Mera Peak Packing: The Hits!

Every time I travel -- heck, every time I go on a picnic -- I end up finding something I'd do differently the next time around. Our Nepal trek was no different. After 18 days on the trail, we learned a thing or two about what worked and what didn't. So let's begin with the success stories...

Mammut Aconcagua Fleece

Mammut Aconcagua fleece hoodie

We spent the majority of our our trek above 4, 000m. So when you stop moving, when you start going downhill, or when the sun goes behind a cloud, you get cold very quickly. I feel like we were constantly taking layers on/off. The Mammut Aconcagua fleece hoodie I bought just before this trip really shone in these variable conditions.

This is the single most useful and versatile item I packed. I wore it every single day! Appearances can be deceiving; it may look like a pretty basic hoodie, but it has some key design features that make it so perfect.

Mera Peak: Mountain Life

One of the things that I didn't really "get" until I saw it for myself, was just how tough life in the mountains can be. I knew it must be hard in theory, but it's totally different to see and experience the conditions for myself. It's not just poverty (although there is that too), it's that it’s so remote. Every little thing is so difficult, even things that we don’t think twice about, like getting water or going to school.

In Khare, the closest stream was about 200-300m from the village. Every drop of water that we drank or used for cooking and washing had to be hauled up by somebody. When you're at 5400m elevation, 200+ metres with 20L of water on your back is no laughing matter. And yet, the men and women who were carrying more than half my body weight on their backs were laughing. And smiling. And sometimes, singing. It was both humbling and inspiring.

Bird's eye view of Khare

Mera Peak: Snapshots

It has been months (yikes, 6 months!) since our trek in Nepal, and I have been struggling to capture the essence of our journey in writing. It was such a beautifully varied and immersive experience. I wish I could bottle up the quiet joy, tired sense of accomplishment and excitement that we experienced every day. It was hard work, but we were constantly rewarded with stunning landscapes.

It's also difficult to capture what the group dynamics were like. My fellow trekkers were a funny, well-traveled and interesting group of people. I don't know if we just got lucky or if this is just what happens when you put a bunch of like-minded people together, but I truly enjoyed hearing everyone's experiences and stories. In fact, we were such a chatty group that our sirdar, Domi, kept telling us that we were talking too much and that we should be saving our energy!

Rainbow encircling the shadow of our plane into Lukla

I may not be able to do the full trek experience justice, but I can share a few moments in time that were memorable to me.

Mera Peak: Trek Life

Every night as we finished off our last mugs of tea and prepared to head to our tents, our sirdar, Domi, would cheerfully call out the schedule for the next day. "6, 7, 8!" he'd chirp. Sometimes it was 7, 8, 9! Oh happy day!

Wake up tea at 6am, breakfast at 7 and on the trail by 8. I am not a morning person even at the best of times. Least of all when my sleeping bag is nice and toasty and it's cold outside. But sadly, there was no sleeping in for me on this trek. Not only did the schedule not allow it, but my bladder didn't either.

Morning sun in Chalem Kharka

Mera Peak

I have been planning different variations of a year long, trip around the world for the better part of a decade now. Whenever I found myself unhappy with work or frustrated with my life, I would fantasize about leaving it all behind to explore the world.

I have a notebook filled with possible round-the-world (RTW) itineraries. Sometimes I fancied going east to west, other times west to east. Some itineraries included Australia and New Zealand, while others substituted Russia, Mongolia and China via the Trans-Siberian railway. And each year, my itineraries would change a little as I discovered new destinations (Croatia, Slovenia) and removed politically unstable ones (Egypt, Tunisia). But no matter which variables I played around with, one thing was always a constant in my plans: a month in Nepal to climb Mera Peak.

Mera Peak from the glacier below Mera La

How cool is it that it is possible to climb a 6000+ m Himalayan peak without any prior mountaineering experience? When Nick and I sat down to plan our RTW route, this was an absolute must-do for me. So you can imagine my excitement when, after 15 days of steep climbs and seemingly never-ending descents, two river crossings, days spent hiking through the clouds and evenings spent shivering with a mug of hot chocolate, we arrived at Mera Peak High Camp (5800m). From the precarious little ledges where our tents were pitched, the summit appeared close enough to reach out and touch!

The Adventure Begins...

Well, it's finally happening! After dreaming about it, talking about it, saving for it, and planning variations of it for years (10 years, in my case), Nick and I are going to take some time off to travel the world!

All of our stuff in storage!

The idea of a career break to travel had never even crossed my mind until I stumbled upon Erik Trinidad's blog, The Global Trip, back in 2004. Erik's detailed and entertaining dispatches filled me with both the desire and confidence to take the leap myself! It may have taken me a decade to make it happen...but...better late than never, eh?

So here is where we plan to be over the next 18 months,

Nov 2015	Nepal (Mera Peak trek)
Dec-Jan 2016	SE Asia
Feb-Mar 2016	South Africa
Apr-Oct 2016	Europe (camper van road trip!)
Nov-Mar 2017	South America

If you think you'll be on the same continent as us at any point, please give us a shout! It would be wonderful to meet up with friends and family while we're on the road!

Childcraft Bucket List: Lascaux Caves

As a child, there was nothing I loved more than sprawling on the living room floor with a volume of the World Book Childcraft Children's Encyclopedia. There were books on every topic that could possibly capture a child's imagination: world and space, fairy tales from all over the world, the human body and how things work. But my favorite volume of them all was "Mysteries and Fantasies".

That book was my first introduction to such places as Stonehenge, Easter Island and the Nazca Lines. The fact that we still didn't know why or how our ancestors built many of these structures was absolutely fascinating to me. I have an entire bucket list devoted to all the places I had read about in Childcraft and hope to visit one day. This June, I was super excited to be able to visit one of them: The Lascaux Caves.

I knew going in, that the original caves had been closed to visitors years ago, and that we would be looking at replicas. So my expectations were suitably lowered. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and beauty of the replicas. A lot of effort had been taken to match the originals. They even used the same materials and techniques that we believe our ancestors used!

So I was somewhat surprised to find myself walking out of the caves still feeling disappointed and very dissatisfied with my experience. If this was the only cave we had visited in the region, I would have been quite disillusioned. Fortunately, earlier in the day, we visited another prehistoric cave that was everything that I had hoped our Lascaux experience would be, but wasn't: Font de Gaume

Along the trail to the entrance of Font de Gaume