Merry Christmas!

Hello All!! I am back from the village now and starting to make my way south! Tomorrow I will go to Chitwan National Park and then possibly make a stop in Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddah before heading into India. I am still not sure where I will spend Christmas but I know I will be thinking of all of you! I miss and love you all and hope you have a wonderful holiday season! I dont have time to write about the village at the moment (it was INCREDIBLE!) but hope to get to it soon and post some photos as well!!! :) Lots of LOVE to everyone! :)

Above the Clouds

Hello All!!
Checking in again, this time from Duhlikel, Nepal! A little over six weeks in Nepal and I have slowly but surely become an expert at using buckets of water heated over a wood-burning stove to shower and using the "squat-style" toilets!
The last few weeks of my life have been filled with moments to remembered for a lifetime! After my last hike, I spent a few days exploring the area around Pokhara on a bicycle. I came across some tiny villiages in rural, picturesque settings and met some truly beautiful people. One village we went to was only accessed by pulling ourselves across a large river by a rope attached to a tiny raft! It was a lot of fun meeting some new people to travel around with and see some new culture of Nepal.
After discovering that a friend, Silvio, that I met last year in New Zealand, was also in Nepal, we decided to meet up and do a hike together. As i mentioned before, i really wanted to do the Everest Base Camp Hike but was worried that it was a bit too commercial and expensive. After talking to a few more people, I decided that Everest, along with a trip to Tibet (very expensive as you have to go with an organized tour) will have to wait until later in life when I have a bit more money! Silvio and i decided to combine 3 hikes together, which was supposed to take about two weeks. The first day was another very scary bus ride, which took TEN HOURS, even though it was only 73 miles! There was a few points where everyone actually got off the bus and walked because the road was so bad!! Needless to say we were very happy to be there when we finally arrived!! The first two days of the hike, the weather was terrible and we were worried that we were not going to be able to see any mountains. We decided to just make the most of it and enjoy the cultural experience of staying with the families in the villages along the way. I am still amazed by Nepal's ability to combine the old-fashioned way of doing things and using modern technology. Most of the small villages that still do everything by hand and cook over fire have electricity! It is very strange to see electricity poles running through places that felt so remote!
On the morning that we were to climb Kyrajin Ri, a 14,319 mountain (more like a big hill in Nepal!! :)), we woke up at 5 AM, when it was still dark, and it was PERFECTLY clear! It was amazing, the stars shining brighter than I have ever seen, a full moon, and the Himalayas glowing with their majestic whiteness. It was truly spiritual walking in the darkness with only the moon as our flashlight! We were part of the way up when the sun rose and shone its beautiful red light on the white peaks. On the top, the weather was miraculously perfect! Sun shining brightly and 360 degrees of Himalayan peaks...was one of the most amazing days I can recall. We stayed at the top for over three hours soaking it all in! The next part of the hike was to go to the Gossakund lakes, which are seen as very spiritual and holy lakes by both the Hindu and Buddhist religions. Every year, there is a pilgrimage to these lakes of over 200,000 Hindu people who bathe in the lakes. It was an amazing place to be! We even met and were blessed by a true “holy man” who has been at the lakes (over 14,000 feet so very cold) in mediation for 1 ½ years! It was pretty incredible. The weather continued to be perfect and allowed us to enjoy the lakes, climbing some peaks around them to get some stunning views of both Nepali and Tibetan mountains, and to climb a high mountain pass. After the pass, the weather got bad again, but we didn’t mind because it was so perfect for the important parts!!
Arriving back in the crazy city of Kathmandu was a bit of a shock to the system after 10 days of nothing but quiet in the mountains! Since then, we have made our way to the much quieter town of Duhlikel, where we have been doing a bit of relaxing, sightseeing and trying to keep warm! The winter in Nepal is fast approaching and it is getting very, very cold!
I am meant to start my volunteering in the village in a few days, which involves taking another long scary bus ride to Timbu, a village in the Helambu region and then walking the remainder of the way to the village I will be working in. I will be working in a Gompa (nunnery), teaching English to children and living with a Nepali family. It will be a very full on! Nepali families in rural areas eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner, use their hands both as toilet paper and a fork, and live in huts that are not exactly “inside” so it will be quite the experience!! I am a bit worried about the cold but I am sure I will be okay! It will be a real way of immersing myself in the Nepali culture (I have been practicing my Nepalese!) and I am looking forward to helping out in a region that is so remote!
After a few weeks of volunteering, I am sure I will be ready to RUN to somewhere much, much warmer! (India)
Until the next time….take care!! Love and miss you all 

