And if your friend told you to jump off a bridge...

Every day in Kathmandu, I inevitably walked past the office where you sign up to do something that I had never really considered doing before: bungee jumping. The office just sits there tempting you to come in with a big poster outside of a guy hurling himself off of a bridge down into the valley below. As I was updating the website last time, my friend Rob was sitting behind me the entire time trying to talk me into jumping with him. It didn't take much convincing; I had seen the bridge on the way in from Tibet, and it looked unbelievable. A few posts ago, I talked about the gorgeous valley coming into Nepal — now I was planning to jump off a bridge into it.

We got up to the pun-tastically named Last Resort, the final stop before the border with Tibet. In our jumping group were about ten kids from London who were on a trip helping out a Nepalese orphanage. The bus pulled up right next to the bridge, and we had to walk across it in order to get to the actual resort. I went silent and turned eggshell white along with everybody else as I slowly made my way across. Walking on that bridge for the first time was so frightening I practically had to change my underwear afterward. We nervously got instruction from the very professional staff before we weighed ourselves and got in order from heaviest to lightest. As fourth-heaviest, I was the fourth person to jump, which suited me just fine; enough time to see how it works, but not enough time to dwell and freak myself out.

After twenty minutes it was my turn to jump. I put on a harness and the extremely tight feet shackles and they locked me into place. After saying my last words into the camera — "Sorry Mom and Dad!" — I stepped out onto the platform and tried not to look down.



I put my arms out and pushed off hard from the platform to the insanely intense freefall that awaited me, one of the longest bungee freefalls in the world at more than 500 feet. The freefall part was definitely one of the scariest things I've ever experienced — the only thing I remember thinking was oh shit! which I said quietly to myself out loud on the way down. Once the bungee cord pulled me back up toward the bridge, I was having a blast and I bellowed out the loudest scream of my life, which echoed throughout the valley. I have a video of the whole thing on my camera which I'll try to upload, and I bought the surprisingly well-produced DVD of my jump, which I'll show everyone when I get home. Here's a shot of one of the Brits jumping:



Rob and I stayed the night at the resort, which was wonderfully relaxing after an overwhelming morning. The place had really good food, nicely maintained grounds, and a hot tub sized swimming pool. We went on a hike as the sun went down and wandered into a nearby rural village, which was full of kids who loved to get their pictures taken and see the results on the back of our digital cameras. After I took this one, all the kids swarmed me and practically pried the camera out of my hands.



Back down in Kathmandu, I enjoyed another phenomenal meal at our favorite Muslim Halal restaurant, before saying goodbye to Rob and Lauren and parting ways with each other for the first time in almost a month. They are off to West Bengal in India, were I'll be in a couple of months.

I woke up at sunrise the next morning and grabbed a rickshaw to the bus station where I boarded a bus to Pokhara, a town about seven hours northwest of Kathmandu. The bus ride was pretty brutal: we got stuck in accident-related traffic for almost two hours where we crawled along, barely moving. Without air moving past the open windows, the bus became excruciatingly hot and I was drenched with my own sweat. To make matters worse, Nepalese people haven't joined the deodorant revolution so it stunk like hell in there. After a fairly awful ride I made it to Pokhara, bartered with a sea of hotel operators and jumped on the back of a guy's motorcycle where I was taken to my Lakeside area hotel. Pokhara is awesome — it actually reminds me a lot of Grand Lake in Colorado.



So far I've done some city exploring, taken a boat out onto the lake, and eaten some delicious meals including some fresh fish from the lake (yes Dad, I ate fish voluntarily). The power goes out all the time here, so I've eaten a lot of meals and read by candlelight, which has been really fun. It also rains unbelievably hard from about 4-9 every day because it is currently monsoon season in South Asia, which has claimed the lives of a boatload of people in the last few weeks (Actually... I guess it was probably the people who weren't in boats).

In a few hours, I'm going to get on a bus to the Annapurna mountain range and start an eight-day trek toward the city of Jomsom. The trek sounds pretty cool: there are about fifty villages and towns along the way, most of which have places to stay for trekkers. Hopefully I'll meet up with some trekking partners along the way. I've been gone for 75 days so far, and I've only spent about five days travelling by myself because I’ve been lucky enough to meet cool people along the way. Hopefully the streak continues!

Thanks for reading, and I'll update again after my trek. — Ryan!

Sorry... only a few photo updates for today. I'm trying to keep up with it, but the Internet speed in Nepal is straight out of 1996, so it's almost impossible.