Nomads in New Zealand (part 2)

As we drove the van down the off-ramp into Picton from the Bluebridge ferry, the sun was already getting low in the sky. We'd arrived around three thirty, and so only had around two hours to find a place to park the van for the night before it became exponentially more complicated by the lack of natural light. We spent a few moments in Picton figuring out our general course through the south island - down the left side, through the centre and back up the right - before embarking west along some of the craziest winding roads that we had come to know and love, towards Abel Tasman national park.

New Zealand is a hiker's paradise, filled with a multitude of well-maintained, multi-day "great walks." As well, there are hundreds of smaller trekking trails, ranging from a few hundred metres to month-long, pack-in-pack-out odysseys. After having driven a rapid pace towards the south island, we realized we weren't really taking advantage of the fact that we had much more time to see the country than we had in previous countries. So, we decided we would walk the Abel Tasman "great walk," camping as we walked up the forty-kilometre distance up the northwestern coast of the south island. To that end, we had to drive towards Motueka, an access town to the park, where we would reserve our campsites and plan our walk with help from the Department of Conservation ("DoC") staff.

But we wouldn't make it there today, travelling along the spaghetti roadway that is the Queen Charlotte Drive. We passed very little that looked accomodating for a night's freedom camping. Finally we ended up pulling into a DoC campground, "Aussie Beach," where we watched the sun set, cooked some food and spent the night. It was around this night that I realized the construction of the bed wasn't going to be satisfactory; it was essentially a pallette, made from particle boards, so they had buckled into a curve in the middle. We would wake up in a pile in the morning, and the normally difficult process of putting one's trousers on lying down was made doubly hard by having to work up a hill.

We drifted through Nelson the next day, in what was supposed to be a short stop to see why the interior lights of the car and the CD player had stopped working. I tracked down the problem to the fuses - one of them had blown - but repeated attempts to replace the offending fuse resulted in more blown fuses. There was a short in the system somewhere that I wasn't going to find, or fix. This problem had been dogging us since before we got on the ferry, and we had met someone waiting in line who, when confronted with the problem, suggested we take it to an auto electrician. And when we saw a place advertising same in Nelson, we knew it was worth a stop.

When I walked in and greeted the guy, I asked him (in what I perceived to be typical Kiwi fashion), "How you going." He must have taken me for a native, because he completed the code phrase with the completely enigmatic, "Ah, box of fluffies." It was then that I had to break down and reveal I had absolutely no idea what he had just said, and could he explain it.

Box of Fluffies: Short form, "box of fluffy ducks."

Box of fluffy ducks: Can't complain.

We moved on to the problem at hand, and he said he'd take a look. He recommended some cafes and local stores, and we wandered around. What followed was a typical situation of car repair; getting your vehicle into the repair schedule. When we did come back to find the van under repair, we saw the dashboard torn apart, the roof ribs pulled down, wires strung, and the auto electrician on his back under the dash. It looked expensive. But when we strolled up, he nodded authoritatively and said he'd tracked down the problem; during a repair for rust, some steel plates had been welded over a rusted out hole, and an interior wire had been melted. It was just a matter of time. Fortunately, the repair was less expensive than it looked, but most of our day was gone.

We decided to press on to try and make some headway towards Motueka. Fortunately, one of the motorhome crowd we had met at Aussie Beach had tipped us off to a really nice place to freedom camp outside of Motueka: Kina Beach. Finding it prominently displayed on our map, we make tracks and get to the area just before sunset. We find one really promising spot seems to be taken by three vans and some guys doing some drinking; looking for a more secluded spot, we walk around a loop and find a nice spot looking up off the road towards the rocky beach. It all looked straightforward enough; a short hop onto the firmly-packed sand, a quick reverse and a perfect spot to spend the night.

Except, as it would happen, the sand wasn't as firmly-packed as I had thought. And here's the funny thing about vans; the weight isn't distributed well, so you don't get the power where you need it. And finally, rear-wheel drive works much differently than front-wheel drive.

In short, I got the van marvellously stuck in the sand.

After a brief panic, I tried what most completely inexperienced van drivers would do: rocking it back and forth by switching between first and reverse. This succeeded in a lot of encouraging motion, creating massive holes in the sand for the wheels to rest in, while not moving the van an inch back towards the road. Fortunately, we were next to a rocky beach, so there was no shortage of rocks to grab and bring over to try and create a more stable footprint for the van to attempt to drive on. And as we started to collect the rocks, I realized just how well dug-in the van was on the left side; the wheel was almost completely buried.

Two hours later, the wheels jacked up and rocks deposited, there was a bit more rocking, but no progress to be made. I admitted defeat and agreed with Amy's suggestion that we walk over to the party in progress and ask for help in dislodging the van.

In the end, they turned out to be really helpful and friendly guys; two Spaniards, a Briton, and another guy whose origin escapes me. We started out just pushing, with the van in neutral. Nothing. Then we tried rocking it, combined with the pushing; nothing. Finally we had to bring over one of the other vans, tie the two together with rope, and combine the pushing. To our great relief, the other van dragged our van out of the sand. Diagonally. A great cheer erupted when we put the van back on the road: three hours later in almost pitch black. We made some friends that night, shared our drinks, and went to sleep with aching, but relieved, muscles.

The next day we set off for Motueka, eager to leave the van for a few days and set off on a trek through the parkland. By the time we pulled into Motueka, we realized we weren't going to have time to set off today. We got ourselves sorted with the DoC, reserved some campsites along our planned route, and spent the remainder of the day outfitting ourselves for the trek to come. Originally we had decided to take the small camping stove with the rest of our kit - but when we saw how much stuff we were already going to be taking, we decided to leave it behind and stick to a basic regimen of cold meals.

The next morning we drove up a bit further north to the park entrance, leaving our van at the water taxi service that would pick us up a week later. As we set off on foot, a gentle drizzle began to fall, but we were well prepared with our MEC pack covers. I began to recall fondly our six-hour days of walking in Nepal, although in this case we were regularly passed on the road by boats, towed on trailers, taking people to the water and up the coast for a day's tour.

Even though we had slimmed down what we were carrying to the bare essentials, the packs were still quite heavy. In addition to our sleeping bags and tent, we were carrying plenty of extra clothing (it was starting to drop to around three degrees Celsius at night), and food enough for five days. While I knew that as the trek went on, we would gradually lighten our load as we ate through the food, it was no encouragement on the first leg of our hike. The rain didn't help. But as we passed into the main body of the park, crossing raised walking platforms of several hundred meters to keep human feet off of delicate marshland, I began to take in the truly wild nature of the park. The rain made it seem all the more lush, and soon we were walking through densely packed tropical forest. The everpresent symbol of New Zealand, the silver fern, shot up absolutely everywhere, while behind and above towered trees of all kinds. The forest path was quite popular, with hikers passing us in both directions, and every once and a while we would be rewarded by a view of the Cook Strait over our right shoulder.

Beautiful Abel Tasman beach.

At around three o'clock we arrived at our campsite at the Torrent Bay Estuary. By the end of the first day of hiking, my feet and back were aching. It was the biggest relief just to set the pack down and know that I wouldn't have to carry it until tomorrow, and that after we ate something it would be that much lighter. We were also rewarded by the rain having abated, being replaced with glorious beams of sunshine. While the park was interesting to look at during the dismal grey, in the blazing sun, it was spectacular. The tide was on its way out, and before we embarked on the serious business of dinner, we enjoyed a stroll around the estuary. The most direct route to the coast was across the muddy plain of the now-clear estuary, strewn with clam-shells and tiny hermit crabs who disappeared at the slightest human movement. Walking around without my pack on was like floating on air. The beach was an absolute treat, with powdery white sand and a blue-green lagoon formed by the tidal exit of the water.

After returning to our campsite and having our first of many cold meals, we turned into our 2-man palace and, also reminiscent of Nepal, went to sleep shortly after the sun went down.

The next day was to be our most challenging. The hiking trail crosses three areas of water in total, and there are various windows for each in which the tide makes it possible to cross. If you miss a window, you have to wait for the next tide. Because of our campsite reservation (which were diligently checked each night by a DoC representative who dropped by to review our paperwork) we had to cross two in one day, which represented at least seven hours of walking.

After striking camp rather late (there wasn't much point in hurrying as we couldn't cross the first tidal area until the tide started to go out) we put everything back into our packs and set off. We ate our lunch in a lovely cove, and were just starting to relax when we could see nine kayaks in the distance, bearing down on our tropical turf for a place to beach. One of the attractions of Abel Tasman is a big trade in kayak tours, which we opted not to take. You can combine kayaking and hiking, leaving your kayak behind and having your packs delivered to you; seeing the park's coastline from the water is probably quite striking. But since you have to be part of a tour and really have no freedom to go off on your own, it didn't really appeal to us. As well, the kayaks have earned a nickname for the less-experienced as "divorce boats," as they can be challenging to operate as a team. Amy and I have canoed together, and it works, but that doesn't mean we wanted to spend a whole tour with people for whom it didn't.

After a few more hours of walking, we made the first tidal crossing, which involved taking off shoes and socks and crossing the frigid ankle-deep waters while trying not to step on too many pointy clamshells. The aches were already setting in, and we weren't even half-way to our next campsite. We pushed on towards the next tidal crossing, taking little delight in our surroundings and getting increasingly irritable as the day wore on. As we approached the second tidal crossing the sun was low in the sky, blazing directly into our eyes. I have distinct memories of feeling like we were walking through a desert, our destination constantly getting further and further away from us.

