Trekking Day 1 (of 2)

Today I trekked from Phedi to a place called the Australian camp. My guide and I started at an altitude of 1100m/3600'and hiked uphill almost the entire time to an altitude of 1880m/6170'. Total hiking time was less than three hours (although we stopped for lunch so the total trip took about 4.5 hours) and involved climbing the equivalent of 226 floors, taking 13,415 steps and walking a little over 5 miles (according to my iPhone).
The first hour was the toughest because it was nonstop stairs (the stairway was made of large rocks). Unfortunately, the clouds hid the Himalayas from view excluding a brief glimpse of some of the peaks on the drive to the trail head (of which you can barely see part of the peaks when we stopped for a quick picture).






The second picture was taken at about the 1/3 mark of my trek this morning. You can roughly see how far I'm already above the river from where we started.





Probably the most interesting thing that happened today was when a group of Trekkers who were going in the opposite direction and had come from the Australian camp reported finding blood sucking leeches clinging to their ankles or in their shoes. Apparently leeches can squeeze their way through the stretchable weave that is common on many running or hiking shoes and also through socks. One woman told me she saw the leech just as it was burrowing into her shoe top. Needless to say she freaked and quickly ripped off her shoe and sock and pulled the little blood sucker off.
Tomorrow we will do a longer trek and hopefully get a better view of the Himalayas (if the weather cooperates) while also doing our best to avoid long wet grass where leeches like to hang out until a juicy meal walks by!

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