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Blog 119
Day 5 - For over a month I've had a ring burning in my pocket, I've had it burning in my sock bag and in my mozzie net, and just about anywhere else I thought Jo wouldn't rummage. But the girl likes to rummage so it moved around a lot. At one point I was quite sure she found it and sneakily put it back, but she promises otherwise.
Anyway, on Halloween at 4am, 3 hours beyond the witching hour, we woke up from a few hours sleep to minus four degrees, clear milky way skies and Machhupuchchre standing above us, white in the light of the moon and stars. A slow plod in the dark, the clank of walking poles the only interruption to silence, we made our final assent to reach Annapurna base camp which stood 1200 feet and 2 hours walk above us.
Just as the sun rose and turned the sky light blue, casting a halo of light around the fishtail I set up a self timer picture to capture the moment. Jo stood 10 metres away positioning herself calmly. I was a quiet bag of nerves, and as I pressed the button and saw the camera count down from 10 my heart was going crazy (at this altitude it was already over 150bpm).
Long story short...I rummaged for the ring, got down on one knee, asked Jo to marry me and in that many words, she said yes, we have a self timer picture, the sun came up a bit more and I had proposal snow on my knee. Happy days!!
We celebrated at the top with incredible views in every direction and a nice cup of earl grey. Feeling elated we headed down to MBC base camp for breakfast of Tibetan bread and eggs before machu poochie showed up (the 3rd best dog in the world) to celebrate with us!
Today we headed down the valley for a mammoth eleven hour day. Dal baht and Tuborg for dinner. Prices heading down too thank God! Shattered and emotional it was bed at 7 for a warmer nights sleep.
MBC 3700m to ABC 4130m to Lower Sinuwa.
Bryn x
Day 6 - First thing I did when I woke was check to see if what I dreamed was actually real. It must have happened... The ring was still there! "Morning fiancée" (I don't think that will run dry for a while).
Today was a shorter 8 hour walking day, although probably the most achey after yesterdays 11 hours of fast pace trekking. Leaving the snow capped peaks felt sad and only made us want to get back to Pokara all the more quickly where we could see them again from a distance. But also the state of euphoria over yesterday's happening made the pace somewhat faster as we began to discuss wedding plans for our 'one day' wedding!
Another topic of conversation on the way down was our dream meals if we could chose anything right now. Bangers and mash, jacket potatoes, prawn papadelli and pizza all made it up there. Pizza was probably the only reliable one of these meals in Pokara, so pizza it was going to be tonight. As you could probably guess, we were fully sick of Dahl baht and rice/noodles.
Walking with our Indian friends, on and off and after finding out they were going to make it back to Pokara today we decided to join them.
Finally reaching the village where we could get the bus from at 4pm we boarded the last bus of the day, and took the only remaining seats... The back row. Pretty understandable why the locals wouldn't choose 'said' seats on the rocky mountain pass we were on. Travel sickness tablets weren't even a second thought before starting the rollercoaster bus ride and near death experience.
1 hour into the bus ride and after realising that the bus was going to take us 4 hours rather than the 1 and a half hours it took us in a taxi, it was a mutual decision to jump off the bus at the main road and find ourselves a taxi to avoid the travel sickness and fastrack our pizza date! 6 squashed into a Peugeot 206 taxi was just about doable when we realised pizza and beer was awaiting us.
Too tired and exhausted to speak to family and tell them our exciting news that night we planned our Skype dates for the following night and by 10pm were sleeping soundly, warmly and comfortably.
Lower Sinuwa 2260m to Nayapul 1060m and then onto Pokara.
Love Jo x
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