The tide was just beginning to come in as we approached the second crossing, a shallow river with a kilometre to be crossed to get to the other side. The signage was particularly obscure this time around, so we made our best guess as to where to begin our crossing and started over. Even more frustrating was it wasn't clear where we were supposed to continue our trek on the other side, and we certainly didn't want to end up walking along the shoreline looking for it, as the tide rolled in. We had to take off our shoes and socks twice as we encountered deeper stretches of water that were coming in, and by the time we encountered the third creek of water we just left them off, muttering curses against the pointy clamshells as we went. Finally we saw an inverted triangle in the distance on the other side, and made our way towards it; indeed, it was the other side of the crossing. As the sun set behind the treeline, we emerged. Now it was only another twenty minutes before we would arrive at our campsite. Dusk set in as we arrived to the sign welcoming us to the campsite - another 150 metres away to the actual campsites - and my arms were about to fall off as we deposited our packs in a pile.

We shared a picnic table for dinner with a German couple, who were hitching their way across the country. While I had my doubts of the safety and effectiveness of this strategy, they had apparently found it easier than expected to get rides to where they wanted to go. If our van had seats for passengers, room for their gear, and was in fact headed in the same direction as them (it wasn't) I'm sure we would have offered them a lift. It was interesting to talk to them, as they indicated it's very popular for Germans to travel (we had certainly noticed a great deal of them in New Zealand) as it represents a sense of adventure and wildness that is not available in Germany.

We lazed about the following day, giving our sore muscles a chance to recuperate, as our walk for the day was only to be about three hours to our next campsite, where we would spend two full days - meaning, one of those days there would be no dedicated hiking at all. Other hiking groups packed up and left as we read our books on the beach, strolled aimlessly and generally took our time over breakfast - until we decided we were ready to go and packed up. Our trek took us across no less than four beaches, the path opening up from forest to a sandy beach, with a sign instructing us to walk along the beach to the next opening back into the forest where the path would continue. Giant rock formations constituted book-ends to the beach, worn down by centuries of weather and wind.

As we passed Totranui, the furthest most point that water taxis will drop people, we found the amount of other foot traffic dropped significantly; it would seem that most people just take day trips through the park, and few of those go north. With only four hours to trek today, slightly-lighter packs and muscles that were slowly adjusting, the walk was much more manageable. We arrived at our campsite, finding it to be very deluxe - in addition to a formed concrete fire pit, axe and firewood, there was an installation containing not one but two sinks with both treated and untreated water. Luxury!

An Abel Tasman sunset.

In our "day off," we lounged, basked in the sunshine and enjoyed the surroundings by taking the opportunity to do some short hikes around the area. We visited the local sea lion colony and saw many of these magnificent creatures sunning themselves on the rocks, as well as swimming and playing in groups of two or three.

We thought we were the only ones hardy enough to brave camping in the cool temperatures, until we were joined by another another couple, Duncan and Michelle from Auckland. We ended up getting along very well, sharing our meals and company before heading to bed. The next morning was a treat - hot breakfast, coffee and tea - before we packed up our respective camps and parted company in the drizzly morning, them heading for a mountain hike to get a panoramic view of the park area, and us to head back to Totranui to connect with our water taxi back to civilization. The ride back is as good as a roller-coaster, and it's hard to believe that what took us five days to travel by foot takes us thirty minutes to travel by boat.

The showers we had back in town were some of the best ever, and when we spotted Duncan and Michelle being dropped off from their water taxi (in fact, the same company as ours) we hooked up and shared some well-deserved beers and pub grub. We arranged that we might meet again at their place in Auckland when we returned up that way.

After our hike through Abel Tasman, we thought we would try to drop into a farm nearby for a WWOOF. After they had helped us extract our van from the sand, the Spaniards we hung out with mentioned that they had volunteered on a commune on the other side of Abel Tasman park, called the Tui Farm. It had apparently been so popular through the WWOOF website that they had decided to de-list themselves and be referred solely by word of mouth. The farm was well-knwon in the area, so we decided it would be worth a shot just to swing by and see if they had any availability to WWOOFers. This entailed some more mountain driving through winding roads, but was worth it if just to visit the small town of Takaka. Takaka is the largest settlement to the other side of the Abel Tasman park (you can enter the park from two sides) but even then it's no bigger than a town. That said, it's a town which is clearly buzzing with activity, and no trace of a single franchise store. The town's probably not big enough to justify it. Instead, you had locally owned hardware stores, grocery stores, butchers, and restaurants with exceptional character (my favourite being called "The Dangerous Kitchen"). While we were essentially just passing through to resupply and head towards the Tui Farm, it would have been fun to stay for longer. We did find the Tui Farm after some doing, but unfortunately, they were already fully stocked with WWOOFers. Which was a shame, given the range of produce they farmed and products they fabricated on the farm. We pushed on.

The Franz Josef glacier.

We decided to head further south along the west coast, typically the rainier of the two, to see some glaciers. There are two popular ones in the south island, the Franz Josef glacier and the Fox glacier. We spend more time at the Franz Josef, as it's a bit easier to get to. The glaciers are amazing: the ice has a noticeable blue tint, and the glaciers themselves are huge. Tours take adventurers onto and into the glacier, and when you see them scaling across the glacier, they appear no larger than ants. The "action" part of the glacier, the terminal, is where melting ice is ejected in the form of a glacial river; the water is a sludgy grey, and not suprisingly, very cold.

We also make a stop at a series of natural blow holes. They're quite impressive solely as geological formations, with a vast series of eroded trenches and mounds, seemingly towering stakes of pancakes. But as you pass by the larger pit formations, you are regularly rewarded by an almost volcanic jet of water blasting into the air from one of the aforementioned blow holes. As the larger waves come in from the ocean, the water is under pressure, and is careened down natural formations until it erupts through a hole in the ground. Unfortunately, as much as water is being ejected upwards from the ground, it was also falling quite substantially from the sky, so we decided that we had got a good idea of the blow holes, and made a bee line back to the van.

After a couple of days sleeping in the van and living on the road (or, at times, right beside it) we made it a policy to check into a motor park to have some showers and wash some clothes. Our next stop was Wanaka, a small picturesque town named for the lake which it sits adjacent to. In many ways it reminds me of Takaka, with its community buzz and small town feel; however, with its traffic in adventure sports and bus tours, there are far more up-market options available in Wanaka.

It was, however, very much worth the stop, and so highly recommended by my cousin Mary (who used to own a home there) that we ended up staying for three days. Mary used to work at the local cinema, Cinema Paradiso, a place of infinite character and classy selections. When we went to see a film there, the cinema was adorned with a giant sheep, advertising the new horror-comedy, Black Sheep. Our film wasn't as good as that would have been, but the whole experience was well worth it as we sat in comfortable couches and had freshly-baked cookies at intermission. Our stay in the Mount Aspiring Motor Park was as rewarding, if for two words: hot tub.

In Wanaka we fixed the woefully-warped bed in our van, with the friendly assistance of the kind folks at the local Mitre 10 (New Zealand's national big-box hardware store: North Americans should think Home Depot). When we went in to look for a replacement hose for our propane stove, I asked casually if there was a place we could rent tools so that I could fix up our van. When the guy asked me what I needed, I realized all I really needed was a power drill and perhaps a hammer: they were only too happy to loan us the tools we needed, and even a box of screws to use. They sold us the wood we needed, cut to size, and an hour later we were set up for full bed stability.

The infamous New Zealand Kea parrot.

We also took the opportunity to do one of the walks in the area, known as the Rob Roy walking track. It's a five-kilometer stretch about twenty kilometers outside of town. As we were having our breakfast before we started walking, we started chatting with some other hikers, Bryan and John. John's a guide by trade and walks the Rob Roy track at least three times a year, so while we didn't decide to walk together, we did have several conversations as we took turns passing each other. Bryan runs a photography shop in Paihia, and mentioned that if we were in the area we should drop by and say hello. We pass by a small construction crew rebuilding the hiking trail, and are rewarded with our one and only sighting of a Kea (a large, greenish-brown cheeky parrot) running off with one of the guy's lunches. A Kea is somewhat famous in New Zealand for its brazen contact with humans: cars left attended in Kea-filled areas often come back to find the black rubber window seals have been torn away by the birds. At the end of the trail, ascending further up onto a mountain track, we are rewarded with views of yet another glacier.

Amy's a hit with the Japanese tourists.

Our last morning in Wanaka, we decided to cook our breakfast beside the lake, so we hauled our small pile of cooking gear to a picnic table and set up shop. Little did we know we would become a tourist attraction for a busload of visiting Japanese tourists, who must have been dying to get up close and personal with these "backpackers" they've heard so much about, who actually drive around the country and sleep in their vans at night. I jest: they were quite good fun.

After Wanaka, we hauled back into the van and drove further inland, towards the winegrowing heartland of the south island. We make a stop in Cromwell, a small regional town, with the intention of heading on towards Queenstown. Staying the night in the Cromwell Chalets motor camp, we notice a notice for seasonal grape pickers, which got us to thinking. We had struck out with grape picking in France, and none of our WWOOF visits had anything to do with grapes, so perhaps this could be our opportunity to get a closer look at the wine industry. This is of course complicated by the fact that we have no work permits for New Zealand, so we decide that we'll just ask at some of the places we expect to do tastings at, and see if something casual can be arranged.

