Fiona Kwan Photography

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Fiona Kwan Photography

Landscape, nature, and outdoor adventure photography

08/01/2023

Scenes from Manang
Shoutout to !

07/30/2023

The change in landscapes in Bhraka

07/30/2023

The last leg as we were nearing Manang. I think I took one step per second at this point. Slide 2 shows my accidental small lunch (you don't really know what you'll get when you order, and you can't re-order unless you wanna wait another hour). The Clif bar I had on me only did so much. I had never known such exhaustion.

Alas, I did make it beyond the village gate and thankfully our accommodation was the first one down the road. Right before reaching the gate, I thought I was way far behind from the rest of the group. Our guide Ngima stayed with me the whole time 🙏🫶 I feel a little better now actually seeing a couple others not too far ahead in the gate photo 😅

I was nauseous and had zero appetite that night, likely more from the exhaustion than the altitude, so I continued to barely eat. We would be staying in Manang for 2 nights though to help our bodies acclimatize. We're at 3519 m altitude.

07/27/2023

Passing through Ngawal

07/26/2023

A wall of mani stones with Buddhist mantras. One of many along the AC.

If you haven't noticed I gave up on sharing photos regularly. How do people do this??

07/02/2023

Day 5, our second longest day of the trek. 20 km towards Manang.

07/01/2023

Images from a few teahouses along the Annapurna Circuit. One thing I found charming was all the family photos the owners would have proudly displayed on the walls everywhere. There was also often just one cook so we always had meals dished up about an hour after ordering.
1-3: Kitchen at our Upper Pisang teahouse
4-5: Family photos in Upper Pisang
6-7: From Manang, including an image of the owner with a portrait of his father whom he is a mirror image of.
8: Yak Kharka
9-10:

06/09/2023

More from Upper Pisang.
1. Gate to the Buddhist monastery in Upper Pisang
2. Left to right: Our guides Dawa and Ngima, and 2 of our porters Gelje and Dorchi
3. A happy crew
4. The true feelings upon final arrival to the teahouse
5. Exhausted but glad to be here. It was a short walk up to the monastery but man was it gruelling after we had just gotten to the teahouse.

06/01/2023

Annapurna Circuit Day 3: Dharapani to Chame.
We do our first steeper climb today. We cut through the forest and take a path with built in rock steps that are 200 years old (someone correct me if I remember wrong). It's our first real push of the trek and boy did we start to feel it. I did actually like the change in muscles used for stairs vs slopes though. It only lasts for half an hour and at the top we are rewarded with views of snow capped mountains and ridges all around us. We pass by another rockslide site and it's clearly wrecked an entire bridge previously built to cross the river. There's a newer dirt road now that just goes around it.
We're nearing Chame on a slope and it's kinda funny to see local women wearing their dresses and regular shoes while we're in all our gear. We make it to Chame at 2700 m in altitude. We're above where altitude sickness can start to kick in but thankfully we're all feeling okay (AMS-wise 😂)!

06/01/2023

Annapurna Circuit Day 2: Jagat to Dharapani.
On this day the sun is beating down slightly less on us. We walk on a fairly monotonous route, stopping briefly to take in some cool air coming off of a waterfall beside the path. There is a memorial plaque on a newer piece of road with names of those who died while rock blasting the area less than 10 years ago. We stop for lunch atop the village Tal, which our guide Dawa says suffered a flood 2 years ago when a rockslide occurred nearby. I'm already getting a sense from my time in Nepal so far that rockslides aren't uncommon here, and it's something locals accept, which is unclear whether it's a choice or not.
Eventually we arrive at our teahouse in Dharapani for the night. There's a little white dog named Sakura here who belongs to the owners, and it puts together its paws for you when you say namaste. We've walked about 15 km and 660 m in elevation today, and we sit down to enjoy another huge pot of ginger tea around the table.

06/01/2023

Day 1 of the Annapurna Circuit:
It's a full day's worth of driving. We leave busy Kathmandu and hop into a small shuttle with some locals and pass through the relatively calmer countryside. Our driver is an aggressive one and passes anyone even a bit slower than him on the road, blaring his horn non-stop to warn drivers going the other way. In hindsight I'm thankful for his speed because it ends up being a 7 hour drive, where you either had hot breeze with dust, or when it was REALLY dusty, a hot box of a car with the windows shut.

We arrive in Besishahar, where some of the AC trekkers start their journey. For our itinerary, we cut out what would've been an extra 2 days on foot, and we hop into a 4x4 towards Jagat. 4 of us cram into the back seats and hang on for another 2-3 hours of essentially off-roading. We realize our guides and porters will just be sitting in the back where the bags are tarped up. Our new driver is switching his music like crazy until we realize he's looking for his English music, which he then has on loop for the journey. Some hips get bruised from being pressed against the car doors, but we're all happy to be here.

We pass by a few farmers who were herding their sheep to somewhere, but they have all of them filling up the road. Our driver doesn't sound too impressed. Us travellers are entertained by the site of our vehicle slowly crossing through the crowd of sheep.

Almost 12 hours after disembarking Kathmandu, we arrive in Jagat where we would be sleeping for the night. It's our first teahouse! We get dal baht! We start what would become a daily ritual of sharing a huge vat of ginger tea upon arrival at a new teahouse. We pass out soon after dinner in preparation for our first day on foot the next morning.

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