Himalayas

So this week has been a little bit different than most out here. I still had class last week (and went to most of it), but I also had two friends fly down and we took some vacation and backpacked for a while. We traveled out to the deepest gorge in the world and spent two days getting through all of that. It was pretty amazing. On one side you have an 18,000 foot mountain rising straight up from the river, and then on the other side there is a 17,700 foot mountain. It honestly has to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. It was hard to actually hike the trail because we spent so much time looking around at the scenery. Also along the path there were tons of waterfalls and different surroundings at every turn. Because the elevation changed so much we would go from a forest, to a mountain forest, to rocky cliffs in just a few hours. It was a great time of getting to go out with some friends and just enjoy being in the wilderness.

After the two days of hiking the gorge we went and stayed at the bottom of the 17,700 foot mountain. Just to put the mountain in perspective, it would be the second tallest mountain in the United States, behind Mt. McKinley, and it is well over 3,000 feet taller than the tallest mountain in the lower forty-eight states. So it was pretty big and an amazing sight. We set out to climb the mountain on Friday and hiked about six hours up to Base Camp. While eating dinner at Base Camp one of the guys who came to visit started throwing up and had a serious case of altitude sickness. I guess going from 1,000 feet to 13,000 feet in just a few days is not a good idea. Because he was sick the other two guys decided to go down the next day and not attempt to summit with us. My roommate and I took off with our guides at about 4:45am on Saturday and reached the peak at about 9am. I wish that I was cool and could say that the climb to the top was easy, but it was one of the physically most demanding things that I've ever done. We started off taking breaks about once every twenty minutes and by the time we reached the top of the glacier we were taking breaks about once every twenty steps. It is crazy how much altitude can slow you down. We made it to the summit though, took some pictures and then headed back down to Base Camp. The trip down was much easier, however it still took about two and a half hours. At Base Camp we took a short break, ate some lunch, and then made the three hour hike back down to the village. Overall, it was a great trip; however it was incredibly exhausting.

So pretty much the rest of this week I have been trying to catch up on sleep (getting up at 3:50am to climb a mountain will really mess with your sleep cycle) and I've been working on school work. Class is continuing to go well and I'm finally starting to pick up more of the language. I can't really put together complex sentences yet, but I'm getting a lot closer. Hopefully that will fall into place soon. As far as other things going on, I'll be heading out of town on Thursday to spend some time down on a farm. I'll spend about a week there working on some agricultural projects and learning fun things like how to immunize pigs and plant soybeans and all sorts of useful life skills. So if I don't get this updated next week it is because I'm out of pocket and I'll make sure and add more once I get back.