We visit first Rockburn estate, where we sample their wines and decide to ask on our return where we pick up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to go with the night's meal. Our second stop is at Quartz Reef, where we meet an older couple who have been picking, and ask casually about doing some picking; we're directed to Dom, who's not actually connected with Quartz Reef, but is the manager at another vinyard, Gibbston Valley, as well as managing his own vineyard. We chat for a while and get along well, and in the end we decide to volunteer to do some picking, which works out well as we can park in the vineyard's extensive parking lot.

The next day (and the next, actually) are spent picking grapes. Our first day is spent picking Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, small green grapes with light brown shades. It's easy work and the time passes quickly in thankfully good weather. It's been getting nippy in the mornings, but nothing we can't handle with sweaters and jackets, and by mid-morning we're in short-sleeves. The picking crew is made up of the Gibbston valley staff, and a legion of contract workers made up mostly by international backpackers. We met Anika, a German girl travelling on her own who picked up a job working for the vineyard to make some money. At the end of the day we park next to her van at the Gibbston valley vineyard, and we make a feast of spanish omelettes and fried potatoes. I got a first-hand view of grape pressing, and the rapid pace they try to set; turns out they aren't pushed to turn grapes into wine for fear of losing the grapes to frost. In Gibbston valley's case, they actually only have so many grape containers and need to clear them for the next day's picking.

The next morning the van wouldn't start; it's just too cold. So we hitched a ride with one of the Gibbston valley staff, Nathan, in his truck. It's a good thing too, given the thin, bouncy gravel road we have to climb to get to the second vinyard. I'm glad someone else is driving. The night was so cold there was quite a substantial frost, which is the equivalent of an earthquake in this winegrowing region: quite a lot of money is spent on frost prevention. Every vineyard has a frost alarm, and if the temperature goes below a certain point they spend thousands of dollars hiring helicoptors to come and fly over the crops. The idea is that the updraft of air created by the helicoptor rotors will raise the temperature by a few degrees, and often, that's all you need to prevent frost from settling. In addition there are windmills and drums filled with burning diesel. With hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in grapes, a frost can wipe out an entire plot: there's no insurance for this kind of event. So, when one of the frost alarms didn't go off last night, it's the talk of the harvest, and everyone is chatting about it all day.

Pinot noir grapes.

The second day is a bit longer than the first, but by now we've improved our technique: today, it's pinot noir; tiny, wrinkled red grapes. There are also "second-growth" grapes, big juicy red clusters, that we have to be careful to avoid: they're not as flavourful. As we fill our buckets with grapes, clipping them off at the stem, they get tipped into larger bins. As the grapes get chucked into the bins, they're picked over by the well-trained eyes of the Gibbston valley folks; many bunches are tossed out because they don't make the grade.

After saying our farewells to Gibbston valley and Cromwell, we made our way towards Queenstown. It was probably a lovely little town until it became the unofficial epicentre of New Zealand's adrenaline sports, and now it is jammed packs with high-end restaurants, outdoor supply stores, and tour operators. There are now direct flights to Queenstown; you can make it your only New Zealand destination, if you wish. On the recommendation of some people we've chatted to, we decide we want to investigate going on a cruise through the Fjordlands, the southwest coast of New Zealand, made up of towering bluffs. There are two main cruises: a shorter day cruise through the Milford Sound, and a longer overnight cruise through Doubtful Sound. The latter was recommended as better value for slightly more money, so we sign up for that one but it doesn't leave for a few days. We go on hikes, hang out in the town, catch up on email, generally waste some time before driving towards Manapouri and the beginning of the Fjordlands cruise.

The cruise was wonderful. We meet some other tourists and revel in the fantastic scenery that is the Fjordlands. We don't have any rain, which is great, but on the other hand we don't see any of the fantastic waterfalls the area is known for. The transit to the Navigator, the main boat taking us out into the sounds, is a bit of a big deal; you take an hour-long boat ride to a stretch of intervening land, a bus across it, and then board the Navigator. There is only one road in this neck of the woods, which is used by to service the hydro dam - and that road is purpose-built, not connecting to any other road in New Zealand. Everything has to be shipped in, including petrol for the bus. According to our driver, it's the most expensive road ever built in New Zealand.

On board the Navigator, they stuff us mercilessly with great food. We have muffins when we board, soup a couple of hours later, a massive buffet dinner; the next morning, a cold/dry breakfast for the early risers and a full-on caloric fest an hour later. No one can complain we were left hungry. We ate like pigs. Speaking of pigs, the hunting and killing of them is actually big sport in New Zealand, and like all big sports, it has a dedicated fan base with its own magazine: "Pig Hunter." I'm actually not kidding about this. The magazine was shown to us by a woman we met on the cruise, who bought it as a gag; it's replete with stories and photos of pighunting exploits. The photos are mostly of men carting out dead boars on their backs, but there are also touching stories of women and kids getting in on the action, talking about their first kill. What seems to be absent (or taken for granted as known) in the stories and depictions of the pork stalking is that the kills are all made with a big bowie knife, which strikes me as particularly grisly.

We also meet Hugh and his wife Joan, Canadians from outside of Toronto. When we got to talking to them, they turned out to be some of the nicest, friendliest people we'd met, and by the kind of coincidence we have come to expect, they are actually grandparents to a child of the sister-in-law of a good friend of Amy's.

Sunset over Doubtful sound.

The Doubtful Sound itself is quite striking; mountains towering out of the water, covered with lichen, moss and trees in varying stages of growth. The water between, through which the ship made steady progress, was almost black from the depth. The sun set behind a fjord around mid-day, but not before we stopped in a bay for some out-of-boat activities. Kayaking, nature tours in a launch, and unbelieveably, swimming. Our quarters for the trip were a shared quad with another couple, in our case, the aimable Britons Bryan and Jane. Bryan dared to swim; big marks for bravery.

At the mouth of the water body we were navigating, we stopped and saw the Tasman sea as the sun set. Several islands in the mouth were home to a seal colony, which barked and dove as they woke from the slumber of the day to go hunting for dinner. The boat turned a lazy circle around, and people descended for the night's feast as the boat lodged itself in a quiet bay to anchor for the night. We ate, drank and chatted until well past our regular bed times.

After dinner we attended a nature talk by Kimmy, the naturalist on the boat with a packed audience as she described the flora and fauna of the region, letting us know what animals we could feel free to run over on the highway (the possum, noteably) and which we should avoid.

Doubtful sound, completely still.

The following morning, after the carb-fest of a breakfast spread we hadn't seen since staying at a four-star German hotel, we stopped in very still fjord bay and the engines were turned off so you could experience the Fjordlands at its most peaceful. The water turned as clear as glass and you could here every sound with absolute clarity. It was quite a special experience. Eventually the engines rumbled back to life and we made our way back towards Manapouri.

The whole rest of Nepal (for us)

Our day in Jomsom prepared us a bit for what we're likely to expect for the rest of our trek towards Muktinath. Every day the weather seems to turn out the same way; it starts off very calm and sunny, but as the day gets hotter the winds pick up, until in the middle of the afternoon it's a veritable wind- (and hence, dust-) storm. The clouds develop, sometimes there's rain, sometimes there's not. Either way, people go indoors because it's no fun to get pelted with dust outside. In the more bored recesses of my mind, I nickname this effect "the weather machine."

[But first, a note of clarification regarding these notes about our trek in Nepal: I'd mentioned the plight of Gavin and Jade, how Jade had come down with giardiaisis, and how if you didn't bring your own medications with you, you could be in serious trouble. I didn't go on to reassure our mothers that we were carrying a pretty good pharmacy of our own. The point I was making, to myself, it seems, was that we weren't carrying a readily available medicine to treat giardiaisis, as we were hoping to avoid that particular bug - you tend it catch it by drinking local water. We were carrying water purification tablets, which we used liberally.]

After getting the best of a first impression from Jomsom, the next morning we packed up and set off on the road towards Muktinath. We passed by groups of children bound for school, all dressed in the same uniform: grey jumpers and black trousers or skirts, depending on whether you're a boy or girl (just in case that's not clear: the boys wear trousers, the girls wear skirts). They didn't pay us much attention as we go: tourists are common here, especially as many choose to fly into Jomsom and trek back to Pokhara. It's a slightly easier variation of the trek because you've got more downhill than up.

It was a fairly easy stretch towards our destination for the day, Kagbeni. As Jomsom is a very critical location for the area (military, travel, judicial focal points) the road to and from Jomsom was probably one of the first to be completed. Consequently, our travel goes pretty quickly, and we're passed by several motorcycles (with and without extra passengers) as we go. We pass by a very interesting collection of houses, seemingly built out of the rocky crag of a mountain, and all the same colour of yellowish-brown.

The stone-filled basin.

While we could have probably taken the road all the way to Kagbeni, Bhakta preferred the scenic route of the stone-filled basin. Walking over the millions of mandarin-sized rocks filling the chasm floor is only a small challenge on the ankles, but the real challenge is coping with the boredom, as it takes a while for the scenery to change, and the path is invariably straight and flat. Bhakta tells me that if you're lucky, you'll find a fossil among the rocks. Indeed, this route towards Muktinath is regularly scoured by fossil-seekers, as they're particularly precious to Hindus of the brahmin (religious) caste. So, it turns out to be a great way to pass the time, convenient because you're already looking that way to avoid ankle-destroying stones. I don't find any, however, which isn't a surprise as the route to Muktinath is travelled regularly by pilgrims who have much better eyes for this sort of thing than I do.

