One thing we see a lot of is news about people climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for charity. After a while, they all blur together. Then we see something like this: A man climbed Kili with a 9-foot stuffed tiger on his back.
We read on, and we see that there was more to it. For one thing, the tiger weighed 30 pounds, and a few days before climbing Kili he had carried the thing on his back in a marathon in England.
And what does one do after such a doubleheader? Go run another marathon, of course. He went back to London and ran that marathon, as well. Yes, carrying the tiger.
Why, you might ask. For charity, of course. And we must admit, it works. The man got our attention, and we shall now direct yours to his charity: helping Friends of Conservation protect Bengal tigers in India.
There’s been much talk of happiness and Bhutan recently, after the United Nations hosted a conference on the topic in New York.
Now ABC News has done an extended piece on Bhutan and the idea of Gross National Happiness. View it here. It’s excellent; you’ll get a good review of recent history (no currency until the 60s, no television until 1999) up to the nightclubs and Lady Gaga fans of today.
There is some TV-style cheese here, and you might want to smack the reporter once or twice, but the images and sounds are beautiful, from the streets of Thimphu to the monastery at Punaka.
Just remember, as always: learning more about Bhutan will make you want to go there!
Trekking in Mustang is like being at sea, only with more dust. There’s an endless spaciousness, punctuated by cathedral columns, crumbling cliffs and towers of rock.
In the rain shadow of the Himalayas, north of the Annapurna range and south of the Tibetan Plateau, Mustang has been part of Nepal since the late 18th century but has more in common with Tibet, which surrounds it on three sides.
Alluring, no? We found these lovely descriptions in this article from an Australian newspaper, describing a two-week trek to Upper Mustang. It goes on to say that only about 2,000 trekkers visit Upper Mustang each year, which it calls “a drop in the ocean of 70,000 trekkers visiting Nepal every year.”
Read on, and you’ll come across more fine prose like this:
Then there are the villages – green and lovely oases such as Ghami, where we stop for lunch on day four, which is all autumn-leafed poplars, white-walled courtyards, fluttering prayer flags and pink hollyhocks.
At Embark, we dream of places like Mustang – wild, remote places with fascinating culture and history, not to mention amazing beauty and fantastic trekking opportunities. Our Mustang trek “More Tibetan Than Tibet” is a perfect introduction to this high, lonesome place.
The attention of the world was certainly focused on Haiti just after their disastrous earthquake in January, 2010. Sadly, much of that attention has moved on, but not here at Embark. Ken Stober, whom we call our Lead Explorer, is in Haiti right now, helping install computers and Internet service in rural areas.
An example: he and his team came into a school that had no power, and in six hours they had installed solar panels, computers, and wireless internet. Good work!
Read all about it over at Ken’s blog, Travel With Ken.
The Toronto Sun has a story that captures the essence of how we like to travel in Nepal: Homestays in a local village.
We at Embark love adventure, of course, but a big part of what we do is interacting with the locals on a level most tourists only dream of. We also believe in the places we visit and make every effort to give back to the local community.
In this case, homestays give visitors a chance to, as the story puts it, “stay with locals, eat locally grown food in their kitchen and even cook meals yourself.”
“We live like a family sitting and eating together with the guests. We discuss even personal matters and crack jokes with them as friends,” one man said.
Their motto is ”‘Come as guests, go as friends.” Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
The best part is, in the village profiled in the story, only 400 of the 11,000 homestay guests last year were non-Nepali. What an opportunity to really see the local culture on a personal level!
So good for the folks in Ghalegaun, and thanks to the folks at the Sun for telling is about this.
We do love sitting around looking at pictures of beautiful places like Nepal. If we can’t be off climbing or trekking in the Himalayas, at least we can lose ourselves in images of that beautiful country.
In fact, here’s a stupendous collection of photos of Nepal right here. Scroll down a bit, click on “Launch Slideshow,” kick back, and prepare to be amazed.
But let’s say you want to travel to Nepal and take your own pictures. A fine idea, we say. We can help with traveling to Nepal, and this fantastic website has advice for photographers going there. We’re not necessarily photography experts, but if that site can help you take photos like the ones on there, you’ll be good to go.
Just make sure you share some with us when you get back. We do love pictures of Nepal …
Embark Adventures is so excited to be offering treks and cultural tours in Ladakh, and here are a couple of sites that will show you why.
Two very talented photographers have posted some images of Ladakh. One of them went in the winter time, which might not sound like the best time to be in the high mountains of India, but we offer you the Frozen River Trek to think about, or you can just go see this guy’s amazing photographs. We love it when talent meets beauty.
Another very talented photographer, Ramona Singh, took another view of Ladakh during her trip: she focused on the young monks of Ladakh.
Natural beauty and ancient culture: that’s why we love adventure travel, and places like Ladakh in particular.
