Thursday, April 24, 2008

Josh's photos from the India trip online!

While I've been severely procrastinating in regards to sorting and captioning my photos from our India trip, Josh did an awesome job of getting his photos organized, captioned and online. You can see them all here. He broke the trip photos into three chapters to make going through the photos much easier. Post a comment here and let him know what you think!

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

A few of my favorite photos from India

I have over 2.5GB of photos from our India trip that I've been sorting through a bit. I plan to post them in a web album at some point but no doubt that will be a while. But in the meantime, here are a few that I really like or that tell the story a bit...



Monks playing cricket at the Enchey Monastery.


We're huge in India...


Sarah and Sam enduring the long drive from Gangtok to Yuksam.


Our group at the lookout above Dzongri. Kangchenjunga and Pandim are the major peaks in the background. From left to right: Me, Sarah, Sam, Dawa our guide, Josh and Suraj our liaison officer.



Jopuno, 5,936m. We successfully climbed the west ridge, the ridge going from lower left starting on the glacial snow to the summit.


The "A-Bomb" sunset from our 16,000' camp on Tinchenkang.


Josh descending the rock face section on Tinchenkang in a snow storm on our summit attempt day.


Kangchenjunga in the moonlight from our basecamp.


After the storm cleared, Sam descending the west ridge of Jopuno on our summit day.


Our big mountain family at Thangsing camp before we hike out. The group includes Dzo drivers, porters, our cook and his assistant, our liaison officer, guide and us.


Super friendly school girls at the border checkpost of Sikkim and West Bengal.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Ah, the taste of green chile

Hey, we all made it back home safely and without incident! After a couple of long flights (9 hours from Delhi to Frankfurt, 11.5 hours from Frankfurt to Los Angeles), a night in Los Angeles and a short flight to Albuquerque this morning, we were reunited with our fair state of NM this morning around 9am.
The flights were rough for me. First, Air India had an antiquated Air Canada 747 in poor condition that has the least leg room of any jet I've ever been on. Then, despite not having any stomach issues the entire trip, as soon as I got on the jet, I started up with the diarrhea which is still with me even now. On top of that, I came down with a head cold a day before we left for home. It was one miserable trip back!
But, despite a wacked-out stomach, I was eager to get some chile so Allison and I headed straight to The Frontier restaurant where I enjoyed my last bit of gluttony for the trip. From now on, it's diet time and time to shed some of these extra pounds I amassed while playing tourist in India post-expedition.
I'm unpacking and sorting through five weeks of mail, both electronic and postal, and just happy to be back home again. It was an amazing trip with some truly wonderful companions and I'm wildly thankful to have had the opportunity to make this trip.
In a few days I hope to have some photos with captions and a story online and when I do get this up, I'll post the link here.
Thank you Sam, Sarah and Josh for an amazing excursion. It was awesome!

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Delhi Sandwich

We made it successfully to Delhi last night after a nice drive from Darjeeling to the Bagdogra airport yesterday morning. It was sad to say goodbye to Suraj as we'd become good friends in the past month but we'll stay in touch via email and maybe come back to explre North Sikkim sometime.
Today we'll take a taxi (and hopefully an auto-rickshaw!) around Delhi and check out Lodi Gardens at the recommendation of my co-worker Giri. Tomorrow we leave here at 7:30am flight to get back in Los Angeles around 6pm on Saturday night. We stay the night there and leave early Sunday on flight back to ABQ. We're almost home and we are looking forward to being back again.
India has been fantastic and I can't wait to show you all some photos and tell you all the details about this wonderful journey. Thanks for reading and saying hello here!
Jason

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Happy Birthday Allison!

Hey, today, April 1st, is Allison's birthday! Let's all wish her a happy day!
Thanks!
Jason