As we round a gentle bend in the basin, the mountains reveal two settlements in the distance: Ecktabeni, the closer, and Kagbeni, actually set onto a plateau a few hundred metres up from the basin. Ecktabeni, by contrast, is at river-level, and it we would reach it first: we stopped for tea. The sun was high in the sky just before noon, but the weather machine hadn't really picked up yet: it was blazingly hot. Ecktabeni is a collection of lodges, a staging point between Kagbeni and Jomsom, which is a bit odd as Kagbeni is really only another hour away of fairly easy walking. An hour later we were walking into the outskirts of Kagbeni, passing one of the many contrasts you'll note in Nepal: lush, green, grass-filled terraces overlooking the dry rock bed of the empty river basin. As we approach the town, I can't help but note an odd zig-zag pattern scarred into the side of the mountain on the other side of the town; it carves a path from the base all the way to the top.

Kagbeni occupies an interesting position in the Annapurna sanctuary for tourists; it's the farthest north you can go with your ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project) trekking permit. Crossing into the zone north of Kagbeni takes you into the Upper Mustang province, which requires a separate permit worth USD$700. In addition you have to go with a licensed trekking tour operator, and you have to have a completing accounting of the gear you intend to take with you. When you come back, you have to go over the accounting again, and there are serious fines if you don't bring everything back - including your garbage. They take littering very seriously in the Upper Mustang, apparently. But for us, it just meant that our visit to Kagbeni was done with an awareness of which streets we could walk on and which we shouldn't. Even crossing the border by accident can incur a fine of USD$200.

Our stay in Kagbeni would be at the Red Lodge, so named for its choice of exterior colour scheme. Walking through the town to get there, we pass two shops that clearly know their target market: the first, a shop with a hand-painted 7-11 sign hanging proudly over the door; the second, a small restaurant named "Yak Donald's", complete with hand-painted golden arches.

We have to walk up six sets of stairs to get to our lodge, so by the time we get there, we're out of breath. But we're received warmly, shown to a room and told we can order some lunch whenever we like. When I mention that we'll have dal bhat with everyone else, she tells me that they have dal bhat for dinner in Kagbeni, not for lunch. It's just one of those things. The place has a very Tibetan influence in its furnishings and general decor (there are several pictures of the Dalai Lama): as you go further north, the proportion of residents of Tibetan heritage increases.

In one of those coincidences that can only happen when you travel in a small country, we run into Beranice and Monica in the Red Lodge (we met these two in Tatopani at our lodge there) and share some stories while waiting for lunch upstairs on the rooftop solarium (the Red Lodge was a bit fancier than some lodges). They tell us about their trek up the nearby mountain with the scar on it in the early hours of the morning to catch the sunrise. The scar, as it turns out, is a newly constructed walking path carved out by the hotel's owner and a friend of his. It's a long, and slightly dangerous ascent, given that the wind picks up dramatically as you climb and the path isn't really finished yet. But when you finally reach the top - 4,800 metres, by the end - you have an unparalleled view into the Upper Mustang. As they talk, I find myself wanting to scrub our plans to go to Muktinath and climb this mountain instead, but I also want to get to the end of our road in Muktinath as well.

Dust storms in Kagbeni.

The rest of our day is spent wandering around Kagbeni, doing some laundry, and marvelling at the approaching dust storms as the wind starts to pick up in the middle of the afternoon. We find a device that looks like a cross between a satellite dish and a mirror, aimed at the sun with a pot of water at its focal point: yes, it was heating the water, and the water was plenty hot. I asked Bhakta at one point why there wasn't more use of wind power in this area, given the extraordinary wind activity that occurs almost every afternoon. Apparently there are some issues with the "feast or famine" level of wind in the area when it comes to wind as a power source, but the real issue he decided, was that the people of Nepal aren't the greatest when it comes to technical maintenance. He cited a few examples of infrastructure investment in Nepal which had run down to ruin, owing to the lack of technical training to keep them running.

At dinnertime the guests of the lodge congregate in a hitherto-unseen dining room, complete with under-table heating, for piles of dal bhat. Amy and I are joined by Beranice and Monica, a french couple named George and Marie, and another Parisian named Julian. After dinner George and Marie retire for bed, but the younger set stick around. It's only a little while before some decks of cards are assembled and the rules for Racing Demon are passed on to some new players. In the end there were five players - our largest number yet: myself, Bhakta, Padam (playing with a helper), Tanzig (the hotel's owner) and Julien (who alternated with Beranice). It was fast and furious, as it usually is with larger groups, but great fun.

The next day we rise and head out for Muktinath, taking Beranice with us. Monica only has a few days to get back to Pokhara, so she figures she's got some long trekking days ahead of her on her way back down towards Jomsom. Before we leave Kagbeni we take a tour of a Buddhist temple, but no one can really translate for us, so much of the details of the place, while being clearly made with high quality craftsmanship, are lost on me.

Otherworldly blue.

We begin our ascent towards Muktinath. The trail is carved into the side of a mountain range, for the most part, so we get fabulous views over our left shoulders. I'm stopping every couple of moments to take pictures, it seems: but the sky is just so blue, and every look brings a different composition of mountain and sky. The mountains themselves are radically different than what we've seen so far: bulbous areas on top leading towards flat plateaus, and as they stretch downwards into a long valley, their walls have eroded into complex cave patterns. And the coffee brown against the royal blue of the sky is a colour combination you'd have to work pretty hard to replicate. My theory on the intensity of the blue colour of the sky is that normally, if you look straight up pretty much anywhere in the world, you see the same colour of blue, but it thins and lightens as your eyes drift to the horizon. So it doesn't look as impressive. But here in the mountains of Nepal, the horizon is masked by mountain ranges, so all you can really see is the deep blue.

Hard to describe, but it's quite something.

The trek upwards is more difficult than anything we've yet done, owing to the altitude: crossing the threshold of four thousand metres seems to be like adding a stack of bricks to my pack. It's a lot of vertical movement and it's extremely aerobic. Fortunately, Bhakta has been expecting this, and we take many breaks. As we get closer to Muktinath, we see something we haven't seen since the beginning of our trek into Annapurna: sales tables, replete with the same selection of Tibetan-style jewellery, scarves and paraphernalia. I would have died laughing if I saw a "I trekked all the way to Muktinath and all I got was this stupid T-shirt," but alas, none is to be found. We also encounter something we haven't really seen yet in rural Nepal: the hard sell. The sales pitch is the same: there are no tourists, we're hungry, there is no business, please buy something.

We stopped in Jokpath for lunch, which was surprisingly hard to find: the cooks had gone down to Jomsom for the afternoon. Eventually, Bhakta finds a lodge with someone willing to rustle up some dal bhat. Beranice, being on a much more open schedule than us, decides she's going to hang out in Jokpath for a few days. We say our goodbyes and head onwards to Muktinath.

A sadhu on the road to Muktinath.

The last bit of the trek from Jokpath to Muktinath wasn't so long, but it was a grind; it's a fairly steep trekking path, and what would normally be a slight bit of work is intensified by the altitude. But finally we were there, walking through a large arch welcoming one and all to Muktinath. We found a hotel, the Bob Marley Inn, a room and crashed. A bit later a stroll through the village: this wasn't going to be the place to buy souvenirs, as everything is a bit poorly made and too expensive. There's also a lot of hassle to buy, including being taken by the arm and having scarves thrown around your neck. These folks don't take "just looking" for an answer, and they've heard it all before. If you say you'll be back later, they try to extort a promise out of you to return. But despite it, it still wasn't as aggressive as some parts of Delhi.

Muktinath wasn't much of a stop, for us at least - for someone to whom Buddhism or Hinduism was important, this is a very significant place, with dozens of temples in the area, and two of the biggest in Nepal. But for me, the trek was more about the journey rather than the destination, and we were certainly afforded some pretty amazing views.

The Bob Marley Inn seemed to be pretty inactive in the low season, but it was fairly well populated. It must be a welcome sight for people arriving from the Throng La pass: lodges on the eastern side of the circuit are less cushy than the western side, and the BMI was certainly cush. A bit cold, owing to the season, but cushy. The under-table heating was welcome, and it was entertaining for a while to play racing demon in the dark (or near-dark) until the solar-powered fluorescent lights came on. With everyone staying at the hotel huddled into the two under-heated tables, it was quite cozy and familiar, and our game kept people entertained at our table.

We didn't visit the temples in Muktinath. We'd seen enough of the temples, and Amy had a headache that could have been aggravated by a further trip upwards. So we made our way back down, encountering many of the same vendors that we met on the way up. As we wound our way down, we barely had time to react to the voice of someone saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" before a mountain bike careened past us. We scattered to the side of the path to see a rider and a very expensive mountain bike blaze down the trekking path, the first of about six on a Himalayan circuit that actually took them over the Throng La pass. At that altitude it's got to be hell. I managed one acceptable photograph as we had precious little warning before they skidded past us, probably set off in intervals.

