Upon finishing our stint volunteering for Marine Conservation Cambodia, we returned to the pleasant and funky riverside town of Kampot. First priority was we treating ourselves to several days of yummy Western meals at the plethora of ex-pat owned establishments to celebrate Christmastime. Although, in keeping with Jewish tradition, we did eat Chinese for Christmas dinner itself since most places were closed for staff holiday parties. 
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It was refreshing to be back on the bicycles after residing on a tiny island for over a month, so much so that we took an ambitious day ride to the top of Bokor Mountain on Christmas Eve. It was incredible to see the influence of elevation on nature as tropical forest featuring hornbills and gibbons gave way to foggy scrubland towards the chilly upper reaches of the oversized hill. It was strange to gaze down through breaks in the clouds to the sweaty flatlands 4,000 feet below. Even stranger still was the incongruent assortment of development capping the mountain. Originally a French Hill Station where the colonists would retreat from the lowland heat and humidity, many of the buildings later served as refuge from the enemy as Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces duked it out. We explored the shell of a once luxurious casino and a church that had been occupied by the opposing forces. 

Then, in stark contrast to the historical sites, we locked up our bikes in the corner of an expansive, multi-tiered, but completely empty parking lot, the likes we have not seen since leaving Suburbia USA. We wandered in to a massive casino hotel that would not look out of place in Vegas, except for the surprisingly small casino itself and the modestly dressed staff. While all of this felt oddly out-of-place for Cambodia, what really made us wonder what bizarre world we had stumbled upon was the Christmas festivities in the form of poorly executed gingerbread houses with styrofoam trimmings and Khmer employees awkwardly dressed as Santas and elves. If all of this doesn't sound so weird to you, consider that Cambodia is a poor, predominantly Buddhist country, so commercialized Christmas decorations are essentially non-existent there. 

​We weren't really sure what clientele Thansur Bokor Highland Resort was targeting, either with the Christmas gimmicks or with building the ridiculous resort in the first place. However, one thing was for sure. After "leasing" the entirety of Bokor National Park from the Cambodian government for 99 years, the Chinese-owned parent company Sokimex Group constructed what has to be the nicest and smoothest road in all of Cambodia in order to whisk guests straight to the casino's grand entrance. The national park signs have all been removed, so you would never know you were technically in a national park (unless of course you knew). Now with a full dose (overdose?) of "Christmas spirit" and the privatization of public land, we took full advantage of that pristine pavement to fly down the mountain in a fraction of the hours it took to huff our way to the top. 

Sadly, Bokor National Park is just one example of the trend of auctioning off of national parks to major developers as Cambodia's leaders seek to make the elite even richer in order to stay in power. For China in particular, Cambodia has recently become an alluring land of investment opportunities. The Thansur Bokor Highland Resort claims to be stewarding the park by providing increased enforcement personnel to patrol against illegal logging and poaching of the forest's many endangered species. On the other hand, they are depleting habitat with plans for a golf course, cable car, and water park, not to mention planting a monoculture of thousands of non-native trees to "complement the beauty" of the resort.

On Christmas Day, we celebrated with an evening boat cruise up the Praek Tuek Chhu River. We enjoyed the perspective of watching the sun set behind Bokor Mountain since we had just cycled up there the day before. However, the best part was seeing synchronized fire flies for the first time once it was fully dark. The insects tended to rest on vegetation instead of flying around, so large patches of trees and shrubs were covered with coordinated blinking. Appropriately, they really looked like twinkling Christmas lights!

The next day, we packed up and said goodbye to Kampot. Since it had been a few days since we had seen the ocean, we aimed for Ream Beach on the border of Ream National Park. The last few miles of riding were slow going on a rocky sandy track in the dark, but that only made our destination of Monkey Maya Hostel feel that much more remote and special. Fortunately, the dorm was full, as were the well-above-our-budget bungalows, so the owners were amenable to having us pitch our tent next to the beachside volleyball court. At dinner they introduced us to another cycling couple from Germany who had quite an adventure arriving to Monkey Maya earlier that morning. They had followed a road cutting through the national park, only to have it worsen and eventually disappear as it approached the coast. Once it was dark, they ended up sleeping on a random beach without camping gear or food while their reserved bungalow at Monkey Maya awaited them. In the morning, they pushed their bikes along the rocky coastline only to discover they had slept only 800 meters away from their goal!  

