Day 1 - to Australian Camp

Carol spent another night not feeling too well but bravely appeared for breakfast and assured us she was ready to go. We were far from convinced watching her pick at her breakfast but as today was to be a short day we agreed to see how she went.

Our trek initially follows the Mardi Himal Trek but only as far as High Camp. From there we backtrack before diverting to Lwang and Kharpani to take in some of the local Nepal villages.

The van arrived complete with 12 porters - more commonly referred to as "the boys". They were being led by Hari who had led many treks for Mukti and also works for Intrepid. His off sider is Jonag who did the logistics for food and portering.

We needed 12 boys as we were doing a camping trek and had tents, bedding and food for 5 or 6 days to carry. The boys loaded our bags onto the already stacked van and we hopped in for a one hour ride to Karde. The boys had brought a Nepalese drum with them and entertained (deafened?) us with Nepalese trekking songs, including drumming and clapping, during the drive.

At Karde, the boys unpacked the roof of the van and set about distributing the load. Mukti assured us that they weren't carrying more than 25kgs and most of them less than that. Even so, some of them appeared to have quite a weight. While this made us a little uncomfortable we consoled ourselves with the fact that we were providing quite well paid employment for 12 boys to do something they really enjoy.

The path to Australia Camp was uphill most of the way but was reasonably easy. We did have the option of walking a few kilometres further but decided to use Australian Camp so Carol could rest up for the next day. Because Carol still wasn't feeling the best she stayed in the tea house overnight.

It turned out that this was a good choice as we could catch clear views of the Annapurna Range from the camp. This included Machhapuchhure (from now on referred to by it anglicised name "Fishtail"), Annapurna South and Singu Chuli. These were the purpose of the first half of our trek - to get to High Camp for close up views of them.

I'll mention them here once but for the next few days while trekking through the forest there were leeches - Sylvia's, and as it turns out, Steve's least favourite creature. The leeches particularly liked Steve and attached themselves to his boots at every opportunity. They also took a liking to Mukti's head and attacked him while he rested.