Wow. We have done so much in these last few days. Surya, our local guide, has been awesome. He has spent almost every minute of every day with us and has taught us much about Nepal that we would have never known.

We spent our first day and a half here in Kathmandu and then went to Pokhara, about 200km away. Of course, that doesn’t sound so bad, that’s only about 120 miles…well it took almost six hours! Traffic is pretty rough and the roads even rougher. Fortunately, driving through the Himalayas is a bit more intriguing than a drive through Kansas so it wasn’t so bad. It’s really breathtaking. We are so thankful for the opportunity to visit this paradise, such a powerful place to experience the immensity, magnificence and beauty of our Creator. No photos can do it justice but I’m pretty happy with the images we came up with.

We were in Pokhara a couple of days and we made a climb up to the Sarangkot, a great place to view and photograph the Annapurna Mountain Range at sunrise. It was an intense hike, and we didn’t know how intense it was going to be. We wore our jackets which made it even warmer and my pack when fully loaded we figured is about 55 lbs so it can be quite the workout. 

I haven’t assembled all the panoramic shots yet but below are a couple of the images that came from that viewpoint Sarangkot. If you click the image, it will take you to a full screen slide show displaying these images and many others…

We also decided that while were in the Himalayas, we might as well go paragliding! So we set up a cross-country flight and took off at about 2PM on afternoon from Sarangkot. It was cloudy so we couldn’t see the Annapurna range too well but still incredibly beautiful. We each flew tandem, one passenger with a trained pilot (phew!) My pilot was a guy who instructs paragliding in France. 

After we leave Pokhara, we came back to Kathmandu and the following morning (today) we took a flight over Everest and photographed it. An awesome experience and a beautiful mountain range. Shooting through the airplane windows was quite challenging because they were tinted and severely distorted. We each got some cockpit time as well… not thinking that would happen in the States… 

We returned to Kathmandu after our early morning flight kind of chilled around the hotel, catching up one some rest. I went up to the roof and experimented with some of my equipment and shot this miniature of Kathmandu:

And later in the evening we had a power outage so I went outside to photograph the car lights on the street illuminating the buildings, only to find that there was a lightning storm outside, making it even better! 

Tomorrow we leave Kathmandu and fly to Delhi to catch a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Finally, Africa! We can’t wait to get there. We will be meeting up with a friend that I met on my first trip to Africa in 2006. He was in Tanzania then and is now working with Samaratan’s Purse in Addis Ababa. 

Thanks for all your comments. These photos are just a handful of about 30 that you can see from Nepal on the slideshow that can be viewed by clicking any of the images.

I don’t know what our internet access will be like when we arrive in Ethiopia but we will try to stay updated as possible.  We appreciate your prayers and are thankful for all of you!