Very smartly, Monkey Maya offers a free beer to anyone who collects a rice sack of garbage off of the beach. Consequently, this was easily the cleanest beach we have seen our journey. Of course, when duty calls to drink free beer, we can be counted on. So we wiled away the day by picking the micro-trash out of the beautiful white sand that others skip over in an effort to fill their bags quickly, and dipped in the calm water when we got too sweaty. The isolation of the place induced relaxation, but that gave us space to contemplate our unstructured future, which led to a heated "discussion" over our hard-earned free beer with a stunning sunset backdrop. Matt commented, "Only we can find a way to make such a beautiful place so depressing." Nonetheless, we were grateful to have visited this newly "discovered" beach. We saw evidence that it is only a matter of time until other developments come in, and chances are high that they won't be as sensitivity-designed or responsibly-operated as Monkey Maya.

Things were easier in the morning as we became refocused on our short term plan of cycling to Otres Beach. The main area of "Otres 1" had a Wild West meets the beach feel to it with an eclectic range of establishments lining a rutted, bumpy, red dirt road. We got what we needed--lunch and info on boats to Koh Ta Kiev--and got out, retreating to more chill and inexpensive "Otres Village" set back from the beach. Although we didn't know it at the time, and neither did the place itself, Otres 1 qualified for "before it's gone" status. It may already be gone as I write this as government officials abruptly ordered the beachfront establishments to move off of the beach. Beaches are public property after all, unless of course you have deep pockets and know the right people. While it may be a seemingly arbitrary and ultimately discriminatory enforcement of the law, I don't see it as any great loss of an amazing place, although your average backpacker of Southeast Asia is certain to be heartbroken. However, given the choice, I would take a backpacker haven with laid-back independent businesses any day over another "soulless mega-resort," which is widely speculated to be the motivation of the sudden eviction notices.

The next morning we took a boat out to Koh Ta Kiev, one of the few islands in the Sihanoukville area not (currently) slated for exclusive luxury resort ruination. The boat dropped us off at our intended camping spot at The Last Point which we quickly concluded was no longer our intention. People had raved about this island and insisted that we go there, but our first impression was a non-existent beach with a surfline filled with litter and torn up sea grass. We knew we could do better and the hungover staff didn't mind in the least pointing out a trail through the forest to the other side of the island. The next spot of Coral Beach was buzzing and definitely the hip place to be on the island. We balked at the $25 rate for an otherwise enticing stilted bungalow and they were firm on the no camping policy. We had a similar experience at the next one down the beach called Ten103. We were almost ready to settle for an uninspiring but cheap shack, though at the most authentically Khmer establishment thus far--KTK Bungalows. Luckily, my stubborn thoroughness kicked in despite my exhaustion from being hit with a food-related stomach bug in the middle of the previous night. The last option, Crusoe Island, was rumored to be closed back on the mainland or we would have taken a boat directly to it in the first place. But what we found was fully operational and pretty close to perfect. However, we did appreciate our "discovery" even more after having walked the length of the island and investigated all other options. That method of multi-hour exploration wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the loose sand with loaded backpacks in the mid-day heat while I suffered waves of nausea and cramps.

We began our Crusoe fantasy by staking down our tent for $2 per night on a rocky outcrop just above the high tide line with no other campers in sight. It was a short walk down the beach to the unexpectedly amazing restaurant and creatively designed hang out area. So then it was no surprise that we decided to stay a couple of extra days. We were so enamored with the place that we even offered to step in as the next round of volunteer staff for an extended stay, but the nice Khmer lady who owns it already had enough help for the foreseeable future. 