Mountains, Temples and Dahl Baht

Hello! So, I am back from my very long (20 day)hike in the Himalayas! It was amazing! I met a girl here in my hostel, Rachael, and we decided to do the Annapurna Circuit Trek together. The trek is supposed to take around two weeks and I decided I wanted to add the Annapurna Base Camp trek onto the end of it, so I was planning to be out for about three weeks. The Annapurna Circuit Trek was named one of the top three in hikes in the world, winds through tiny Nepali and Tibetan villages strewn with Buddhist temples, goes over a pass that is at 16,248 feet and has a range of scenery unlike anything I have ever seen before. The Annapurna Base Camp Trek puts you in the heart of the Annapurna range, where you are surrounded by those white peaks I have come to love. Annapurna I is the 10th largest mountain in the world and lies at 24,273 feet.
Before you go thinking that I am really hard core for being in the mountains for three weeks, I'll tell you that I was staying in villages along the whole way, eating home cooked meals and sleeping indoors! I even had hot showers and electricity in a few places! So, it was NOT exactly the "roughing it" experience that I am accustomed to in the Rocky Mountains. The trek started out by taking a very scary bus ride to the start of the trek. The roads here are not exactly top notch, especially if you are heading to the mountains, and I found myself feeling safer riding on top of the bus, where you can easily jump off if the bus falls off the side of the road, which also happens to be a cliff leading to a very long drop to the river below. While on top of the bus, Rachael and I met the rest of our crew that we ended up doing the trek with. Together we were a group of five! Rachael, David, Phil, Yann and myself. We became very close throughout the trek and I was very glad to have such wonderful company along the way!
As I said before, the trek was one of an immense variety of scenery. The trek starts out in rolling green hills, covered with rice patties and tiny villages and winds its way through rainforests, dry forests, open areas that feel like the desert with huge mountain backdrops, to an alpine zone and then on the other side of the pass, there was an extraordinary vast openness, which made us all think of what it must be like to walk on the moon! A huge canyon reminded my of a mini-grand canyon and the whole time was a wonderful cultural experience. In the villages along the way, time seems to be at a standstill and everything is done the old fashioned way! Everything that needs to be brought to the villages is carried by people or donkeys! Quite a phenomenal thing to witness! The harvest of the fields is also happening at the moment so it was great to watch everything being done (and carried) by hand by the villagers. The temples were also amazing and one of my best experiences of the trek was watching the sunset over the mountains from a temple while monks were chanting in the background! Amazing! some of the villages remded me of tiny mid-evil towns, while others consisted of simple shacks and one reminded me of the type of place baby Jesus was born (and time frame)! Dahl Baht is the cuisine that we feasted on for dinner...it consists of rice, dahl (lentil soup), potato curry and pickel. It is tasty and filling and is refillable!
When the circuit trek was finished, my friends and I parted ways and I continued hiking for about two days on my own to the start of the second hike. Along the way, I met up another guy, Erik, who was doing the same hike as I was, so we ended up doing it together. This trek was much more physically demanding, as it consisted of going up and down, up and down, up and down on thousands of stone STEPS! yuk! It was hard going, but the top was incredible, with the most stunning views of the mountains yet! The sunsets and sunrises were amazing and we stayed at the top for a rest day with fantastic Himalayan views!!
Overall, the hike was incredible, both for scenery and an outstanding cultural experience. I also met and made some great relationships with my hiking buddies from around the world!! I could go on for hours with details but I will not bore you with that!! I just got back to town yesterday and I have spent the day today going through photos and relaxing...has been a great change from spending the days hiking and sweating!!! :)
Now I am still not sure what my next step is. I want to do some more hiking but I dont know which hike to do...there is sooooo much, as you can imagine! The Everest Base Camp trek is calling my name but I have heard that it is very very touristy and villages have been transformed into hotels...it is also very expensive, as you have to fly to the start of the trek! so I would possibly like to do something a little less popular but still not sure!!!
I am putting up a few photos, another day I will try to upload more onto a website so you can see more of a range!!
LOVE and MISS you all!!!

Goat is whats for Dinner

Hello all! Now I am here in Pokhara, where I have been for the last week. I am loving it here! The people are extremely friendly and hospitable and it is wonderful. There is a big lake here and the town is surrounded by the snow-capped Himalayas! It is stunning when you can actually see the mountains (a lot of times they are covered by the clouds!) It is a big town for tourists but I have been trying to get out of the main areas as much as possible. I have met some truly amazing people in the last week. For some reason I have not been able to sleep in past 6 AM since I have been here! So I start my day with yoga on the rooftop of my hotel, where I get an amazing view of the mountains! I then usually go on a walk through town, where I can see all the shop owners setting up their shops and food stands. By that time, some of the other friends I have meet are awake and we have been renting bicycles to ride around the area. This has been an amazing experience, especially because there is a big festival, Dasain, going on at the moment. It is the biggest festival in Nepal and it has been great to see everyone out celebrating and to learn about their customs. The festival involves the sacrifice of animals and it seems that most often it is a goat. We saw hundreds of goats being transported around...poor things haven’t the slightest idea what is coming their way! We even saw one having all this fur pulled off and being prepared to be cooked after it was beheaded!
Nepal has some amazing tea, and we were invited into a home to have tea along one of our bike rides! It was great sitting there with this little girl and her mother. They were very hospitable and proud to have us at their home. An hour later, we were being serenaded by two men with their little violins. Would have been even better if I could have understood what they were saying!! Yesterday we rode though tons of tiny villages all celebrating the festival with their families and ended up jumping in the river, where all these little boys jumped in with us and we had a splash war! haha it was great!
Now I am FINALLY leaving to go on a hike tomorrow! I am joining two hikes together, (Annapurna Circuit Track and Annapurna Base Camp)to total about three weeks of hiking! The highest elevation on the hike is over 16,000 feet! Will be the highest I’ve ever been :) You stay at little tea houses along the way, so no camping and I also don’t have to carry food since there will be food at the teahouses. We are not getting a guide or porter but it is a very popular track so we will be great! Very much looking forward to it!
Hope you are all doing well!!!