The rest of the walk back to Jomsom was windy and other-worldly: while we had timed our travel towards Kagbeni to take advantage of the still morning, we wouldn't be so fortunate on our return, as we decided to take a short cut and go directly from Muktinath to Jomsom with a short break at Ecktabeni. When the wind picked up in the early afternoon, we put scarves over our faces and hoods over our heads: I felt like an astronaut walking on the moon. It was especially comical to take photographs. It was a long haul but we finally arrived at Jomsom, trudged through the village and returned to the Anka Marco Polo.

There were lots of little things to while away the day. A brief walk through town, a hot shower. Beer and lovingly hand-made apple fritters. Eventually we reconvened with Bhakta and Padam and started a game of Dal Mara (so we would remember the rules) - and then the biggest Racing Demon game we'd played, with six in total. Utter chaos, but good fun chaos.

A chaotic morning followed: we awoke on schedule with lots of time to prepare for our 7:45 arrival at the airport (across the street), but Bhakta was at our door at 7 AM to alert us that the "airlines-man" had advised him that the plane was coming early and that we needed to be ready much sooner. It all happened very quickly - we had to hurry, but Bhakta seemed certain we still had time for breakfast. Our Tibetan bread had barely arrived when we heard the drone of an airplane and Bhakta said we had to go, now. Tibetan bread hanging from my mouth, we slapped some money in Bhakta's hands to pay the bill, lumbered across the street with our bags and sped to the departures lounge. It was then a matter of hurry-up-and-wait as we watched people get on board "our" plane, while we waited at the check-in desk. It turned out we were still scheduled for the second flight, that 7:45 would have been well sufficient, and we would never have made the first plane anyway as we still had to go through security.

Armed with this extra time, we got a chance to say some decent goodbyes and went back to wait for our plane. I'd love to tell you the full story of "going through security" but, the internet being the funny thing it is, it has some details that could get people in trouble. So I'll tell anyone who asks, the story, in person. Suffice it to say it left me shaking my head in wonder, and happily, no invasive body-cavity searches were required.

Our plane touched down. It was a small, twin-propeller job that held eighteen passengers and their luggage, and (as Ghorka airlines' literature glibly promised), "every seat is a window seat." Our flight back to Pokhara was an eyes-glued-to-the-window affair, with views of the whole Annapurna range from an unrivalled aerial perspective. It was amazing to think that the journey we had made on foot in seventeen days took us a mere thirty minutes by airplane.

Without much fanfare, we arrived in Pokhara. Pokhara is lovely and laid back, a small city with excellent weather, a launching point for excursions north into the Annapurna Sanctuary or south into Chitwan National park. Unfortunately there's a power cut between six and nine at night which puts a dent in nightlife, but there are a lot of generators in town to prevent too many tourist dollars from staying in tourist pockets.

We had a great, relaxed time in Pokhara: the city tends well to people who are looking to relax and spend a few dollars. It tends ever better to those who realize that the exchange rate between pretty much any major currency and the Nepalese rupee and the local prices make almost everything really cheap. So without too much of a dent in our wallet, we lived pretty well. I think for many people this is a major attraction to many countries in this area of the world.

We met many interesting people in Pokhara, and had a few fun days trotting around, but to give all the details would probably become pretty boring. So I'll choose one highlight: our hike to see Mount Sagarkot. On a clear day, Sagarkot is one of the closest peaks you can see from Pokhara, but you have to leave early because as the day heats up, a light haze fills the air, and visibility is dramatically reduced. We had some fuzzy directions from our guidebook, and armed with our intuitions, we set off out of the main road south of the city.

We made decent progress up the back hills of Pokhara, past people's houses and gardens, climbing ever upwards to get to a precipice from which we could see our last panoramic mountain vista. As we got further up though, we quickly lost our bearings as to which path would continue taking us up. We encountered several young children, each one offering to be our guide, for ridiculously low sums of money. We didn't want a guide: we wanted to do this on our own. For each we graciously thanked them, but said we wanted to go on our own.

We arrived at a point where the paths really didn't make any sense: they went directly into people's back yards, which we thought probably wasn't a good idea. Just milling around drew attention, and soon a child of around six years of age was asking us if we knew where we were going. We gave him the usual, but we didn't even get through our gracious denial before he shouted out something in Nepali, to his friend Basanta. I didn't need to know the level of Nepali required to know it translated as "Basanta! Tourists who want to see Sagarkot!"

This is how we met Basanta, a Nepali pre-teen who, along with his extended family, all live in the surrounding area. He was a really nice guy, and offered to take us to see Sagarkot: by this point I was willing to pay for a guide, but when I asked him how much he'd like to show us for, he replied, "some things you do because you feel proud of where you live, not everything is about money," which made me feel very small.

He then took us up a hitherto unseen path, which scaled the side of the mountain; he was wearing flip-flops and negotiated the track with no trouble, while us, with hiking shoes, were taking extra time. Walking these trails is something you clearly grow up with around here (the routes some of these mountain kids take to school will turn anyone into an athlete), and Basanta was no exception. The only time he paused to consider whether a particular path would be the next leg of the journey was to leap across a five-foot wide chasm on the side of the mountain: he looked at us and said, "I think this is too far for you, yes?"

We climbed further and further up his family's back forty, passing terrace after terrace: many had been planted with mustard, which had bloomed into a bright yellow carpet of flowers, some were left fallow with grass. He showed us a terrace that he and his youth group were expanding so that they could use it as a cricket pitch. He was very proud of the accomplishments made by his youth group: they had built a shrine, installed a water system and a welcome sign for their village, and their next focus was this pitch. Clearly, these kids aren't hanging out at the convenience store for fun.

As I began to wonder if we would ever get to a point where we could see anything but mustard, we arrived at the top of the mountain, which opened up to show us not only Sagarkot and its neighbours, but also all of Pokhara, spreading out before us. It was about eight in the morning and the activity in the city was clearly underway, with smoke rising from dozens of houses, and a light smog filling the air. Sagarkot was a more fulfilling view, interesting in that the haze had already begun, but from the ground up: the mountain appeared out of a misty base, along with the peaks beside it. We took pictures, promised to send copies to Basanta (we did), gave him a donation towards his youth group, and descended back to Pokhara

After our stay in Pokhara, it was back to Kathmandu by tourist bus. Our bus was set to depart at seven-thirty in the morning, so we woke early and paid our bill, and proceeded to the bus depot in the early, misty morning. The only reason Western tourists walk around in the early, misty morning in Pokhara is to catch a bus or a plane, so every taxi who passes slows down to see if you'd like to fork over some cash for a ride. We knew it wasn't far. We were walking.

We'd already figured on an empty stomach for the bus: we'd even bought a few small things to take with us for the ride. We knew there wasn't going to be time for breakfast. At least, this was what we'd planned on, but when the guy on his bike stopped beside us, with a platter of freshly-baked goods balanced on his shoulder, one look at what he had to offer told us we were in for a treat. Croissants, fresh from the oven; jelly rolls; cinnamon buns; you name it. All of them still steaming, and the price he commanded was a pittance, especially if you consider the mode of delivery. We bought a few and ate them as we walked.

And then realized that he wasn't alone, that other guys on bikes were making big dollars ferrying freshly-baked goods to the bus depot for the consumption of passengers. Ingenious. We were hailed by a guy as we arrived, who seemed eager to help us out and direct us to the right bus. He looked at our tickets and pointed us to a certain bus, which we boarded and waited. More guys came by with freshly-baked goods. The bus departed.

It must be a common theme among buses in India and Nepal: big, old, clunky, slightly uncomfortable, but workable. We settled in for a long, bumpy ride. We read, we lounged, I remarked how we must be taking a different route because I didn't recognize any of the scenery. We stopped at a roadside restaurant for a break. While there, I chanced to chat with a girl from Denmark, there to study for a semester at a university in Kathmandu (Denmark apparently has big ties to Nepal). It was only by turn of chance during our conversation that she let us know that the bus we were on was not going to Kathmandu; it was going to Chitwan national park, some four hours south of Kathmandu. As we headed back to the bus, we confronted the driver about this, who confirmed that we were indeed going to Chitwan.

Here is a lesson to be learned by one and all when travelling in countries where transportation systems are more "thrown together" than carefully regulated. Make sure you know where your bus, train or rickshaw is going before you get in. And in a case such as ours, rather than having someone tell you that this is the bus you want, ask them where the bus is going and then confirm that it's the bus you want. Because here's how the money flows in the bus system in Nepal: you buy a ticket from an agent, and then give your ticket to the owner of the bus. The bus takes you to its destination, and then the bus driver takes the ticket to the agent, who redeems it for a certain amount.

However, there's no incentive for a bus driver to be honest: all he wants is butts in the seats, and preferably, a completely filled (or over-filled as the case may be) bus. If we hadn't asked, he would happily have driven us to Chitwan and left us at the side of the road with no options. Informed of our problem, there wasn't much discussion, but a wavery committal that at the next stop - a larger town - he would find us a connecting bus towards Kathmandu.

And he did - a minivan, packed full of people - but staunchly refused to pay for our transport to Kathmandu. Not his problem. Legally, he's probably right - it's probably our responsibility to know where the bus is going. But that didn't help us from feeling pretty resentful towards the guy. The minivan was packed with fourteen people. There wasn't much room for anything but to enjoy the scenery. Conversation was slight. There was the fun game of waiting for the subject of payment to come up, and not wanting to give in too early. But we did.

