wooden bridges, eating nothing more than a few grains of rice and potatoes.  I would reach altitudes that would make the Alps look like a restful day-trip and the mountains in the United States nothing more than mere hills.  I would become one with the land, separating myself from the world of television, fast food and polo shirts.

Of course, the fact that the longest trekking journey I had ever undertaken was for three days in Colorado over ten years ago on an Outward Bound expedition never entered my mind as a serious obstacle I might need to overcome.

As for the necessary training, I supposed walking back and forth to the beach while living in Fort Lauderdale over the past three years and pushing down on the gas pedal of my Mustang convertible would be enough to get me through any rough times I would be confronted with.

A few months later in Hanoi, I went to one of their numerous coffee shops and picked up a bootleg copy of Lonely Planet:Nepal for the low, low price of 50,000 dong.  If 50,000 sounds like a lot, it would have been about 220,000 back in the States.  To put it in perspective, I paid $3.40.  OK?

Their trekking section made both the Annapurna and Everest treks seem like they could not be missed and I also discovered I could get a two-month visa for $30 which would give me plenty of time since both could be covered in approximately three weeks apiece.

Eight of the world’s fourteen highest mountains were to be located within my scope, going all the way up to the 8,848-meter grandmother of them all.

I learned they could be gazed upon for less than $10 a day, which was like music to my frugal backpacker ears and I would not have to break open a tent unless I wanted to because there were teahouses available along each route.  To top it all off, a guide/porter was not essential, as the paths were well defined.

Now I am one of the most – no, I am the most – directionally challenged person on the face of the earth so I did take this last bit of information with a grain of salt.  I wanted it to be true, however, and so for the moment it was.

Wow, this just kept getting easier and easier.  The only drawback was it was only April and to avoid the monsoon season, the best time to go would be in October.  After spending a bit of time on an active volcano, Gunung Rinjani, in Indonesia and having our guide say at the first rim, “You would see Gili Trawangan over to the west if it was clear, the island of Flores over to the east if…” made me realize Mother Nature was nobody you wanted to mess around with.

Luckily, stopovers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and the Indian Himalayas made the timing happen according to my loosely formulated plan of attack.