In keeping with tradition, we had a mellow New Year's Eve and fell asleep by ten to the bumping and thumping of concerts across the bay at Otres and Sihanoukville. A night swim amongst abundant bioluminescent plankton was the only fireworks show we needed to see anyway. It was an ideal last beach experience for the foreseeable future as our route would take us away from the immediate coastline after we returned to the mainland.

As envious as we were of Will's determination to explore his way out of the Nujiang Valley without backtracking, it turned out to be quite fortuitous that we stuck to the conventional out-and-back route. While cycling down the valley the day after we returned from Dulong, Matt suddenly felt a rhythmic bump in his back wheel. Pulling over to inspect it revealed a definitive crack in the rim that caused a concerning bulge the tire. It seemed that we had jinxed ourselves by discussing the likelihood of this happening with Will just a week prior. These were the original wheels from buying the bike four years ago and the brake pads had worn distinctive grooves in the rims over 10,000 miles of riding. 

On the upside, we didn't mind having a good excuse to skip over two days of backtracking to Liuku and readied our bikes and bags to hitch a ride in a truck. Despite being conveniently located next to a routine traffic police checkpoint with the vehicles already stopped, all we got were rejections. I looked up the world's for "broken", "help", and "hitchhike" in our Mandarin phrase book and approached the policeman on duty for assistance. He caught on, except for the hitchhike part, and directed a shared minivan taxi to pick us up. Lashing the bikes to the roof on top of each other was not as damaging as we had imagined, nor was the "efficient" (translation: scary crazy) journey back to Liuku as expensive as we had dreaded. We were also surprised to recognize one of the passengers as a Dulong woman we had partied with in Bapo!

In Liuku, we begrudgingly reunited with the rest of our belongings, but still refused to get rid of any of them. It seems that our obsessions with self-sufficiency, worst-case scenario preparedness, frugality, and not planning the future combine forces to make us overly attached to the ridiculous contents of our panniers. Examples range from scuba dive masks that were once useful in Thailand to thick gloves we bought for trekking in Nepal, but maybe we will go back to the ocean, or maybe we will find winter somewhere again, so...let's just repack them!

From Liuku, we took an all-day bus ride to Kunming, "city of eternal spring", so the saying goes regarding its perfect climate. The first order of business was beginning the frustratingly bureaucratic process of getting ridiculously expensive visas for Vietnam. We will spare you the details, but basically it involved getting three different answers from three different staff each time we asked the same question. The second order of business was heading to Pegasus Cycling, a recommended bike shop with a charismatic owner, Hui Li, who passionate about cycle touring. Also a popular Warm Showers host, we admired Hui's photo display of bicycle travelers who've spent the night in his shop over the last few years. 

After two new wheels were built for Matt's bike, we joined Hui on a weekend ride with his cycling club. Sometimes we feel a little self-conscious about how we dress as cycletourers since we sport more "formal" gear than most. However, with the Chinese cyclists gathering in front of Pegasus that Saturday morning, we fit right in with our helmets, gloves, spandex shorts, and cycle jerseys. In fact, we were the ones that looked laid back in comparison to their full body spandex and sun-shielding face masks. Somehow we navigated through Kunming's traffic and out into the 'burbs under development as a loose peloton of about twenty. The 50-mile ride was not always the most scenic or enjoyable with a decent amount of truck traffic, but the destination of Fuxian Lake was unquestionably a worthwhile reward. 

As a popular weekend getaway for Kunmingers, the lake is lined with beachside restaurants. We took over one of them and spent the afternoon swimming in the refreshing clear water and continuing to socialize with the welcoming and friendly cycle club members. Dinner was a feast of family style dishes interrupted by many toasts of a strong corn-based liquor from a flask so big it required two hands to pour. As hungry cyclists, we did a better than average job of finishing the copious quantities of food typical of Chinese dining. That night we created a tightly-packed tent city amongst parked vehicles in a field next to the restaurant. Our extra-large Hilleberg tent drew a lot of attention and many folks came over just to poke their head inside.

