Trekking to Annapurna to welcome in 2010

Back in the poor and jobless days of October, there was a nasty moment
when we weren't going to make it into The Himalayas during our Nepal stint. Luckily though, after 6 weeks of working, we managed to justify a Christmas and New Year break in the mountains. So, after a little too much Marmite, chicken tandoori, Nepali beer and brownies (the strange combination of goods indulged in over Christmas) we headed off into The Annapurna region for 9 days of walking.

When we set out on our trek on Boxing Day we were not sure if the weather would permit us to reach Annapurna Base Camp, the highest and most exciting destination of the trek. If it snows at base camp there is a high avalanche risk and being without a guide, we weren't going to take any chances. Being the snowy season, we were braced with optimistic phrases about how unimpressive base camp would have been anyway. But we needn't have worried. On the day we planned to head into the big stuff we awoke to a clear, crisp sky and it remained that way for the next 24 hours.

Walking into the snowy bowl that makes up Annapurna Base Camp, which is surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the world, was one of the most breathtaking moments of the trip. We gazed and gazed and gazed and still couldn't take it all in. Rock broke away from under our feet as we gazed down a 50m cliff to a sea of boulders, brought down from glaciers thousands of years ago. Whisps of cloud flew off the tops of the icy peaks, as if to warn you against even attempting to reach such inhospitable heights. Mile wide glaciers moaned and groaned as the sun went down and came back up. Semi-frozen streams cracked and creaked their way through the snow. At sunset colours turned from blues and whites to pinks and oranges until a full moon tinted everything silver. Melted ice crashed down from mountain ledges and froze solid again when darkness came. Nick and I walked through this colossal land completely alone. Never before have I been so silenced by a landscape.

On New Years 2008-9 we were just picking up the trade winds somewhere off the Atlantic coast of Africa. This year felt almost as remote, sipping on whiskey in a dark stony teahouse, shrouded in the cold mist of the Himalayan foothills. Despite being in bed by 9pm the evening was a charming one. We had a handful of entertaining fellow trekkers to chat too (unsurprisingly, a couple of very enthusiastic Dutchies were the pick of the lot), hot coals to warm our feet by and a huge plate of Dal Bhat to fill our hungry bellies. At 7am on the first day of 2010 we awoke to panoramic views of The Annapurna Range, while golden cloud floated through the valley below us. In Nepal it is considered a very good omen if the first day of the year is clear, which is a relief. All in all, a pretty spectacular way to see in what is set to be a terribly exciting year.

In case any of you haven't heard yet, 2010 is the year of our homecoming and of me becoming Mrs Tuppen. For a long time such exciting (and a little terrifying) events have been a long way off, far too far away to begin to comprehend. Cycling back into Hyde Park has been an unconceivable moment, out there in the futuristic and unknown year of 2010. Suddenly, on the turning of the year, this all changed. Our mindsets did a complete u-turn. We are now on our way home and getting there feels incredibly close.

With this in mind, we skipped along the ancient trails of the Annapurna region full of joy and wonder at everything that passed in 2009, and everything to come in 2010. As if this wasn't mind boggling enough, our backdrop never ceased to leave us in complete awe.

Returning to civilisation after this blissfully simple world of walking from A to B, was a bit of a shock. Minds quickly filled with the admin of getting home; sending passports to the UK to collect our Russian visas, listing every single country we've been to in the last 10 years for the Russian authorities, training for an ice marathon, completing work in Kathmandu, getting permits to travel through Tibet, making sure Carlos is ready for Istanbul... The list goes on. But after an initial panic and finding a bargain happy hour, we happily sunk into our tasks.

One of our more enjoyable tasks was to visit some orphanages in Pokhara where some volunteer buddies were working. One orphanage proved rather entertaining. As hard as we tried to explain that calling a children's home 'The Innocent Children's Center at The Love Company' was not the best idea, the name remains. And despite having been told not to ask for financial aid from volunteers, the manager of this orphanage spent the last week trying to persuade one poor Dutch lad to buy a $700 buffalo for the kids and to fund his retirement. On hearing this we were slightly alarmed to notice that not all the kids had beds. In stark comparison, the other orphanage was a wonderfully homely home kitted out with all the toys, games and comforts kids could want. The answer to such success was a clever chicken farming scheme rather than depending on the wealthy Western folk.