When we finally arrived in the outskirts of Kathmandu, it occurred to us that in the smaller vehicle, we actually made better time than in the bus. However all of this was for naught, as we got caught in a nasty snarl of a traffic jam. Vehicles vied for position, but eventually, everything ground to a halt and we sat there for a half an hour, weighing our options. We could wait it out; we could get out and walk. Waiting was easier, however, we don't wait easily. Walking would have been more attractive, except we had only a sketchy idea of where we were. No one in the van could speak English, and even when we produced a map, it didn't really register to the kid who had taken our money for the tickets. Armed with a compass and a feeling, we got our bags and marched.

We marched for a while, but eventually, found some landmarks that inspired us with the confidence that we were marching in the right direction. However, we marched for an hour and realized that we were only a third of the way to our destination: Jonnche (a.k.a. "Freak street," so named for its hazy, hippy-era past). Feet started to complain, and we found a waiting taxi who agreed to take us to Jonnche for a very reasonable price.

We walked around the Freak street area for a while, until we saw a hotel that Beranice had recommended to us: the Annapurna Lodge. Four stories, reasonable rates, a decent restaurant and an attached bathroom: we were sold, and stayed there for the four nights prior to our departure from Nepal.

The next few days in Freak street were fun - even more fun than in Thamel, probably because there are fewer tourists in Freak street. We found a restaurant a mere block away from our restaurant - it had no name - simply because our guidebook had pointed us to a place that no longer existed. But this place served up the tastiest, cheapest Indian food we'd ever had, so we went back several times. I'm not kidding: we stuffed ourselves for the sum total of about seventy-five cents each. The best part was paying: we had to point out the items we had on the menu. This place doesn't deal in receipts. And then there was the place next door for dessert: a cake and pie place with drawings and paintings on the wall, preserved from the seventies. Cakes and pies to die for.

We hooked up with Bhakta again and he took us around Kathmandu. We did some more shopping, we had some tea, we said a proper goodbye. We shopped for gifts, we ate well for little, we saw some sights. We whiled away the rest of our time in Kathmandu. We decided to send a whole bunch of things home. This proved to be more complicated than we anticipated - isn't it always?

Our first stop was at TNT, an international courier akin to FedEx. They answered all our questions about international shipments and cheerfully told us it would cost us about two hundred dollars to ship our box - the cheapest option for them. Obviously reading the colour our faces had turned, he suggested that the post office might be a bit cheaper. He did help us out enormously, not just by filling in the blanks on many of our questions: but he also gave us a big box we could use.

Walking back along the crowded thoroughfares of Kathmandu to Freak street, with a five-foot by four-foot folded up box, was surprisingly fun. Not only do people look at you because you're from the west, but they look at you extra-long because you're carrying something weird.

We weighed the pros and cons of making two boxes or one box for shipment; Nepali post is supposed to be only partially reliable. We settled on one large box for everything and a roll of the dice. We packed everything in; we added stuff to protect our goods; we wrote out a list of everything. We taped it up. We went out to dinner, confident in tomorrow's postal task.

The next day we lugged our parcel down to the post office; it had rained, so we had swaddled our package in our pack covers. We were practically the first in line. The bureaucracy of the post office suggests why companies like TNT exist, to deprive the consumer of the giddy processes required to send a package from Nepal. The steps involved aren't indicated anywhere; it's learn as you go.

The first step was to tell the guys in the processing office what you wanted to ship, how big it was, and where you wanted it to go. We looked at our options: air, air express, or sea. I don't know the difference between the first two, only that it was actually cheaper to go air express, and no one could satisfactorily answer why you would ever choose the other. And while sea was less expensive, it would take four to six months. We chose air express. The guy I was speaking to gave an encouraging nod, and then directed us to take ourselves and our parcel to customs clearance, the second step.

At customs clearance, we were given a form to fill out. The form was, of course, in Nepali; helpfully, they supplied us with an English version of the form, laminated, with which we could divine the meaning of the boxes, and helpfully, which ones we actually had to fill out. We filled out the form, asked for some clarifications. Then the customs guy asked us to open up our box and show them everything. With internal reluctance, we cut through the four layers of tape, and showed him everything, item by item. They don't leave much to chance. But he was convinced that we were shipping what we said we were shipping, and then we were allowed to repack it and tape it all up again. He prepared a bill for "customs services rendered." But the best bit, worth absolutely every penny of the customs clearance experience, was watching an old lady sew up our package in canvas, and seal up the seams with wax. You don't get this kind of service with Canada Post.

We then took our package back to the processing office with the appropriate forms, to pay the bill and send our package on its long journey back to Canada. It was less than TNT charged, but ten times as entertaining.

The rest of our time was pretty much a blur. We cabbed it to the airport, where we waited in line for no reason at all until it was our turn to go; I made no less than three trips around the airport in order to do some last minute stuff like changing money; we met a really nice Aussie named Rosemary; we dined on dried fruit. We waited for our plane to arrive, and when it did, we got on and took a long flight to Thailand.

Nepali flat

After being turned back from our initial destination of the A.B.C. (Annapurna Base Camp) due to five feet of snow, I was feeling a little disappointment, but perhaps bit more frustration; it was a little hard to believe that snow was the reason, given we hadn't seen so much as a snowflake in our four days of trekking and during the day we were sweating and walking along in short-sleeves. But I suppose that means I was asking for it, because during our stay in Gandruk, we were plastered by a mighty hailstorm. So mighty, in fact, that the cold front blanketed most of the country, and for the first time in 63 years, a thin layer of snow covered the streets of Kathmandu.

We didn't see that, of course, as we were dozens of kilometres away in the northern mountains, but word spread like wildfire about the freak weather in the city. Conversations abounded and the weather was on everyone's tongues. In fact, it was so extraordinary that people stopped talking about politics for at least a day.

I'm certainly no expert about the political situation in Nepal, but in the days to follow we would come to learn much about the current state of affairs in the country, and just how frustrating it must be for the people that live in Nepal. By way of setting the stage, Nepal is home to some sixty-three separate ethnic groups, each with their own language, culture, and specific interests. The government in Nepal is viewed with unified distrust and contempt, owing to the high level of corruption and scandal. There is a royal family in Nepal, but a couple of years ago the prince took a machine-gun and slaughtered them, in a Hamlet-style bloodbath that rocked the country to its core. The line of succession was maintained, with a relative of the king assuming the throne, but given the high popularity of the former monarch, he's got very big shoes to fill.

Nepal occupies a piece of shaky terrain between two world powers: India and China. The only thing separating these two countries is the Himalaya mountain range. It's very difficult to ship goods in from China over the mountains (there are only a few mountain passes for road traffic, and they're subject to weather) so the majority of trade is done with India, to the south. However, Nepal is on the short end of the trading stick, having to import the large majority of its consumer goods from India, including its main import, petrol. There are no oil wells in Nepal, at least not yet, so if Nepal wants its gas, it has to come calling to India. And when India wants something from Nepal, it only has to hold its export contracts hostage.

And right now, one of the things that India (an officially all-Hindu country) wants, is some autonomy for citizens in the southern Nepal region known as the Tarai. These folks emigrated northwards from India, intermingled with the Nepali locals, and brought much of the local economy with them (ie., buying or building factories to make goods that are shipped back to India, all at a lower cost because the Nepali rupee has a much lower value than the Indian rupee). They have never been considered Nepali citizens, which is obviously a bit disconcerting for them, and they've been tending to riots lately to force the issue. They've also set up roadblocks on the small number of arterial roads leading to Kathmandu, blocking the flow of petrol from India. This tends to get their voices heard. Citizenship has now been made available to a wide variety of traditionally non-Nepali ethnic groups, in addition to the Tarai (one of the interesting things we would see during our trek was large picnics organized by small communities to help people fill out the paperwork). Even with this major concession by the government, riots, rotating strikes and roadblocks still continued while we were there, not just by one group but by many. People have figured out that the government is pretty much powerless to do anything but give in, and so many different groups are vying for local power, or at least, the appearance of doing something for their communities so they can gain support for the upcoming election.

The government is caught in a very difficult position; while it seems they'd love to send in the troops to restore law and order, dozens of human rights groups, and more importantly, international donors, are looking over their shoulder to make sure they treat everyone in a humane fashion. In a previous riot, force was used, and some Tarai citizens were injured and killed; the government was forced to pay large sums to their families.

So, the election, then. This is another hot-button issue that was on everyone's lips while we were there. If you read or watched anything about Nepal in the last couple of years, it was about the civil unrest brought about in the country by a political group inspired by Chairman Mao of China (hence, the Maoists). These folks have figured out that their government isn't really doing much for them, so why not have a revolution, Les Miserables style. Their guerilla fighters essentially hung out in the mountains and made life miserable for the government, gaining local support. They made life a bit miserable for trekking tourists as well, setting up "checkpoints" on popular trekking routes and asking tourists for "donations." The donations even came with a tax receipt, but one might consider a certain level of duress on the donations, as they were being asked for by men carrying assault rifles. So, after a lot of unrest, a truce of sorts has been reached between the Maoists and the government, with the government conceding a place for the Maoists in the political system. In the ensuing national election, the Maoists won a referendum, to the considerable chagrin of the then-ruling government. There were challenges; the king tried to get involved; there was much strife. In the end, the high court has decreed that a new election should be conducted, and everyone is still hammering out the rules for how this will happen.