The next day was just like the first day, but in reverse. After munching some watermelon and saying our goodbyes back at Pegasus Cycles, we celebrated our third wedding anniversary a few days after the fact with a splurge for dinner and craft beer at Brooklyn Pizzeria. It was impressively authentic and definitely the best pizza we have had in Asia. Our wedding anniversary also coincided with exactly one year of travel on the Before It's Gone Journey, so it was only appropriate that the bicycle connectivity continued when a young man named Tavish spotted our bikes parked outside of the restaurant and tracked us down. He is the proud owner of a Surly Long Haul Trucker as well, which he has already ridden from Kunming to Lhasa with more trips in the works.

While we waited for our Vietnam visas to be ready, we succumbed to more of the pricey temptations of Kunming's Western food scene. We had eaten local Chinese food continuously for more than a month, so we savored every bite of variety. Our go-to place was Salvador's, where we were in awe of avocados on the menu for the first time on our journey. Sliced avocado on burgers and guacamole with burritos were in order. Their homemade bagels became another staple in our temporarily exotic diet. Another great spot was O'Reilly's Irish Pub, serving Guiness but also specializing in Belgian beers. We got chatting with the owner Tim, who pulled a few Vedett drafts for us on the house when we discovered our mutual Marin County history.

We delayed our departure from Kunming as long as possible when Matt came down with a nasty little flu. Fortunately, he was on the mend by the time we took a bus to the Hekou-Lao Cai border crossing with Vietnam. Figuring out the logistics for stamping out of China was a bit of a process, but eventually we walked our bikes across a pedestrian and motorbike bridge and entered a new country, only the sixth one in just over a year travel. That night we took a somewhat decrepit overnight train to Hanoi, getting a few hours of poor sleep by contorting ourselves into creative positions in our shabby seats.

Making our way over to the Old Quarter early in the morning was a calm, peaceful introduction to Hanoi, but trying to check in to a hotel was a bit of a rude awakening. The Old Quarter is quite crowded and cramped; space is at a premium with tiny hotel lobbies and even smaller rooms stacked up in narrow building on the floors above. While everyone was quite polite about it, they were also quite firm that our bicycles would have to stay outside on a crowded sidewalk during the day, only to be brought in when the hotel locked its doors at night. We did not have a kickstand with which we could wedge them between all the mopeds cluttering the sidewalk, and we didn't trust that hired security guards would be quite vigilant enough to deter "interest" in our unique bikes.

After a multi-hour search, we negotiated a solution with our otherwise top choice of lodging called the Hanoi Blue Sky Hotel 2. We wheeled our bikes into an elevator and locked them to the balcony of the dorm room on the sixth floor, not exactly easily accessible, but sufficiently secure. We very rarely take naps, but they were in order that afternoon since we had a social evening ahead of us. First, we met up with a cycle touring couple whom we had connected with through Twitter. Claire and Andre, traveling as Punctures and Panniers, were taking the train to Lao Cai that evening, but we managed to fit in a lively exchange of our experiences over our first mugs of bia hoi, Hanoi's famous fresh beer. 

Our conversation was briefly interrupted when a disgruntled customer began flinging the hefty beer glasses across the restaurant, shrapnel landing all around us. There is an influential phenomenon in Asia known as "face". People will go to great lengths to avoid conflict in order to "save face", but when the line has been crossed and someone has "lost face", then watch out. A whole series of passive-aggressive behaviors may ensue, or some overtly dramatic actions that ultimately result in a further loss of face, such as the event we witnessed. Despite the apparent risks, we chose a different bia hoi joint across the street later that evening to catch up with Kerri, our friend from NatureBridge and our reason for traveling to Hanoi. She had just arrived from Laos for our meet up as well.

The next four days was a thorough exploration of Hanoi with Kerri. On our first day, we didn't stray far from the Old Quarter with so much to take in just within its compact boundaries. As with anyone who arrives in Hanoi as their introduction to Vietnam, we were fascinated with simple scenes of daily life on the streets. Women wearing pajamas and conical hats selling fruit from their bikes, mobile restaurants in baskets hung from yokes balanced across a shoulder blade, barber shops on the sidewalk, offerings to ancestors left in the most unlikely of places, but casually sidestepped with respect. 

