ABC...as easy as 1, 2, 3...

and 4 and 5 and 600 and the rest of the bloody metres we had to walk up and down to reach Annapurna Base Camp! But it was amazing when we got there. More of that later. After a week of watching as the Maoists tightened their stranglehold on the people they allegedly said they were trying to help, witnessing threatening rallies, demonstrations through the streets with sticks on fire and stories of breaking windows, destroying vehicles and attacking journalists we decided to get the hell out of Pokhara.

This meant home or a trek so as we were in the mountains we decided on the latter. It did mean that we would have to walk two days to get to the start along the road but I saw that as a warm up. We hired a porter and guide. To be honest we didn't really need to guide as Tony even started telling him which was the best route, but we decided on reflection as well as helping him to avoid 16hrs a day working in a kettle factory in Malaysia, he also acted as marriage mediator. With the guide: 'OK let's go this way our guide knows best, or perhaps a different route, I like your alternative Tony, and no problem Tony if you want to skip ahead, my guide is with me to break my fall as I slip down a crevice between two rocky outcrops. Without guide: 'Are you sure this is the right route? But how do you know? I know you can read a map but you've never been in the Himalaya! I told you we should have got a guide! I can't believe you're making us walk this far! I thought you said it was only.... and so on you get the drift. But happy days we got the guide and he soon became known as my shadow, you won't see a pic of me without him unless he took it.

So as you can imagine to get to the bottom of one of the highest mountains in the world (Annapurna is over 8000metres) you have to do a lot of walking up. Iknew that!!!!!! But I just didn't appreciate HOW MUCH walking up I had to do. In fact we had to climb 3000 metres but in order to do that we had to walk up and down 6000 metres. Yes, just as you felt that you couldn't walk up another step (the trail consisted of a lot of steep steps) but you felt proud of yourself that you'd achieved the top of a steep climb and knocked off a few hundred metres, you hoped to look out over a flat bit only to find that the bloody path went downhill again - all those metres gained were to be lost. And if they were lost you knew that this meant that they had to be climbed again (see earlier about base camp being high up - 4144 metres to be exact). I had a meltdown on Day 2 - I felt I couldn't go another step and suggested to Tony he went on his own to Base Camp (not an option). So I gave myself a serious talking to (mainly consisting of: 'It will be such an achievement" 'Who cares?' 'I can do it - I trained for it' 'What a couple of days in Dulwich Park' 'I'll let myself down' 'Yeah right'. And so it was on Day 3 I got up knowing there was another huge ascent but determined to get through it. And I did by striding on ahead ALONE while Tony and guide lagged behind (on purpose) - my only way of doing it was to imagine I was really fast and had to stride ahead while they couldn't catch up. It worked and I was so happy I did a little performance of 'The Hills are Alive...' much to the bemused guide and porter.

After that it was hard but fine. Oh and the views were spectacular. We got up at 5.30am every day to look at the mountains and set off at 7am. We walked about 5 hours a day then settled down in our tea house to watch the inevitable rain, chat to other trekkers and eat dal baht and drink Coke. The final push was to Machhapuchhare base camp at 3700m - it was a steep climb of 1250m that day - a killer. Apparently you can get altitude sickness at 3500m so of course I thought I had it once we got to MBC - well, I had a headache. And it was FREEZING but Machhapuchhare (Fishtail) was also majestic, moving (not literally) and Mahoosive! Then we got stuck in a hailstorm - great big lumps of ice that could knock you out I kid you not. So once in the dinning (sic) room we huddled under blankets, drank black tea, learned about the tetris mountains and life for a 20 something in Newfoundland and went to bed at 8pm. Well we were getting up at 4am to make our final ascent to Annapurna Base Camp.

I had struggled to walk on these treacherous paths in full daylight, so i was not looking forward to starting off in the dark with just a headtorch but luckily I had my brilliant white raincoat on so that added extra light. And in no time at all the sun lit up behind the peaks and gave the sky a brilliant orange glow, against which an amphitheatre of mountains revealed themselves to us. And suddenly all the steps, the trips, the falls the bad dal baht didn't matter at all because at last we reached the reason we had started this trek to surrounded by these awesome (with a capital 'O') mountains. For Tony, it was something he had read about for so many years, he knew the names of every peak (which was more than the guide did) and it was a culmination for him of all those stories of intrepid mountaineers who had attempted and succeeded and failed to climb these seemingly impenetrable peaks. Then we had pancakes and tea for breakfast and walked back down.

Of course the walk back down was harder, because we didn't have a goal, well we did: to enjoy every moment but also to get back to a pizza and beer. So it took us 7.5 days which we thought was pretty good going. Some people were up there for ages taking their time and maybe if we had been on our own we would have stayed longer, but we were feeling that we needed a bit of space from our guide and also needed to feel warmth in our bones again.

Now we are back in Pokhara, I feel ecstatic that this is the biggest physical challenge I have done. Saying that, I won't be doing it again (I know my limits) but it has made me realise what I can make this 46year old body do if I put my mind into it. As for Tony, Everest Base Camp for him next.... he was like a little mountain goat bless him. Pictures to follow as always.