Hello from Kathmandu - sorry it has taken us so long to get this blog off the ground but with only 4 hours of electricity a day, a million photographs to download and being cut off whilst we were on the trek this is the first chance we have had to write!

Luckily Simon was at the airport to meet me, and it wasn't difficult to spot the tall ginger bearded guy amongst the small and darker people of Nepal! As soon as we arrived at the hotel - which is an amazing 6GBP a night I realised all that I had forgotten about Nepal. No electricity ( there is a huge amount of load shedding which means there is only 8 hours of power a day - with 4 hours being in the very early morning so you can't use it), temperamental hot water (if you are unlucky it is cold showers all the way!), tuk tuks, tiger balm sellers, 'smoke' sellers, trekking touts,the smell of incense everywhere you go, and people perstering for you to buy things...

We only had a day to do sights seeing before leaving for the trek so we decided to walk to the nearby Monkey Temple, which is at the top of about 500 steps... I thought this was bad, little did I know how bad the trek was going to be. I was so exhausted that we had to get a taxi back(I think Simon felt sorry for me)...quite usual Sheena antics!

We then went to see the volunteer company VSN - who I volunteered through last time and gave them all the donations that I had bought over. As well as supporting local orphanges they are also in the middle of building their own second home - but need a lot more money. The positivity of Emma who runs VSN is absolutely amazing, she knows she will get it done, even if she doesn't know how.

Off to the trekking company to introduce ourselves to our guide - Ram and our porter Santosh. They laughed in histerics when we asked if they could organise a donkey to take me up the hill. Little did they know...........