Somerville House Team A - Nepal Update # 2

A post trek update from Team A over in Nepal
Namaste everybody!
We have just returned to Pokhara from our exhausting 9 day trek in the Annapurna ranges. We're tired and dirty but 'happy, healthy and hydrated' as our welfare leaders made sure we were every day. The trek was so much fun! Our days entailed being woken up every morning at 6.15ish by our lovely sherpas with a hot cup of tea, a yummy breakfast usually set to the backdrop of snowcap mountains, a 3 hour walk before we saw the saving grace that was the orange tarp that we would eat our lunch on, a nap after lunchtime, and a one or two hour trek in the afternoon before we arrived at camp and were served tea and biscuits by the cooks.
A major theme that ran through our trek was definitely the food... whether it was our discussions about our cravings for Western food (namely a cheesecake for Ellie and a baked chicken for Rachael) or the debates about what lunch we would get that day (favourites included sausages, chipati bread and the amazing day when we were served hot chips).
Throughout the 9 days our group bonded well together, but most of all we bonded with our sherpas, guides, porters and cooks - especially Karma, Lakpa, Dr Chhiring and the two beautiful cooks who taught us how to say 'meeto' (delicious).
Highlights throughout the trek for us included an amazing festival of colours and sounds that we coincidentally stumbled across on the 3rd day, our trip to Poon Hill which had amazing views of all the mountains, our singing and dancing finale on the last night with all the guides, and the simple pleasures of saying 'namaste' to everybody that walked past us. A particularly memorable night was the 5th night when we camped in a valley in -8 degree temperature and participated in a wonderful camp fire and singing session with all the guides.
Everybody has definitely developed 6-packs due to the amount of laughs we have had throughout the last week and a half. The constant jokes and singing helped us immensely to get up the tough hills or down the steep ones - favourite songs included 'Baby' by Justin Bieber, an ABBA singalong and the Kim Possible theme tune.
We will miss a lot of things about the trek - the lovely Nepali people, Karma, Lakpa, the delicious food, Alby's walking poles which doubled as light sabers, and the 55-minute Uno games in Laura's Love Nest... but we are excited to begin our community project on Sunday after a rest day in Pokhara.

So dirty that it looks like we developed crazy good tans,
Love from Team A