Forty years after my first visit in 1982, I returned to a very different Nepal, much changed from the one I'd experienced as a wide-eyed twenty-one year old on my first trip to southwest Asia: City districts renovated and unrecognizable after a devastating earthquake in 2015. Waves of tourists moving through once quiet streets, now packed with travel agencies offering all manner of services; outdoor stores carrying North Face and Patagonia knockoffs from China; restaurants advertising a wide variety of international dishes to satisfy an increasingly voracious global appetite.

Outside of Kathmandu on the popular trekking routes, modern accommodations offer espresso, pizza, hot showers and wifi in places that were decades earlier uninhabited while overhead helicopters continuously buzz the sky, providing a once in a lifetime opportunity for visitors from all over the world to get an up-close glimpse of the world’s highest peaks. By the end of my trip, however, I was relieved that much of the majestic Himalayan landscape and kindness of the Nepalese people were just as I remembered them from decades earlier, and to have once again found solitude combined with rugged adventure in this now wildly popular travel destination.

During five weeks I completed three very different itineraries comprising nearly three hundred trekking kilometers with a total elevation gain of 18,000 meters. My first destination, the wildly popular Annapurna Base Camp trek, is an easy to moderate route that takes approximately one week to complete. There are comfortable accommodations along the way offering a wide variety of services, from the first day all the way to base camp at 4130 meters, one reason many opt for this trek. Jaw-dropping scenery is your constant companion each day, with deep, steep and mysterious valleys - the pathways to the giants - that culminate below the immense, three thousand meter south face of Annapurna I and the West Face of sacred, unclimbed Machhupuchhre. These are once-in-a-lifetime vistas that anyone can appreciate.

My primary motivation for returning to Nepal a third time was to follow the original route taken by the 1950 French Expedition that made the very first ascent of an eight thousand meter peak, without supplemental oxygen or reliable maps, and on their first attempt of a mountain that had never before been explored. The subsequent account, 'Annapurna: First Conquest of An 8000-meter Peak' by expedition leader Maurice Herzog, was written over seventy years ago and is still the best selling mountaineering book of all time, an epic yet controversial account which adds further mystique to the region on both sides of the Kali Gandaki, the deepest canyon in the world. Herzog and his team had their sights originally set on Dhaulagiri I, the seventh highest mountain in the world, but after weeks of searching for a viable route they eventually gave up, deeming the mountain unclimbable, and instead set out for Annapurna I across the valley, statistically the most dangerous 8000'er of them all. My plan was to follow the difficult approach to Dhaulagiri that gave the French expedition so much trouble.

I set out on the 16-day Dhaulagiri Circuit - considered one of the most difficult treks in Nepal due to its remoteness, altitude gain and exposed sections of trail that would be unquestionably treacherous during periods of bad weather or after heavy snowfall - in late November, with a guide and two porters, to explore the Dhaulagiri Region directly across the Kali Gandaki Valley from the Annapurna Massif. By comparison to the popular treks in Nepal, one must bivouac for several nights at higher altitudes where no villages exist, and carry the necessary provisions, an anomaly when tea houses are prevalent on nearly all other itineraries. We completed the trek in just ten days, feeling stronger each day as we gained altitude, culminating in a very long final day, from Hidden Valley to Marpha, a descent of 2560m/8400.' We were extremely fortunate with the weather, but perhaps even more so for the total absence of others on the route. All climbing expeditions and trekking parties had already departed this late in the season, and I later learned that we had been granted the final 2019 permit for the Dhaulagiri Circuit, which helped explain our good fortune. If you're interested in escaping to a remote region of the Himalaya which even today remains relatively quiet, I highly recommend this trek, particularly in late autumn, between mid November and December.

My third and final destination was the short and sweet Poon Hill Trek, one of the best locations in Nepal to view the sunrise on Dhaulagiri I, the Annapurna Massif and Machhupuchhre. This is a short and relatively easy itinerary, just 3-5 days, with a little over 2000 meters of elevation gain and full amenities beginning to end. Leave Ghorepani well before sunrise - the climb to Poon Hill takes less than an hour - then watch the landscape transform as stars disappear from the sky and alpenglow begins to paint the Himalayas.

Personally, the most gratifying aspect of world travel is the cultural experience, the people we meet along the way, locals and visitors alike. These frequently brief yet meaningful encounters are the heart and soul of adventure travel, connecting with those we'll likely never see again, then returning home with memories that last a lifetime. And, when you meet the children of Nepal along the trail, greeting us with big smiles and the traditional "Namaste!” - shy yet confident, innocent yet fiercely protective, full of joy while already burdened by a life of hardship - they'll bring a smile to your face and restore any lost faith in humanity.