Of course, food and drink provided a focal point to our otherwise aimless wandering. First off, we were surprised to find a newly opened nitrogen-based ice cream parlor in the spirit of our beloved Smitten in San Francisco, so that was our mid-morning treat. After that, Vietnamese coffee stole the show at the trendy Cong Cafe where we discovered that yogurt, coconut milk, and even whipped egg are all delicious mixers with potent shots of brew, though not in the same serving, of course.

We strolled around the tranquil Hoan Kiem lake before grabbing a seat on the balcony of Legend Beer specifically to watch the fascinating flow of traffic through one of Hanoi's busiest intersections. It was an absolute free-for-all of primarily motorbikes, but also taxis, busses, cyclos, bicycles, pedestrians, and occasionally a personal car. Somehow it all worked with no collisions or fatalities witnessed within the life span of our pints. 

Next up was another quintessential Hanoi experience: a water puppet show. Not quite sure of what to expect, I was instantly enamored with the antics of wooden puppets splashing about in a pool of water while the puppeteers stood behind a screen and use controls submersed in the water. A series of vignettes set to traditional music depicted everyday rural life with rice planting, riding water buffaloes, and fishing. More fanciful numbers included fireworks spewing sparks from dragons' mouths and phoenixes hatching from eggs.

We ventured further afield the next morning with Kerri on a rented bicycle. We rode across the historical Long Bien Bridge, a local symbol of resistance in the American War, as it is called in Vietnam. The decrepit bridge has a lot of character and provided nice views of the Red River as well. We continued the bike tour around Truc Bach Lake and West Lake, of course fortifying ourselves with food and beverage every couple of miles. We enjoyed snacks and apple-included rice wine at Mau Dich 37, which Lonely Planet perfectly describes as "a unique exercise in nostalgia" since it is "styled after a government-run food shop from the impoverished period after 1976." To counteract the effects of the rice wine, it became imperative to transition a coffee shop if the ride was going to continue. Kerri doesn't normally drink coffee, but she handled a caffeine buzz quite well, even after multiple samples of potent shots of filtered coffee over sweetened condensed milk, the Vietnamese way. It tasted like drinking a chocolate-covered espresso bean! We were instantly hooked and she came pretty close too.

We filled the remaining days with Kerri by visiting some of Hanoi's more formal attractions, such as Bach Ma Temple and the Temple of Literature. All of these demonstrated a strong Chinese presence in Vietnam's history, frequently cited as "a thousand years of Chinese occupation." We also took a cruise by Uncle Ho's resting place, but we had arrived too late in the morning to be admitted into the austere looking mausoleum, an excellent example of Soviet-style architecture.

About the time we were actually able to effectively navigate the Old Quarter, it was time for Kerri to leave for Shanghai. The four days we spent together were a wonderful chance to catch up with her, feel a closer connection to home, and get a thorough introduction to a fascinating city at the same time.

​We stayed in Hanoi for another week, but our focus was "getting stuff done" rather than having fun. I would be soon be leading a No Barriers Youth trip in Beijing and Shanghai, a repeat of the program that determined the start point of Before It's Gone Journey a year prior. Preparation for this included the multi-step process of applying for a new Chinese visa, background reading, a thorough briefing from No Barriers staff on Skype, and storing my bicycle and gear with a Warm Showers host. Meanwhile, Matt was preoccupied with figuring out how he would fill his time in Vietnam while I was gone. Working on the blog, creating videos, fixing up the bikes, and regular life errands filled in the remaining gaps of time. Eating meals became the only time we were actually present in the moment and appreciated the fact that we were in Hanoi. We chowed on all sorts of cheap noodles and frequented many banh mi carts in search of the best. Weeks such as this one used to make us feel guilty that we weren't making the most of every opportunity to travel, but we have come to accept that they are a necessity when your daily life is on the road.

From Bhaktapur, it was a short ride in to Kathmandu, where we beelined it for Thamel, aka tourist central. Our aim was to quickly figure out a trekking plan, get preparations underway, and hit the trail before we lost any more time during the best weather season. Once again, our best laid plan was soon turned on its head, but this time in the best way possible. 