After soaking up all the warmth we could from the Pokhara sun we headed back to our Nepali home in Pepsi-Cola, Kathmandu. A warm welcome from the kids and a plate of 20p momos from our local, quickly made up for the smog and cold. Increased electricity outages and the arrival of a comically talkative and heavily bearded Irishman have hindered work progress considerably. But there's still 30 days left to make our mark in Nepal... we'll see how it goes.

For those of you that want to be persuaded to go trekking, more photos of the mountains here

Not Christmas, but almost as good

Today was the closest we will probably get to a big family Christmas this year, in the form of a Hindu house blessing ceremony. Tej, our boss, and Rupa, his wife, have been living in their new house for a couple of months now. A recent bout of bad luck (hopefully nothing to do with us being here) has persuaded them to get the house formally blessed. So the Brahmans were summoned and they declared Monday 7th to be the lucky day for the blessing. From here on luck should flow freely around the house and all those living within it.

Preparations started early yesterday morning with the grinding of grains to make flour for about 300 donuts. Such culinary expertise continued late into night, only to start up again early this morning. It later became clear that the importance of this feast was not only to serve up to 200 hungry humans but to also please the apparently quite greedy gods. At the crack of dawn today it was all go; the party tent arrived, giant cooking pots got steaming, vegetables turned up by the bicycle load and the household put on their finest.

The blessing ceremony took place in the form of Pooja (Hindu prayer), which started at 8am and went on for an extremely dedicated 6 hours. This all took place in a room on the bottom floor of the house, which was transformed into a den of holiness for the day. The once mundane room was filled with incense, offerings of money, potatoes, flowers, rice, 5 very stern looking Brahman, the family of the house, a huge bonfire, holy water, every spice under the sun and never-ending chants. At the end of the ceremony the Brahmans walked around the house blessing everyone and every corner with a sprinkling of holy water chanting 'peace here' (in Hindu). For the finale a huge sheet of white silk was hung from the roof and water and flowers were poured down it to Tej, Rupa, Riza and a very confused Tiya (2 years old) waiting 3 stories below. Chains of flowers, bananas and donuts were hung around the house and then everyone got stuck into the vegetarian buffet, curd, sweets and milky tea (at last!). You cannot help but be entirely captivated by the mystical sounds, smells and colour of it all. So laptops were shut and we soaked up a day of blessings, feasting and entertaining the little ones. I am now particularly excited about instigating all of the above traditions for our new pad warming party on return to the UK.

We have been in Nepal for five weeks and now feel very at home. Our home is a remarkably peaceful suburb of Kathmandu called Pepsi-Cola Town Planning, inspiringly named after the adjacent Pepsi factory. Time has raced by at an alarming rate, reminding us of the woes and joys of routine, staying in one place and having a job to do. No doubt a gentle reminder of what to expect on arriving home in about 5 months time. Despite some initial trauma linked to space (lack of it), snot (an overload of it) and smog (trying to train for a marathon in it), things are now looking very rosy. Not only have we been blessed by the gods, but our adventure tales got published in a real magazine and we achieved our first work related task in 14 months. VSN's new website is now up and running at http://volunteersocietynepal.org.

To have completed the website feels like quite an achievement, especially since the process only involved one or two 'storming out' moments. All this burying ourselves in html and entering the world of cyberspace nerds compensates a little for ample time spent away from computer screens in the last year. Our next challenge is to send the website racing up search engine rankings (any advice much appreciated!) and to spread the VSN word around Nepal and beyond. But its not all work. Between teaching kids to talk proper and all the marketing faff many an hour is spent sipping whiskey at our local, The Hut, dodging rabid dogs on runs and watching the world go by from our roof terrace. And then weekends (only Saturdays off shock horror) take us to such cultural delights as Kathmandu zoo, the tailors, the best fried eggs in town and guesthouses with fire places in remote hillside villages. So with all this we should remain nicely occupied until trekking and feasting time in Pokhara come Christmas!

