In late October of 2008 I went to Nepal to do some trekking in the Annapurna Region. The trip was a private one, organized for me by Geographic Expeditions in San Francisco. The time of year was right – post-monsoon – and the towering, snow-covered Himalayan peaks were all clear as a bell.

Early one morning we took a flight from Pokhara – west of Kathmandu – to Jomsom, north of the Annapurna massif. It was more than spectacular! The small, twin-prop plane cruised at 10,000 feet up the world’s deepest gorge while majestic 8,091 meter (26,545 feet) Annapurna I and Machapuchare towered 16,000 feet above it on the right and mighty 8,167 meter (26,795 feet) Dhaulagiri on the left. It was over in just 25 minutes with an abrupt landing on the short runway at Jomsom, carved precariously into the hillside. Never before have I been airborne looking up to the summits of mountains practically 3 miles above our flight path!

After several days hiking at 9,000 + feet, we went back to Jomsom to take the return flight to Pokhara early the next morning. The day dawned clear and bright but the wind was blowing down the gorge from the north. No incoming flights had arrived by 8:30 AM and we had been booked on the 7:30 AM flight out. My Nepali guide, Madhav, quickly confirmed that all flights were canceled for the day and no one knew what tomorrow would bring. Even if there would be flights then, they would be fully booked. It appeared that we were indefinitely stranded in the wilds of northern Nepal, just below the Tibetan plateau!

That certainly wouldn’t do, but Madhav was very resourceful. He quickly negotiated with a local driver who had a fleet of Indian built “jeeps” to take us by road, instead, down the Kali Ghandaki gorge. Road??! It had only just been built and it was horrific. It looked like they barely scraped the surface with a bulldozer. Full of rocks, potholes and mud. Also crowded with trains of burros plying the old trade route from Tibet to southern Nepal. But it was the only alternative to remain on my schedule and it turned out to be a real adventure! It would ultimately take 14 bone-jarring hours in all.

We set out in the fully-packed SUV. A small gratuity got me a seat in the front instead of in the back cargo area. I could see everything clearly as we wound down the gorge, bumping and grinding our way along. To my left always was the wild and fast-running Kali Ghadaki kola (river), over a steep, unguarded embankment. To my right were menacing cliffs with the risk of sudden rock falls ever present. Down the middle was a nightmare that was called the new road down the gorge.

After about an hour bouncing around in my seat, we came to a vast impasse on the road. There had been a massive landslide awhile back wiping out at least a mile of road and embankment. Nothing was left but a precariously sloping pile of rocks and mud. So we disembarked and picked our way gingerly through it to where the road resumed again. Madhav had arranged for another Jeep to be waiting for us at the other end.