Update from Chame

Hi Folks,

Here's a quick update, I won't be on for long as the internet is really expensive here (10 rupees a minutes, not sure what that is in English money at the moment). Internet appears to be by satellite connection here for you sad people.

We are 4 days into the Trek and its anything but easy, rucksacks are extremely heavy, yesterday involved navigating tiny steep and muddy tracks left after avalanches, of which there are a lot, including one house completely flattened by an avalanche. We're at about 2670m at the moment and the altitude is only just starting to kick in. Today we've seen the first of the really big mountains, which we think is Annapurna II at 7937m which looks fabulous with its snow covering. Our highest point is going to be the Thorung-La pass at 5400m in a few days time so we'll be spending a couple of days at Manang further on to aclimatise.

We've had a couple of money issues earlier (a small Nepali child has just picked my pocket a few mins ago! Luckily someone saw and got the money back, little bugger. We've also cleaned out the local bank a bit early trying to change enough money to keep us going until we at least get to a proper town.

We've passed a variety of settlements, some really quite westernised with solar showers, nice gardens etc and some that are very shacklike and poor, the scenery is absolutely amazing in general.

Gotta go, its not cheap here, can't say i'm missing work one bit... Look at the link to Rich's pics, as he's just attempting to upload some.

I've just uploaded 3 pics very quickly, maybe more later..

chris