The Himalayas. The largest mountain range in the world. My initial plan was to spend a few days exploring Kathmandu, then take a bus to Pokhara to do some serious trekking up to the Annapurna base camp from which you can enjoy 14 peaks at around 7-8000m (23-26,500 ft) and watch a spectacular sunrise at a place called Poon Hill.
When I was done in Nepal, the plan was to take a bus south in to India with Mumbai as the final destination for the whole expedition. Sadly, things did not go as expected. No more than a day or two after I arrived in Kathmandu, I started to feel rather ill. I had a cold that’d been coming and going every 2-3 weeks during most of my journey, and it escalated in Nepal which left me no choice but to stay in bed at my hotel. The biggest concern at this point was whether or not I had gotten Malaria, since the symptoms are very similar to a common cold. I managed to go to a hospital and get tested, and fortunately, the test results were negative. Phew!
After resting for a couple of days, I finally managed to get on the bus to Pokhara and checked in at an amazing hotel. A friend of mine had tipped me of about a hotel called Hidden Paradise just outside of town, and true to it’s word, the place was a paradise. Residing on the side of a big mountain the hotel had an astonishing panoramic view over Phewa Lake (see the last image in the slide). Unfortunately, this truly Hidden Paradise was the last place I got to experience in Nepal, or in Asia for that matter. On top of my cold, I had also gotten some type of stomach decease, so I never recovered during the week I stayed in Pokhara. I slowly came to terms with the fact that even if I started to to feel better, I would be in no shape to start hiking among the bigest mountains in the world. Furthermore, the more days I stayed in bed in Nepal, the fewer days I would be able to spend in India.
This was of course a huge anticlimax, since both Nepal and India was the the main destinations of this expedition. At this point, I had been alone in Asia for almost three months, and after spending almost two weeks in bed my health condition was getting worse. So, instead of spending my last two-three weeks in Asia climbing mountains in Nepal and traversing India, I was bedridden, and forced to make the difficult decision that it was time to go home.
