I love to travel, and I love to write about my travels.
Bangladesh is crowded. It has 166 million people- the population of Russia- squeezed into a country the area of Florida. And 18 million of those people live in Dhaka, the capital city. Or, put another way, the city has 33,000 people per square kilometer.
Visiting Bhutan is expensive. Pretty much the only way to get there is a $250 per person/per night government-mandated tour. So we found the shortest tour we could find and paid up.
We spent four weeks in Nepal, visiting several areas. Nepal is a beautiful, hospitable and interesting country- and also trashy, polluted, and maddeningly inefficient. But let’s talk about the good stuff first!
Here’s the run-down from our two weeks of trekking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal (if you want to read about our trip to Nepal as a whole then click here).
After securing our TIMS (Trekker Information Management System- in case you disappear and they need to go look for you -2000 rupees/ $17) and our ACAP permits (Annapurna Conservation Area Project- 3000 rupees / $25) in Kathmandu, we stocked up on a bit of gear in Thamel, the tourist zone in Kathmandu. On every street corner are stalls selling both real and counterfeit North Face, Jack Wolfskin, Quechua, and Columbia, all at a fraction of the cost in the US. It’s all too easy to pick up an extra puffy coat or a sleeping bag here for perhaps $15-20 USD.
There is so much to see and do in Japan, so it’s a good thing we had almost four weeks to spend there! We bought a Japan Rail 21 day pass, allowing us unlimited train rides around four of Japan’s islands. And we took major advantage of it.
The first night we were here, we walked up to a ramen counter and Continue reading “Our year abroad ends in Japan”
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