the picture are of the lake in Pokhara, me with a wonderful family we met who insisted on taking a photo with us, the view from the rooftop of my hotel, and the home I went to for tea!

Crazy Kathmandu!

Well I have arrived safely in Nepal! First off, I have to say, that I saw Mt. Everest, along with 4 other peaks, popping out from above the clouds from the plane!!!! Pretty stunning! When i saw that i realized the whole trip was worth while! So--Kathmandu....This city is nothing short of insane! Motorcycles, scooters, trucks, vans, cars, bicycles, pedestrians, stray dogs, pigs and cows all trying to share the same tiny roads going whichever direction they please, and honking at one another constantly! It is nuts! Despite all the craziness of the city, it feels good to be back on the road again, where $5 gets you food and lodging for the night, every bathroom is BYO TP, there are people from all over the world to be met and exotic food to be eaten! I am most definitely looking forward to getting out of the big city! Tomorrow I am heading to Pokhara, a smaller town where there should be good Himalayan views! I found some people to do big hike with, so in a few days I will be off into the mountains to do a hike that should take anywhere from 2-3 weeks. I am very much looking forward to that! I am also planning to do the everest base camp trek while i am out here, not sure when exactly but im sure ill get to it! Hope everyone is doing well!

airports are my friends

i am listening to some great music right now and feeling pretty excited about spending the next 2 days in airports. i love them! haha, i fly to Seoul and then to Bangkok and then on to Kathmandu! I will arrive (2 days later) on the SAME DAY that the biggest celebration of the year begins and lasts for two weeks! apparently most businesses close down so it should be very interesting! it has been a wonderful week spending time with family, although some of it was not on the best terms..it was still good to see everyone! i pretty much spent the last week eating good food and drinking good wine...so i really cant complain!

i wrote in my last blog about the volunteer organization i am going to be working for...i set up a fundraising page for the company because i think what they are doing is amazing! the proceeds of this go to the organisation, mostly for medical and school supplies, not to me! a very little bit goes a long way in nepal. if you are feeling generous, check it out at http://www.justgiving.com/Dana-Thompson0 if not, no worries!!

love and miss you all :)

On the road again...

I'm leaving the U.S. again so I am back on the blog-wagon! I am hoping to keep it up a little better than last time!! We will see how it goes :)
When I arrived back to the U.S. from Southeast Asia, I told myself i would be on another international flight within a few months....well, that was about 11 months ago! It is hard to believe how fast time has flown by! Although it was much longer than anticipated, I have had a wonderful, constructive 11 months back in the U.S. I spent some time back in California, reuniting with family and friends and saving some money for my next big adventure. It was great to be surrounded by familiar faces again! The time with my parents, grandparents, siblings and of course friends was much needed. The last 3/4 months I have spent in Durango, Colorado, a place I am absolutely in love with. I have spent the summer hiking, rock climbing and getting to know some very amazing people. Colorado is without question one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. You could spend a lifetime in the mountains here and still not see everything! This town is everything I could want in a place to live...and I will be returning here when I get back!!
So the exciting part....yesterday I booked my one-way flight to Nepal! I will be flying into Kathmandu on the 26th of September! I was sure to pick a flight that gets in during the day so that I get the view of the Himalayas from above...I think that veiw alone will be well worth the trip! My plan for when I get there...well, is to have no plan! I am going to get a 90 day visa in Nepal, and plan to do some hiking in the mountains (of course) and just to experience Nepalese culture and food. In addition, I have found a volunteer organization that I will work with while I am there. I will spend some time in a tiny village teaching English and working on organic farms. I will start my volunteer work sometime in November, so I will have over a month to travel and hike around Nepal. The village I will be working has no roads, so to get there, I will take a bus to a certain point and then walk an additional 1-6 hours (seems like quite the difference)! I am excited about that. I will live with a host family in a home with no electricity or internet or phones. It sounds amazing and I am really looking forward to it! If you want to know more about the program, you can look on the website at http://helambuproject.org/about-us/.
After Nepal, I plan to visit India and am thinking about Tibet but have no actual concrete plans...imagine that! :)I am not really sure how long I will be gone this time, I am going to play it by ear and either come home when I am almost out of money or take a teaching job somewhere in Asia! Again, the plan is to have no plan!
Hope everyone is doing well and for those of you in the U.S. please give me a call before I go if you want to get together! I will be flying to California on the 19th of September!