Thus, it's a bit complicated. And by no mean should you consider the preceding to be an authoritative representation of how things actually came to be in Nepal: I've cobbled this together from many a discussion held in varying levels of English with Bhakta and several other people we met during our trek.

So how does this have anything to do with us, tourist trekkers in Nepal? Well the Maoists do still put up checkpoints, but they're more rare these days; they've officially stated that they now welcome tourists to Nepal, recognizing that tourism is a major source of cash for the country. But perhaps the biggest change for tourism in Nepal is the development of the road.

Recognizing the trade imbalance with India, Nepal has stretched its international relations as far as they will go and taken their development dollars to invest in a road that will link Kathmandu with China. The road, unfortunately, will be built over existing trekking routes, which makes sense as the trekking routes are pretty much the most direct points between A and B. So in five years, the trek we're currently doing will be gone, replaced by a road. Local economies - the trekking lodges - will fold up.

But, I digress. Hail in Gandruk, that's where I was starting this dispatch.

There wasn't a sunrise for our first morning in Gandruk; it was overcast. Since we'd scheduled in a rest day, we went back to bed. Luxury! When we did finally get up and have some breakfast, Bhakta took us for a walk through the town of 270 inhabitants. Gandruk, the original home of the Gurung peoples, is a Buddhist town; Bhakta as well, is Buddhist. However, people have moved away to the east of Kathmandu to practice a different, less-expensive religion. As religions go, Buddhism (at least, the type practised in Gandruk) is apparently quite expensive: by way of example, Bhakta mentioned that if a family member dies, the family is expected to hold a large ceremony complete with meals for the entire community. And I'll bet it's the same with weddings and births, as well.

The actual town of Gandruk has no real structure or organization to it: there are no street signs. The majority of the buildings are single-family, single-level dwellings, made from stone and mud with thatched rooves. When you're looking at a building with multiple levels, you're looking at a trekking lodge. You have this constant feeling of walking through someone's back yard as you ascend small stone staircases, head down back alleys, and walk alongside farming paddocks. Without a guide, we would have been lost.

When we came back, we had enough time to do some laundry before the heavens opened up and nickel-sized ice pellets started landing. It lasted for quite some time. Not quite conducive for laundry drying. It was very much an indoors day. For dinner, we discovered momos - kind of a dumpling-styled steamed spring roll - and why these haven't caught on internationally, I don't know. They're heavenly.

The next day, the hail has melted away and the weather has returned to normal; we head a little bit back the way we came to go towards Ghorepani, where we will link up with the most popular trek in Nepal, the Jomsom trek, so-named because it links Pokhara with Jomsom. It's actually the western circuit of the larger "Annapurna circuit" trek, which carves a circle around the entire Annapurna Sanctuary range and takes between sixteen and twenty-one days to complete, depending on how you do it. It's hallmarked by the legendary Throng La Pass, the highest walking pass in the world, routinely covered by snow drifts and usually quite difficult to cross. We wouldn't be going that way, owing to our less-than-winter proof clothing and gear.

As we walk towards Ghorepani, we do a fair amount of uralo-janni and ucalo-janni - climbing down, and climbing up. I'm struck by the farming terraces cut into the mountains. Essentially, if it's arable land, the Nepali people have cut terraces into it and cultivated it. They don't grow it all at once, rather, they use quite a smart system of rotating crops, allowing some terraces to go fallow while other bear produce. As the climate changes dramatically the further you ascend, one mountain side can produce an incredible variety of produce.

One of many Nepali children we passed on the route.

The trekking routes themselves range from stone pathways, created from huge eight-foot by two-foot blocks of stone, to muddy paths. The more impressive examples of road, we learn, are built and maintained by local community groups. In some places, you have to do some careful sidestepping, between waterlogged muck and animal droppings. There are some places you really want to have good balance, because a slip would be either dangerous or particularly disgusting.

As we progress along the trail, we encounter another small trekking party, Willem and Jolanda from the Netherlands, and their guide. We find ourselves walking the same direction, so we take turns passing each other during breaks, walking alongside having conversations, and dining and sleeping at the same lodges. We teach each other some card games and have a generally great time. We break up our trek to Ghorepani at Bhantanti, a very small (ie., five or six houses) trekking junction set in the base of a gorge, but tomorrow, it's a lot of climbing to the peak of a tall hill, then some downhill to Ghorepani.

The big attraction at Ghorepani is Poon Hill, where a five-o'clock ascent up the hill brings you to the highest point in the area, at 3210m and you are (hopefully) treated to a spectacular panoramic sunrise vista. If you didn't start the trek from Phedi, but Naya Pul, then this is the destination after two days of trekking, and you don't even see the mountains until Ghorepani. We met some other trekkers for whom this was the case: in addition, they had terrible weather (they trekked through the hail). So by the time they got to Ghorepani, they were very much looking forward to something to make all their travails worthwhile.

The trekking route to Ghorepani takes us through a fair amount of very packy snow, the kind that's perfect for building snow men. To provide some humour to our small band of trekkers I elect to slip no less than three times on the packed snow, as if to prove the point that my shoes aren't going to be taking me over the Throng La Pass. But we do arrive at Ghorepani, where the small (thirty buildings) town is in the midst of nice sunny thaw, and there is a fair amount of dancing as we have to jump from stone to stone to avoid the pools of water and slushy snow.

Despite the fact that everyone that has settled into the Mountain View Lodge knows that they're going to be getting up at five o'clock the next morning, the night actually goes quite late. We met a large group of Norwegians, who let their hair down and dance with the Nepalis; an Israeli girl named Tamar (whose name is surprisingly difficult to pronounce) who's just out of her military service and travelling on her own; and several Brits. Some have already seen Poon Hill and are on their way out, but for most of us, we're here for the sunrise, and it's not until quite late that everyone turns in. I should note that Padam is one hell of a musician, singer and dancer; his skills as a porter are clearly secondary to his other abilities. In short, he's fun at parties and I really wish I could speak more Nepali. He's generally just fun to have around, too; while we walk, he often sings some Nepali dirges (at least, that's what they sound like to me), and is able to make loud, high-pitched notes by blow a leaf held tightly in-between his thumbs, where he plays the same song.

The next morning, we're up by five-thirty for the walk up the hill: it's tricky in the darkness but there are no injuries, and we arrive to a dusty grey pre-dawn sky. There's an observation tower on top of the hill, giving one a spectacular vista view, and it is pretty good, except there is some cloud cover. In forty-five minutes the show is over as the sun makes its appearance over the mountain range, and eventually everyone trickles away. It's back down the hill for breakfast, and afterwards everyone goes their separate ways.

We head north towards the Jomsom trek and stop in Shike, on the way to the hot springs of Tatopani. The sky has been threatening rain all day and it does rain just after we arrive, fortunately for us. Germans at the hotel have been ruminating whether to go on to Tatopani, but as the rains come and go intermittently they decide to stick around and drink instead. Thirteen bottles later and I'm not sure what effect has been had on them. Amy and I play cards with Bhakta and Padam, losing fantastically at Dal Mara, but I think we're getting the hang of it.

We head on to Tatopani the next morning: it's a big descent almost all the way and there are some big suspension bridges to cross. Today we're not lucky enough to escape the rain, so we pull out the rain covers. As if to prove my theory about wards, it doesn't get any more rainy than a constant spitting. After a descent down knee-jarring stone steps that feels like a thousand metres, we come to the next suspension bridge only to find out it's been put off limits due to the road construction. This is why having a guide is so handy, as Bhakta just turns around and takes us down to the river to walk beside it for some time. It's a different kind of trekking, as there's little to no difference in elevation, and I find it's actually a bit more tiring as you can keep a constant pace that's perhaps faster than normal. As we walk, we pass fantastic vegetation: contrary to what our guidebooks have mentioned, Rhododendrums are still in bloom, a brilliant scarlet red flower that puffs over deep green foliage. They're definitely hitting the end of their season, but they're still pretty impressive. Bamboo trees the size of small office buildings loom on either side of the trekking paths, their shoots careening into the sky and bending in graceful rainbow arcs. Bhakta tells us that these plants grow extremely quickly, benefiting from annual harvesting.

We pass an odd stream on the way to Tatopani: there's a silvery sludge on the sides that I hope is sand, but it's really sludge. Ick. However there's a girl nearby selling oranges for a ridiculously low price, and they're absolutely fantastic. The recent snows have felled some orange trees, so there's a glut on the market. Good for the consumer.

A hedge plant in Tatopani. Prickly.

We finally arrive in Tatopani, a larger village than we're used to and it's clearly a bit more well-off due to the tourist influx for the hot springs. These are volcanic hot springs that are naturally quite hot and they don't stink of sulfur. Our lodge, the Namaste lodge, is well-run and the staff are friendly, and it turns out to be a nice place to have a rest day. We take to the hot springs the next morning and they're lovely; we meet an Australian living in Zurich and a five-person group containing two Quebeckers that have taken the long way around, over the Throng La pass, en route to Pokhara. We hang out a bit more at the hotel, take a walk to see an archery practice in preparation for an upcoming festival, as well as a cremation funeral held at the side of the river. We manage to get back before it rains, again.