We set out to familiarize ourselves with the maze of narrow, canyon-like streets of Thamel since we were at a loss as to where to begin our trek organizing process. Soon we poked our heads into Beni Handicraft, a store selling handicrafts made from repurposed trash, and met David Durkan, an energetic ex-pat staffing the shop who struck up conversation with us. We explained that we were anxious to get trekking, but had not yet researched options or decided on a route. That was all we needed to say for him to adopt us for the afternoon, sharing a wealth of knowledge accumulated from thirty years of experience in Nepal as well as snippets of his fascinating life, which he details in his locally published book Penguins on Everest, donating all profits to the NGO Autism Care Nepal.

Now feeling overwhelmed with options, we headed to a book and map store to select some printed material for more detailed research. While comparing two maps of Nepal selected from an extensive collection, a voice over Matt's shoulder said, "Don't get that one, take the other." He turned around and asked the British man why, who then responded with a grin, "Because I made it." This of course paved the way for an insightful conversation with Robin Boustead, a cartographer who has hiked, mapped, described, photographed, written books about, and otherwise promoted Nepal's Great Himalaya Trail. 

The GHT is billed as the highest long distance trail in the world, running about 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) along the High Route in Nepal alone, but stretches from Bhutan to northwestern India in its entirety. While he waited to meet with the manager of the bookstore regarding the release date of an updated GHT map, Robin's enthusiasm inspired us to start dreaming of attempting the formidable trek ourselves. After all, we had no future commitments in our open ended journey. The limiting factors would be the arrival of winter, expense, and as we would soon learn with further investigation, a lack of technical mountaineering experience as well. Our first day in Kathmandu turned out to be an impactful one; just by wandering around we met two local experts who broadened our trekking ambitions from only the overrun Annapurna Circuit and the ever-popular Everest Base Camp. However, the full significance of our serendipitous meetings would not be realized for another week or so. 

We celebrated our epic day with delicious wood-fired pizza for dinner, the first good pizza we had eaten since curiously checking out a Pizza Hut in Beijing. Of course, this was much better!

Besides taking care of travel errands such as laundry, the next day was dedicated to furthering our now difficult trekking decision. We spent the afternoon at the office of Kathmandu Environmental Education Project, a local NGO who provides unbiased trekking information through firsthand trekker accounts in logbooks, access to maps, a library, and most importantly, information on how to trek responsibly. By then, we had honed in on the idea of trekking the eastern sections of the GHT this season and saving the rest for future trekking seasons. Now we needed to find an agency to arrange the logistics of permits and a guide. We stopped in at one place listed on the GHT website as specializing in treks to the Kanchenjunga region, which would be our starting point. However, upon meeting with the agent, it became obvious that the specialized knowledge we were seeking was not there. We moved on to David Durkan's recommended company, Asian Heritage, and the owner Nilam was both personable and straight forward with answers to our questions. He said he would get back to us in a couple of days regarding the details of government issued permits and the availability of an experienced guide for that region.

With our trekking process on hold, we turned our attention towards seeing more of Kathmandu. We spent a day taking in the many sights of city life between Thamel and Durbar Square, from finding the best lassi we have ever had to watching Hindu women fondling strands of shiny beads at a dedicated bead market. By the time we actually got in to Durbar Square, the center of religious and political power of the former Malla royal dynasty, we had hit sensory overload.

We also caught up with a cycle tourer we had met at our hostel in Xining, China. William had also taken the train to Lhasa and toured with Explore Tibet to the Nepal border before cycling to Kathmandu, arriving just a few days after us. Like us, he was also in the process of figuring out his next moves for his long-term travel. Unlike us, he seemed content with the prospect of chilling in Kathmandu for a while, whereas we were already getting antsy to get out. 

Our readiness to move on made our next meeting with Nilam all the more disheartening. He had consulted with a guide that had done the section of GHT that we had set our sights on. Not only was the guide already booked up for the rest of the season, but he emphasized the need for a handful of porters to get through a week of jungle without any options of a provision resupply, followed by three challenging passes over 6,000 meters (19,600 feet) high. We were not yet ready to commit to the level of logistics and expenditure required, nor did we feel we had enough experience to safely take on the technical high-altitude passes. Six days spent in Kathmandu and we were back to the drawing board.

