Dear all,

It has been 3 weeks since the last update - in that time we have been sweating a lot and lost a few kilo's! In 17 days we have completed the famous and popular Annapurna Circuit trek, with highlight crossing the Thorung La pass at 5416 metres! Every day we saw differetn landscapes and different people, making it a very diverse trek. Going upwards to the pass was slow, to give us time to acclimatise. As the day neared to go over the pass, we woke up at 3 am to start walking at 4 am to avoid the possible strong winds. Luck was with us though, we had perfect sunny and quiet weather. Roberto struggled the last hour up the pass because of the thin air, but was the perfect mountain goat again going down. Once we were over the pass we had to descend 1600 metres, which took us 3 hours. THank God for walking poles because otherwise I would not have made it! The 17 days were fairly painless and not too hard . We met lots of very nice and interesting people and ended up walking with an American called Adam and 2 other Dutch ladies Ellen and leonoor. We saw some very lovely villages and made tons of pictures we hope to upload soon. However after 17 days we were very happy to be back in Pokhara for nice comfortable beds, endless hot showers and lots of nice food! The plan was to have 2 nice quiet resting days but we ended up walking a lot still. We found a very nice and secluded Yoga Ashram on a hill outside of Pokhara where I went to stay for 3 days; lots of meditation, yoga practice, mud baths, steam baths and healthy organic food, while Roberto wanted to have his adrenalin pumping so he went rafting for 3 days. He came back with big arm muscles and the wish to do more serious rafting as the category 4 river was not wild enough! Now we are both knackered and do our best to relax and do nothing! Quite an art really...

Hope you are all well and hope to hear from you soon!