'China on the Move'

10 miles offshore in the East China Sea it is apparent that we're approaching somewhere big and busy. As we chug into Tianjin Port our precious eco-conscious minds are gravely disturbed. Vast fishing nets swallow up anything and everything within a mile radius. A 5 mile long queue of rusty ships unburden themselves of sludge and sewage into a brown, scum-covered ocean. Closer to shore dredgers are busy dumping soil on metal flat beds in what looks like an attempt to turn the useless sea to more industry holding land. Finally, a huge port rises up in front of us; miles and miles of industry of every kind, the details of which are masked by a smog that bleaches everything to a dull grey. We must have arrived in China.

Before we can fully take in the extent of the port, we're whisked through immigration and climbing into a taxi to a station that we hope will led us to Beijing. The journey is an instant eyeopener to the scale of things in China. The roads are monster 6 lane affairs. Traffic is managed by death seeking, florescent wand waving cops, who seem to spend more time dodging trucks than directing them. Taking a shortcut by driving down the wrong side of the highway is totally legit' here. On either side of the road huge tower blocks are being built, all at least 15 stories high and no more than 20 feet apart. The development stretchess uninterrupted into the distance. The building work only adds to the grey haze that we now realise is not a feature of the port alone. As if to counteract my negative impressions brand new trees and topiaried bushes line the roadways. Amongst the smog and dust they look painfully unnatural, desperately clinging onto a very precarious life. The combination of spherical plant life, huge red bill boards full of forced smiles and aggressive 'Welcome to China' neon signs, it feels a little bit like entering a Butlins-esq resort. It turns out that that early impressions weren't far off.

In Beijing we quickly suffer from the communication breakdown that would effect our travels for the next 30 days. We are pointed to a bus and promptly seem to go around in circles for 2 hours unsure of quite what is going on. Our jaws drop as we pass huge floodlit squares filled with people, tower blocks garnished in enough neon to relive the 80s 10 times over and boarded up 'undesirable' neighbourhoods. Finally we reach Beijing Central Station and can place ourselves on the map. People flood the area shouting, pushing, shoving, spitting and laughing. Police roam amongst the crowds waving taser ended batons menacingly. We suddenly realise that it is the day when rail tickets for the week long holiday coming up are released. 50 or so ticket kiosks have queues of at least 100m deep. 200 million people are due to travel around China in the next fortnight. But before that can sink in and cause any panic about buying our own rail tickets out of Beijing, we hurry to the safety of our hostel.

At our hostel we are pleasantly surprised to find we had a TV in our room (just as well given that facebook, our blog and flickr are all blocked!). Needing respite after our hectic journey we open a beer and put it on. No break from China here! We flick through the channels and our options are the news, entitled 'China on the Move', a war drama about the communists fighting and being awesome at it, a drama about Mao's private life, a documentary about Mao, a documentary about Hu Jintao, another communist war drama or a showcase of Chinese nukes on the Chinese Military Channel. Wow. Neither of us have ever had such a quick cultural introduction to a country as this, and all within the comfort of our own bed. We opt for China on the Move (given that its the only in English). Highlights of which included:

'American wishes America could be China, even if its just for a day'

'South Korean wives dislike their husbands'

'China leads the way in international climate change'

'60,000 doves to fly over Tianammen Square on 1st October', one man 'just wishes he could give back [to the PRC] more than his 5 doves'

'Mao is trendier than ever'

And the horribly overt display of the brilliance of China didn't stop there. We managed to time our travels with the 60th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Not only was this the busiest traveling week in Chinese history, with an estimated 200m train journeys planned, but it was also a chance for the PRC to demonstrate the glory of their state on a mass scale. The round the clock celebrations were in our faces everywhere we went. From nuke heads being showcased around Beijing, kitsch plastic flower waving parades, thousands of red pot plants lining the streets or huge banners of Han Chinese people dressed up as the 52 different ethnicities of the nation. The Chinese government did everything possible to ensure that celebrations were peacefully watched on TV or seen on banners. Participation on any other level was reserved for VIPS. I don't think you could ever experience a country more polished, scrubbed and painted red (on the surface) than China for this occasion. And so it was in this context we begun our very long journey into the far flung Western desert lands...