Even after a few weeks, the things that seemed shocking at first become part of daily life. Trying to remember that these things aren't all so ordinary, I took some pictures. No sandbagged police check points or Maoist rebels, but a lot of other things that don't mind pictures.

From 1000 meters altitude at Pokarah to 4130 meters at Annapurna Base Camp and back down, these are the photos from our Annapurna trek. A little late in getting posted, these photos were taken by Ewan and I during the nine days of our trek. The route we followed is mapped out on Ewan's site.

We have been to two Nepali machine shops - we do a lot of work at EcoSystem's fabricator, KC's. We also visited the shop in Thimi (outside Kathmandu) that does our galvanizing. It turns out this place in Thimi has a huge outdoor metalworking setup.

After Nepal, I went to Bangkok, Hong Kong, and mainland China. I flew from Hong Kong to Xi'an, where I met up with two friends from college: Jeff and Silvia. We saw the terracota army, walked up Hua Shan, and then went to Jeff's hometown: Xining.

Silvia Shinpei Chiang first met the author and his associate Jeffrey as residents in a vegan cooperative house at Stanford University. She will attend Case Western University in the autumn to begin her medical degree.

Speaking English and Chinese natively and Spanish through study, she has lived in Peru with the Peace Corps. She currently lives and works in Beijing PRC and has two cats: Aboji and Tupac.

Jeff's been teaching English in Xining, western China. He lives there for real - much realer than my having lived in Kathmandu

We've two sub-albums in the Christmas Special, there's Going Somewhere for Christmas and a very special Christmas En Passant.