As though it was intended to match our mood, it began down-pouring and did not stop for two days. The streets transformed into rivers and pools of the dirtiest brown water imaginable. Shopkeepers pulled their wares away from the storefronts that usually spilled into the streets. We still didn't know which trek we were doing, but we felt an urgent need to accomplish something tangible, so we decided to go shopping.  We walked loops around Thamel, comparing practically identical products and prices. We were soaked to the bone before we committed to any specific fake North Face down jacket or knock-off Leki trekking poles.

We had a vague awareness that this heavy rain was unusual for this time of the year, the result of a monsoon storm that had hit India and kept going. Then, the next morning after the sky cleared, the sobering news came in the storm had translated to freakishly intense snowfall and blasting winds that settled on the highest pass of the Annapurna Circuit, killing an undetermined number of tourists and Nepali guides and porters. Some were caught in avalanches and others lost their way and presumably died of hypothermia. We tracked the news stories over the coming days, including helicopter rescue for those who were fortunate to have hunkered down in lodges to wait out the storm. With six feet of snowfall in 12 hours reported and the death toll confirmed at a minimum of 43 (but likely quite a bit higher since many bodies have yet to be recovered as I write this), the incident is regarded as the worst trekking disaster in Nepal's history. We gratefully reflected that, had we not met David and Robin, resulting in a longer trekking research process, we may have been on our way around Annapurna ourselves. One option we had been considering was cycling the Annapurna Circuit on the dirt roads that have been controversially constructed along the route in the last few years. 

It was Matt's idea, likely the product of his habit of pouring over maps, but I latched on to it quickly and wholeheartedly. Why not trek from Kathmandu to Pokhara and take care of roughly the middle third of the GHT in the process? We brought our new plan to Nilam and he approved too. We would be able to hike the first month on our own, then if we were still game to keep going, he would send a compulsory guide to meet us with permits for the sections that are deemed "restricted areas" by the government. All we had to do was leave our passports and our credit card with him! We figured this was either a really great guy who was prioritizing our flexibility over his business gain, or we would soon be financing his luxury vacation to Somewhere Far Far Away...We decided to bet on the former.

That was actually the least of our concerns as the concreteness of a plan suddenly quadrupled the length of our to do list. It seemed like endless details needed to be taken care of over the next few days, everything from getting our trekking permits at a government office and meeting with our future guide, to stocking up on chocolate bars and buying a cheap emergency cell phone. One of the most pressing logistics was finding storage for our bicycles and extra gear. Luckily, a friend of a friend was willing to keep them in their storage room at their family home not far from where we were staying. 

When we had met David and Robin on our first day in Kathmandu, it was both of their last days in the city before leaving for projects elsewhere in Nepal. We were still there when they returned from their work, and both kindly offered to meet with us again to discuss our specific trekking plan. When David learned that we were passing through Tipling, he called his friend Beni to come meet with us as well. She is from Tipling and is the founder of Beni Handicraft, the store selling upcycled goods made by imprisoned women where we first met David. She encouraged us to visit her parents when we arrived in her hometown.

Later that same evening, we joined Robin and friends at his favorite watering hole, Sam's Bar. While spreading out a map across the tiny bar table, he gave us the skinny on the Ganesh Himal Ruby Valley trek, the one region we still felt a little unsure about. Conveniently, he had just returned from conducting trail research there (while coping with snowfall from the same storm that hit Annapurna so hard) so his information could not have been more up to date. He even gifted us one of his last copies of the first edition of his Great Himalaya Trail guidebook!