By the time we're ready to move on from Tatopani, we've met a half-dozen new friends. We meet several women travelling on their own, who have decided to travel together: Beranice, a young woman from Toulouse, France; Monica, from Poland, and Josie from Morocco. While hanging around on our second day, we also meet Fred and Jasmin, two more lovely French Swiss that we seem to instantly get along with. I'm not sure what it is exactly about French Switzerland that produces such warm and charming people, but I'm all for it; my suspicions are that once removed from a somewhat conservative environment, they're partially starved for meeting new people. Anyway, they're on their way to Vietnam and southeast Asia and also don't speak much English. I marvel on how difficult this is going to be for them (I marvelled previously about this for Julien and Stépanie), but really, I guess we had the same problem in Portugal. It is indeed an adventure and when it works, quite rewarding.

I almost moved on from writing about Tatopani without writing about the feature which gives the town its name (Tatopani means "hot water") - the hot springs. The pool itself is quite large (at least thirty feet square, or less than ten metres) and has hot water poured into it. The water is then drained out with three small openings, with which you can take a hot shower. When we arrived in the morning, a massive layer of steam was being produced from the water, giving quite an other-worldly feel as we sunk our aching joints into the hot water. It was definitely worth the forty cents' admission.

After being thoroughly relaxed in Tatopani, it's onward, heading northwards, towards Ghasa. It's a fairly leisurely stroll and from what I recall, unnoteworthy. Ghasa itself is a pit stop and the hotel we stay at is one of two so-so ones. They don't have much of what they promote on the menu - we have french fries as a snack instead of one of the Jomsom trail's famous apple pies - but in the evening, the entertainment was supplied by the Canadians. We managed to track down some extra decks of cards, and finally are able to teach Bhakta and Padam a game I hope will sweep the nation; Racing Demon comes to Nepal.

Racing Demon is something of a family tradition on my mother's side and the source of many a raucously fun moment during my childhood. When we stayed with Mary Gordon-Cumming in the French Alps, a call had to be placed back to Canada for some rules clarifications from my mum. For those who haven't played: if you've played Solitaire (a.k.a. Patience), you'd understand Racing Demon. Imagine playing it competitively, and the more players, the better: the level of chaos increases exponentially. It's slow going at first (poor Bhakta and Padam would be absolutely smashed by Mary Gordon-Cumming, who shows no mercy), but as our trek progressed, these two card sharks would prove to catch on fast.

The next early morning we're on the road again, leaving Ghasa for Tukche. This time we have a recommendation for a place to stay: the Tukche Guest House. The trek between these two settlements is relatively uneventful, except for two exceptions. The first has to do with the road, and the second has to do with coffee.

The trekking route outside of Tatopani.

Where a year ago, we would have been walking on a path no wider than required for two donkeys to pass each other, now we found ourselves walking on newly-finished road sections, wide enough for two buses. These aren't finished roads; they're little more than earth and gravel, but they're buttressed on the sides with stone. More accurately, "boxes" of stone where the box is made out of heavy-gauge wire. The construction of the road is managed by the Army, and the actual work has been tendered out to local construction teams. Some teams are more efficient, or the work is more easy, in some places than in others; thus, we find ourselves walking on road here, and in other places, they're still chopping away at the mountainside.

I bring all this up because for the first time in the trek, we're sharing the road with motorcycles, which are a very new phenomenon in this area, and unlike Kathmandu and India, these drivers don't tend to use their horn every chance they get. Rather, you barely have time to bounce out of the way before it comes screaming past. The motorcyclists have started a good business in ferrying trekkers from Jomsom to Ghasa (or vice versa) either because they've been stranded, injured, or are just tired of walking.

And the second, to do with coffee: we have a tea break in a very small town called Dana, where I have perhaps the best coffee I have had since leaving Europe. On being presented with a tall glass of frothy coffee, I imagined for a moment that I was in a Spanish café; it looked very out of place, and I had to wonder if the Nepali who owned this lodge-slash-tea house had a very expensive Lily espresso machine in there. It was marvellous coffee - so marvellous I had to find out how the heck he made it. His presentation to me provided a wonderful example of how Nepalis can do so much with very little. In fact, rather than shelling out what would have been a small fortune for an expensive coffee machine, his method was to pour boiling water over instant coffee and a little sugar, seal it with another container and shake it like a martini until it was nice and frothy. Some café owners in France could learn a lot from this guy.

Arriving at the Tukche Guest House, the place indeed lives up to the recommendation, with a particularly fantastic view from the roof. The owner, Saumer and his wife are lovely and take very good care of us. We arrive a little later than we're used to, and as a result are hungrier than usual, but we're lucky that lunch was already well-started. Lunch is pretty much always Dal Bhat, the national dish of Nepal: steamed rice, and a lentil curry. Usually it's accompanied by one or two other curries, and just as you think you'd start to get sick of the same old thing again and again, you find that it's different from town to town. The dal bhat in Tukche is very nice - but then, the thing that usually makes dal bhat very popular, is that it's customary to get as much rice and dal as you like.

With regular power cuts from the grid, the people of Nepal have come to learn a lot about alternate forms of energy cultivation, and the Guest House is a good example, with a firm investment in solar panels meeting most of the energy needs of the house, as well as heating the water. As the sun sets we set ourselves up in the rooftop solarium for dinner and Racing Demon. Dinner consists of some very good momos.

Our destination the next day is Jomsom, where we'll confirm our flight back to Pokhara before heading onwards (and upwards) towards Muktinath. The walk is much more level than we've experienced so far, mostly because the path has been transformed into the road. We encounter on more than one occasion several work gangs, hacking away at the side of the road with pick axes and shovels, and work would sometimes come to a halt as the workers watched us pass.

While we've heard lovely things about Marpha, a settlement renowned for its apples, apple pies, apple cider, apple brandy (basically, all things apple), unfortunately we pass through at about seven-thirty in the morning, and only the cows and chickens are awake. We decide against hanging around for an hour and a half to have a brandy tasting at nine o'clock in the morning and choose instead to push on.

As the day winds on, we find people playing cards and generally having more fun than usual; turns out today is "Holi," a Hindu religious holiday. The highlight of this holiday is for people to walk around with bags of brightly coloured chalk and paste each other with the stuff. Apparently, in Kathmandu it's a heck of a street party, that very usually gets out of control as all forms of social barriers are removed. We meet some kids that very kindly offer to smear holi on us, which we graciously allow. We're celebrities. Bhakta isn't too keen on the idea (he's Buddhist, so he doesn't really follow the celebration) but I give him a good pasting.

Our new colouring has the effect of driving the kids (and to some extent, the adults) we pass on the trekking route, absolutely wild with giddiness. I'm reminded of my sooty christening in Rishikesh. When someone invites you to be a part of the local culture, I've found it's an honour.

On the other side of Marpha the landscape changes dramatically as craggy hills turn into small mountains, and we climb up the side of one to leave the Myagdi district we've been walking through, and enter into the Lower Mustang district. At the border we encounter the home of a family selling music in their shop, and as usual, the kids go nuts that we've been pasted with holi. We have some great fun chasing them around to spread the joy.

Since we've long since run out of things to talk about, Bhakta has been teaching us Nepali, and it's coming along: we can count to twenty, comment on the food, know some very essential words and the difference between up and down. We're still working on telling the time.

We walk alongside a winding trail en route to Jomsom, heading at times up and down, until eventually the path empties into a wide, desolate, empty river basin, flanked on both sides by towering mountains. The basin is filled with stone, and two small creeks of water that meander from side to side. Outside of monsoon season, the channels of water are spartan, and apparently they change their course capriciously. One season the rivers follow the left side of the basin, another year, they follow the right. Donkey trains are quite regular as we walk along, a monotonous, hypnotic trek as we walk along the straight and level, keeping our eyes on the path to avoid stepping on big knobby, ankle-destroying stones. But we look very small in contrast to the mountains that line the sides of the canyon, piercing the ground and heading straight up to vast heights.

Jomsom emerges from around an upward corner as we depart the basin. The flights are done for the day (they're done by nine in the morning as the weather picks up dramatically). The town is essentially built around the airport: an army outpost, an army mountain warfare school, a district police headquarters, and district court. It makes sense as it's a travel depot. We stay at the Anka Marco Polo hotel, which has clearly done quite well for itself as it is actually comprised of two hotels, one behind the other, the better one being out back where we decide to stay (attached bath, but the beds don't move, so we have to sleep a single). We confirm our flight, but unfortunately we have to leave a day early as the day we'd originally booked, the plane isn't available.

Amy and I stroll along the main drag, having conversations with army soldiers anxious to practice their English, and interestingly, French; one of the soldiers had a United Nations peacekeeping placement in Senegal, and learned some of the language there. They're all really friendly, and tell us how they spend their spare time on various projects: the latest one is the building of a small shrine across the road.

The night is filled with Racing Demon, beer, and momos; in short, a pretty great way to wind down after about five hours of walking. Bhakta and Padam are getting better, and as we play, we get a small crowd of people, interested in the game. I'm convinced there's going to be a Racing Demon revolution before long. It's got a lot of things the Nepalis like about card games, including:

• The ability to slap cards down on the table in an aggressive and meaningful way
• A healthy amount of competition
• A fast pace
• Infinitely debatable rules

Jomson as a town isn't much to write home about: the weather and wind pick up a lot in the afternoon, bringing a stinging wind through the main drag. We didn't have long to get used to it, as the next day we were heading further up into the mountains towards our destination: Muktinath.