I experienced a lot of Nepal exposure over the course of past 12 months. Different earthquake relief events, bringing Nepali runners to Hong Kong for Trailwalker and HK100 runners, the Mira movie… It seemed appropriate to finally visit the country.

While doing the HK100 podcast with Vince we somehow started to talk about Nepal trip. Each of us had it in mind and so we decided to plan in together. We came up with workable dates. I sent the dates to Ramesh in Nepal just to check we will be still OK weatherwise. At the same time I asked him for some suggestion of trek route that we could do within the time available to us. Within few days I received very detailed Annapurna Base Camp trek itinerary with a suggestion of taking Kiran, one the of Nepali trail runners, as our guide.

Vince sent our expedition plans to several other people thought to be interested in making the Nepal trip too. Within 2 weeks we had a 6 people team. Few weeks of preparations and funny pre-trip Whatsapp chatter followed. On April 15 we were ready to depart.

Four of us – me, Vince, Roger and Hannes travelled from Hong Kong, Tilly from Geneva and Dom was joining us in Kathmandu after spending couple of weeks in the Everest area.

Day 1 – Travel to Kathmandu

The trip was uneventful. With boarding almost complete we still could not see Hannes but at the end he showed up. Before take off I did a final email check. I found the message from Ramesh with subject “TILLY COLLECTION” confirming that Tilly was successfully collected from the airport and delivered to the hotel. All good there.
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