Nepal: easier to type than Kyrgyzstan

One of the highlights of our recent trip north was seeing the Himalayas, up close and personal. Amazing sight! Most everyone knows that Mt. Everest is located in the Himalayas -- and is the world's tallest peak -- but what not everyone knows (well, me) is that not only is Everest right there, but so are... the 13 other highest peaks in the world! In fact as I research this more, why stop at 14...the 109 highest mountains are all in the Himalayas!!! Whoa. It's not really fair. What about the USA and the Rocky Mountain high in Colorado? The Rocky Mountains don't even register on any highest mountain list -- the highest mountain in the Rockies is Mt Elbert at 4401 meters. Everest is 8850 meters. For you non math majors, that's more than twice as high! (FYI the highest mt in the continental US is Mt Whitney in CA, at 4418 meters. Mt Hood is the highest in Oregon, at 3,429 meters. The highest in the entire USA is Mt. Mckinley, in Alaska, at 6,194 meters. BUT -- if you really want to get technical, the highest mountain ISLAND is Muana Kea in Hawaii, which rises up 10,203 meters from the bottom of the ocean. It gets short changed because the common accepted mountain measuring practice is to measure mountains from sea level...not the sea floor. Still, worth a shout out for any islanders out there).

All numbers aside, it was certainly pretty cool to be right there in Nepal, within sight of Everest (and also the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th highest mountains in the world, which are all in very close proximity to Everest...yes back to numbers, can't resist!). Kathmandu itself wasn't my favorite city in the world -- I could go on about how polluted, dirty, congested, and overall-not-that-enjoyable that the actual city itself was, but what an amazing place to be in. I don't think our health exactly aided in enjoying the city experience either -- all of us low elevation Bennetts got pretty painfully sick at one point or another during our time in Kathmandu. Silly us, we thought it would be a good idea to eat steak in Nepal...should probably have put down our forks when the waiter told us the steak actually came from Kolkatta, India...hardly the first choice of where you want your steak to be sent in from. But once we recovered (for the most part -- although my worst didn't hit me til getting back to India), and stepped a ways outside of the Kathmandu smog cloud, it was truly breathtaking. We stayed a night at a hotel in Nagarkot, a tiny little resort town about an hours drive away from Kathmandu, and atop a mountain ridge with clear views of the peaks beyond, and it was pretty amazing. Clear, crisp air, and whew it was COLD at night. COOOOOOOOOOOLD! Freezing cold. I could only imagine what it must be like in a tent somewhere on Everest -- hopefully those North Face knockoffs actually work as good as they look!

World's Highest Mountains. Right there by Nepal on the map, where the 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are is situated right by Kathmandu. And wow, there is Kyrgyzstan in the upper left! Now you know -- big mountains in Kyrgyzstan.

I'll post some of our actual pictures on here tomorrow -- for now, it's past bedtime!