Andrea + Chris

Namaste! This is Andrea and Christian from Hamburg, Germany. In march 2003 we made - with hari as our guide - a most wonderful 21-days-trek Around Annapurna including the 5600m Thorung La-pass and were eager to come back to Nepal since we so much fell in love with this country and its inhabitants. Over Christmas 2004 then we made it: we did a 10-day-trek in the Langtang- and Helambu-region, crossing the 4500m Laurebina La-pass.

After planning and calculating the trek via email with Hari and Thakur Timalsina from Himalaya Heart Treks we were picked up at the airport by Hari. He lost no word about the trouble we brought him in, because our planned flight was canceled in Bangkok in the middle of the night due to technical problems and we had him waiting the whole night until we arrived the next midday ...

He organized a nice hotel (very hot shower with bathtub!) in the center of Thamel and took his time the whole afternoon to walk around with us getting the needed equipment together - not content until he had bargained the best possible rate on every piece of gear we bought.

With a free cup of nepali milk tea in the office of HHT we over talked the planned trek. And it was no problem at all when we came up with the idea to change the whole route and everything that we had written about by email before. Thakur was very flexible and within a couple of minutes we were offered a route matching exactly our new announced wishes. Also the
wish to take a private jeep instead of the local bus was - for an
acceptable upgrade in price - made possible immediately, so that we could leave for the trek by car early the next morning. The organization was great!

The trek itself was as beautiful as we expected it. With us was
"Hungry", a good friend of Hari and experienced porter who new the area as well as Hari (who himself seemed to know every tree and rock personally ;-)).
The amazing scenery was changing fast, the weather was fine and the all round-service provided by Hari and Hungry was just excellent. We had very good and healthy food, clean rooms and nice daily walking-distances. We got lots of information about the nature and the culture on the way. And most of all: we had fun, fun, fun! As a special service Hari carried a bag with fresh fruits the whole trek over and offered us an exclusive fruit plate for free every evening after dinner. That was so cute!

When we were musing about the fact, that we were walking the day walks together with another group of trekkers, Hari immediately sensed intuitively that we were not 100 % happy and changed the route for that day, so that we split off the other group and were only the 4 of us again for Christmas. That was so nice and sensitive - we were overwhelmed!

After the trek we also wanted to do one day sightseeing in Kathmandu. Hari organized a car and a driver and took us to just the places you have to see to get a feeling about the culture and religion of the city. It was very impressive.

Like last time we were invited to the home of Thakur. And together with Thakur's friendly wife, his enchanting two kids, Hari and Hungry we had a wonderful familiar nepali evening with delicious dhal bhat. The family of Hari and Thakur become closer friends every time, we are in Nepal. Hopefully we can arrange another visit soon! dhanyabad, Hari, hamro bhai ra sathi!
If you want to go trekking in Nepal - trek with Himalaya Heart Treks & Expedition - it's the right choice if you want to combine perfect service, good prices and everyday fun with friendly and caring people!

If anyone would like to have further information or likes to see a considerable amount of pictures from Nepal, feel free to visit our travel-website at http://www.fusselmenge.de

Andrea + Chris
Hamburg, Germany