Trekking Annapurna

So I've signed all the things I need to sign for my visa, my picture has been attached to an untold number of documents, and I've had my thumb prints attached to half a dozen other documents. My passport is with the Department of Industry and/or Immigration and hopefully within the next day or two I'll have my Business Visa. This means I can finally get out of Kathmandu for an extended period.

My initial hope was to go and hike a combination of the Annapurna circuit along with the Nar and Phu valleys. Nar and Phu are in a restricted are that costs $90 for a permit, but that cost seemed well worth the sights and culture up in that region. Further investigation however revealed that the permit has to be arranged by a tour operator, you have to have a guide, and it's a minimum of two people for a group to go. No thanks. I'm an independent trekker at heart and I only use guides when I absolutely have to (Kilimanjaro is it so far) and I am even more averse to using porters....I carried my own pack up Killi (though to be fair the porters carried the food and the means to cook it, and I ate it). Point is, that was a deal breaker for me. So Nar and Phu may have to wait until a later date.

No Visa For You!

As we enter day four of the nationwide strike it is becoming increasingly evident that I will not be getting my 1 year visa this week. So with our extension up as of Thursday I had to walk on down to immigration today and get a tourist visa extension for another 15 days. With a little extra money handed over this went easy enough, but yeah, no business visa for me yet.


Essentially I have to stick around Kathmandu until I get this thing worked out, which keeps me form doing the trekking I really wanted to do here. I've been wanting to get out to the Annapurna area for a month now, and as we get closer to the monsoons, the less pleasant that trip looks. The pass I want to go over that leads from the Nar Phu valley area in the north back on to the Annapurna circuit also becomes more avalanche prone as more snows swept in from the monsoons begin to cover the adjacent slopes. Sigh. If I don't go through that pass it means not only missing the sight of some rare blue sheep, but also back tracking a couple days to get to the main circuit.


The more I deal with this whole visa process the more I wonder how needed the whole process of people checking the flow of people and where they are really is.