Our last obligation was to return to Nilam his signed copy of The Great Himalaya Trail written by Gerda Paula, a German woman who through-hiked the GHT in 2012 as a charity walk for Autism Care Nepal, and friends with David Durkan as well. She wrote an account of each day on the trail. I read the relevant sections out loud to Matt, over our "goodbye to civilization" dinner at The Roadhouse Cafe, the same wood-fired pizza place where we also ate our first night in Kathmandu. Next stop was the Northfield Cafe, where we gleaned the last tidbits of information about the route ahead of us accompanied by a brownie sundae and our last organic coffee for the foreseeable future that then kept us up all night...oops. Our last day perfectly mirrored our first day; we met the same people, ate in the same places, and, after our spell of disenchantment with the process, we were once again filled with the same sense of anticipation and excitement.

The White Lotus Guesthouse owner was somewhere between shocked and congratulatory when we actually checked out the next morning, after several days of telling him "just one more day." We were more than ready to leave Kathmandu after getting stuck there for about two weeks, much longer than we anticipated. We only hoped that the thoughtful research and thorough preparation for our trek would pay off once we hit the trail.

“Sigh...Why can’t we ever do anything simple?” was a sentiment we frequently expressed to each other as we survived the month of May and looked ahead to June. We fully anticipated that the end of our time at NatureBridge in the Marin Headlands would bring on an inevitable flood of transition-related tasks. But we also knew from previous experience that there was not much else we could do except swim hard in order to keep our heads above water.

We kicked off May with a lovely week and a half in Colorado. The first part was attending a Global Explorers staff training in Fort Collins to prepare us for leading expeditions to the Grand Canyon and China this summer. While Casey has led trips for the organization since 2006, Matt now gets to experience firsthand the inspiration of being part of it all as well.

We finished our Colorado trip by renting a house in Winter Park for Matt to celebrate his 40th birthday with some family and friends. Yes, May is “mud season” there, but it was an intentional getaway to somewhere with nothing to do except eat, drink, and be merry in the hot tub even as a late season snowstorm rolled in.

Mid-month, and back in California, we threw a farewell-to-us-while-we-say-goodbye-to-our-stuff party. After some late nights of detailed possession sorting, we set up an indoor yard sale with curated thematic displays and a silent auction for the major pieces of furniture. Matt’s last batch of homebrew, a porter with a hint of chocolate, was on tap and proved as effective as serving complimentary cocktails in a high-end department store in promoting a shopping frenzy. It was a bit bizarre to see people claiming our stuff, dragging furniture out the door, and trying on our clothes, all while simultaneously socializing, but ultimately the event was very successful.  While the profits from our friends' generous shopping spree at our pop-up thrift store have been set aside specifically for the humanitarian and environmental aspects of our travel, we were even more touched by the surprise of a departing gift from our community of an essential modern day adventure storytelling tool: a GoPro camera!

Our last weekends at home were spent wrapped up in a three-day long Wilderness First Responder recertification course, then leading an all-day preparatory retreat in Oakland with the awesome students we will be traveling with in China. The packing was forced in to every spare moment in between our commitments and somehow it all got into the Uhaul trailer by our last day of work on June 10th.

Saying goodbye to our house, work, and community felt very surreal, and difficult to comprehend how six years had flown by since we arrived intending to stay just two. We were both ready and not ready for this moment, but there was really no option to turn back from the multi-staged departure that lay ahead:

Stage One—We drove almost non-stop from California to Colorado, where our dear friends Eric and Julie have generously shared a corner of their basement for our remaining belongings.

Stage Two—We flew to Wisconsin for a wonderful celebration of Grandpa Ivan’s 90th birthday and a fun and festive reunion of the widely-dispersed Fagre clan.

Stage Three—After returning to Colorado briefly, Matt flew to New York to spend time with family and friends while Casey flew to Arizona for an incredible experience rafting in the Grand Canyon with a unique and hilarious bunch of teens. The hike out from Phantom Ranch on the Bright Angel trail made for an epic day on so many levels—the beauty, the challenge, and the compassionate teamwork of the group will never be forgotten!

Stage Four—We reunited in the Marin Headlands once again for a few days of recovery and final preparation based out of our friends Pete and Lauryn’s house. More sorting, final packing, and the real goodbyes. Then, somehow, we were boarding a plane to Beijing and beyond…