Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

Our muscles were feeling the strain of the prior days 4 hours trek, and the past 4 months of little to no working out. Yes- those of you who know me as the work-out-aholic, it's true, the biggest obsession I've had to let go of on this trip (besides the blackberry) is my daily workout regime, and I'm feeling it. Sad thing is that yesterdays trek was by far, the shortest, easiest day we'd have in all 10 days. Little did we know what we were in for! We realize just how out of shape we are today, as we trek from Tirkhedhunga to Ghorepani. There are over 300 stone steps, after trekking to and across a suspension bridge for 7 hours. The incline was steep, our quads burn, and visions of people doing stair-master on super high tension for the entire day at Frog's Gym come to mind. This was just like being on the guy stair-master, but worse... we couldn't push the stop button, cool off under the fan, and go home to a warm shower and bed. Our stop in Ulleri was a welcome break for lunch. I don't think I've ever been so hungry. The views of the Bhurungadi Valley were gorgeous. We caught a quick glimpse of Annapurna South (7219M) and Hinchuli (6441M) before the clouds quickly smothered them from our view. Our day continued to climb upwards through Banthanti and we finally arrived Ghorepani. We had to again, register with the local police at this village. Graffiti on a wall we passed read "Long Life the Maoists." There were flyers on restaurant windows with the communist emblems. It was getting cold, the wind was picking up pretty strong. We climbed up four more steep sets of stairs to our very small (5 bedroom guesthouse). We were told our package did not include a shower here... Exhausted, stinky, and not in the mood for dealing with our crappy travel agent, a simple word to our guide and he took care of it. It was a rusty metal spigot coming out of the cement wall, with a trickle of water dribbling on through. The walls of this shower were tin siding strapped together - I was sure the wind would blow it over, revealing my nakedness to the village. That night the sky cleared and we could see a good bit of the Annapurna range, all covered with snow. We tried to keep warm, wearing our down jackets, fleece, wool long johns, pants, hats and mittens. We inhaled our locally prepared Nepali Chilly Chicken dinner and some special "high altitude" garlic soup that was oh so yummy. We tucked into our freezing cold cubicle room, surrounded by glass on two sides. Cold it was, but oh, what a view - a zillion stars decorated the sky on the moonless night. We were woken at midnight (after going to bed at 8:00 pm having thought we had already slept for 8 hours)by monsoonal rain and hail - and then dozed in and out until our 4:30 am wake up call.