December 28, 2000 - December 13, 2001 14 Days in Nepal Into thin air...
Tengboche would end up being the highest point that we reached during our trip. It was a little under 3,900 meters. In order to comemorate this event (since I'm sure it'll be the highest I ever go in my life), I got a cool patch that says Tengboche, Nepal and says how high we went. It's awesome. Anyway, this picture was taken on our way to Tengboche while the sun was coming up. It's really something seeing the rays of the sun shoot out just as the sun is about to rise over the mountains. We began most of our days around 8am, so we were on the trail nice and early.
	Here is the sun in full glory and full glare, shortly after it cleared the mountain. It's funny how in the mornings, we have like five layers of clothes on, but by the time the sun makes it up, it's nice enough to walk around in shorts and a t-shirt. We stopped for a break along the way at some eatery. I had some hot chocolate. I think I drank more hot chocolate during my two weeks in Nepal that I had in the previous five years of my life. Since the water there is so undrinkable, it had to be boiled in order for westerners to drink it, so hot chocolate is one of the few safe things to drink.
The terrain was very steep and hilly and the altitude was getting high. It was a long way to the bottom. I made sure to stay to the far left of trail, away from the edge, at all times. We didn't really see any mountain goats until we made our way to Tengboche. This picture is great because the sky is perfectly blue behind the head of the mountain goat. They were tough to take a picture of because they liked running off. We also saw a number of interesting birds along the way, including the national bird of Nepal.
	Here's another shot of my second favorite peak, Amadablam. Again, you can see the evergreen tree on the left to provide some contrast. This picture was taken along the way. Once we lost all of our altitude and crossed the bridge to get to the other side of the mountain, the climb to regain our altitude (up to Tengboche) was rough. It seemed like the trail kept winding up and up and up. There wasn't must break in the trail at all. Luckily we always were stocked with our bottled water. Every place we went had bottled water and we bought some almost everywhere.

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