Today, we woke up in Beni at 4:00am and left our hotel at 4:30am. We were told that we needed to walk down the street to where the bus was waiting, however, after more than an hour of walking, the bus was nowhere to be found. We waited awhile and made friends in Galeshwar (pictured above) while the staff tried to find the bus, and finally, it arrived. The drive took seven hours and the route had two roadblocks that could only be passed during short intervals, so after the delays of the morning, we rushed to make it in time to get past before they closed the road. Fortunately, we managed to get by these obstructions and arrived in the late afternoon to Marpha (8760 ft/2670m). The wind picked up significantly, so we settled into our modest accommodations, ate lunch, and ventured into town to explore this charming town. We visited the local Buddhist monastery and were invited in by one of the monks. We returned to our hotel in the late evening, as it began to rain, had dinner in the hotel’s restaurant, and went to sleep. Tomorrow, we plan on waking up at 7:00am, eating breakfast, and beginning our trek to Yak Kharka.

Today, we woke up early, had a quick breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant, and finished packing our bags for the porters. Once this was done, we headed to the airport, where we waited for hours for our delayed flight to board. Thankfully, despite a torrential downpour earlier in the morning, the flight departed, and we arrived to Pokhara in less than a half hour. We collected our bags, had a nice lunch by the lakeside, and continued our journey by road to Beni. The road was washed out in many places and was a lot rougher than I remember it being from the last time I was here (in 2010). We arrived after dark to Beni, found a hotel, ate a sparse dinner, and went to bed.

Today, we spent the morning sorting equipment. Since our group plans on trekking using an accelerated schedule, we must send most of our equipment directly to Dhaulagiri Base Camp via the normal trekking route, and only bring crucial equipment for the trek with us on our accelerated trek. After this was finished, Lina, Javier, and her trekking group from Spain arrived to the hotel. We caught up with them, finalized details about our expedition with Parajuli, then went to La Dolce Vida in Thamel for lunch. I spent the remainder of the afternoon repacking my gear for the porters. After this was finished, we all went to the Third Eye restaurant with Lina’s group for a delicious local dinner.

Today, Simon, Wendy and I woke up at 5:30 am in Abu Dhabi, enjoyed an extensive breakfast buffet in our hotel, then ventured out into the city. We took a taxi to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, the largest mosque in the United Arab Emirates, and toured the grounds all morning. The mosque, designed by Syrian architect Yousef Abdelky, was constructed between 1996 and 2007 and covers an area of more than 30 acres. Designed to unite the cultural diversity of the Islamic world, the mosque takes inspiration from Persian, Mughal, Indo-Islamic and Alexandrian mosques. Its archways are quintessentially Moorish and its minarets classically Arab. I found this pluralism of influence to be a welcome change from the rhetoric that we find evermore present in the US media, as it acknowledges the enormous diversity within Islam, while American media lumps the entirety of the religion into a monolithic ideology. Afterwards, we headed back to check out and continued on to the airport. We flew again on Etihad airlines, which we will never do again, and arrived at 8pm to Kathmandu. We were greeted by Parajuli and his staff at the airport, headed to our hotel, and went to sleep.