Annapurna Trek with Tilicho Lake 2006

It had been a dream ever since we had been to Tibet in 2005: we wanted to go to see the Himalayas, the real big mountains, maybe even climb one of the "shorter" ones. We started to read about altitude sickness, what to do about it, looked out for the necessary equipment we didn't have yet... but the longer the preparation went, the more we liked the idea of first doing the Annapurna Circuit to get a general feeling for such altitude - and then take it from there. We do a lot of hiking in Europe (Klettersteige, self-securing trails), but we had only once been to elevations higher than 4000 meters - and that was the Tibet trip mentioned above. For months we said goodbye to consumption of alcohol. Both of us are in pretty good shape, but we intensified our work-out programme. So when we headed off to Pudong Airport in Shanghai on the morning of October 22nd we felt both terribly excited and well-prepared. We had chosen the usual direction, counter clockwise, for the trip, since it allowed for better adjustment to the altitude. So the plan said we'd start in Besisahar and walk the whole round back to Beni, still hoping that we could tackle one of the 6000 m peaks along the trek. Well, things don't always go as planned - but read for yourself :-)