We did it! We just finished the Annapurna Circuit, one of the most popular treks in the world with a pass on 5400m and stunning views onto the 8000+ meter mountains of the Himalayas!

We wanted to follow the original trek as much as possible, so we started hiking in Besi Sahar. There's now a road along most of the trek and you can be lazy and take a jeep, which many people did. For us it was good to know that we had the option should we need to, but we always followed the excellent NATT guide which takes some really worthwhile detours to avoid the road.

As so often, we took it really slowly - partly because we took many side tracks, partly for acclimatization, partly for some sickness - having enough time is a luxury we wouldn't want to miss on this trek!

As you can see on the photos the landscape changed from forest over dry rocky parts to a winter wonderland with 2+ meters of snow as we got higher and closer towards the pass. The deep snow was sometimes very hard to walk through, sometimes sinking in up to the hip, however our mini-crampons certainly helped.

For acclimatization and to be able to show you these nice pictures we took side tracks to the ice lakes (4600m) and an extra day towards Tilicho Lake. Both were unreachable due to the high snow (it's still low season in Feb), but we got very close. Too close, in hindsight - it takes a lot of time walking in the deep snow and it's very exhausting. In the case of Tilicho Lake (the highest lakes of the world, 5000+ meters) we first stayed a night in Khangsar, then followed the track towards the lake and then wanted to cross over to Yak Karkar on the main track towards the pass. While the guidebook and the people in Khangsar told us it's "easy" and possible to do "in 3-4 hours", we would only recommend to do the same in high season. Again: very deep snow accounted for a long day (9+ hours with no lunch) and as there were no footsteps we had to find the path first, which wasn't easy (even with the GPS and open street map). Luckily we teamed up with Miriam who is an excellent path finder.

By the time we got down to the bridge it was getting dark, so we couldn't continue to Yak Karkar and instead went down to the last guesthouse on the main track: Gunsang.

Those trips helped us to get acclimatized for the pass easily. After Gunsang (3900), we slept in Ledar (4200m) and then in High Camp (4900m) and could then cross the pass without any signs of altitude sickness. The crossing was pretty tough, but actually easier than we first imagined: we had breakfast at 5:30am and started walking shortly after 6. It was light already, but the sun didn't warm us yet - combined with some strong winds it was very cold as you can imagine. Our equipment proved to be very good, but everybody got much happier when the sun hit our faces and warmed us up more.

Another thing that helped morale up were the two tea houses - one half way to the pass, one on top. I guess you only have that in Nepal: people serving tea, soup and snacks on 5400m. Some of them actually live up there - crazy! It was an awesome and emotional feeling on the top, everybody hugging each other and being proud of what they had achieved. We even had the energy for some star jumps on 5416m ;)

The days before we saw many tourists with bad problems of altitude sickness, most of which luckily took some rest days or even returned the way they came. However there're always a few who are smarter and try it anyway: We saw at least one helicopter a day going up and down. Locals told us that in high season the choppers go back and forth all the time - that's quite sad, really.

Another weired thing was that there was a bike race while we where in the area. They went from Manang (3500m) to Thorung Phedi (4500m) in one day, and then over the pass the next day. Sadly that's not only dangerous for themselves, as they had porters who carried their backpacks who had the same schedule - just by foot. Poor guys, we thought!

One of the best parts of the track was the company we had - a number of very interesting and helpful people from many many countries (the majority being Israel, France and Germany) and we met many of them back on the other side. Specials hugs to to Miriam who we spent the most time with - she continued on to do the Annapurna Base Camp track we did in 2011 while we're back in Pokhara now.

Lot's of text this time, and even more photos - guess it was the best track we've ever done, I hope you can see why! After a couple of days relaxing in Pokhara we'll catch a plane and be back in Auckland on 27/03 - soo looking forward to seeing all our friends back after that long time!