A few months on, and our adventure in Bhutan seems like almost a lifetime ago. I was lucky enough to find time to revisit the memories on Thursday in giving a short slideshow presentation to people at work about our trip. Was a bit rushed in the end, as I had to get off to the airport to catch a plane to Brisbane, but was great fun none-the-less.

Inspired by looking through photos in preparing my slideshow, I’ve finally posted a few more photos from our trip to Bhutan up on the web. Head over to my Flickr page (or more specifically, my Bhutan Photo Set) to see them. There are lots more photos to process and publish – especially film photos from our non-digital SLR. I’ll place those up on Flickr as time permits.

All this thinking about Bhutan has also inspired me to finally start reading the book on Dzongkha, the official Bhutanese language, that I bought a few months back. Fascinating reading so far!

Start Altitude: 10m (Bangkok)
Peak Altitude: 2800m (Taktsang)
Sleeping Altitude: 2200m (Paro)

Ater a week in Thailand, our flight from Bangkok Airport was scheduled to leave at 5:50am, meaning an obscenely early start from our hotel in downtown Bangkok. At the airport, we arrived well ahead of Druk Air staff, who eventually showed up sometime after 4am. Whilst waiting, we met a lovely couple from Brisbane who were also heading off to Paro to do the same trek as us. Although we assume that we would be trekking together, they ended up walking in the smaller World Expeditions group.

Unexpectedly, our flight actually had a brief stop-over in Kolkata in eastern India; well, not really a stop-over, since those of us on the plane didn’t even disembark, but passengers alighted and boarded around us.

Once on the final leg to Paro, the scenery was apparently pretty spectacular, with views of Everest, Kanchen Junga and other Himalayan peaks. Unfortunately, we were seated on the wrong side of the plane to see most of this :-/. Despite that, however, the scenery was still pretty impressive, as was the spectacular landing into Paro. Apparently, the Airbus 319 we were flying in is pretty much the largest plane that can actually land at Paro; certainly anything with a wider wingspan would surely be clipping trees and valley spurs as the plane banked from side-to-side on approach, based on how close the mountains, trees and houses appeared to be to the wing tips on our descent.

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You might have noticed that things have been a bit quiet around here for the past month. There is actually a very good reason for this – Michelle and I have been overseas in Thailand and Bhutan since the beginning of April, with the main focus of our trip being a 14 day trek through the Himalaya in western and northern Bhutan.

The trek was almost certainly the most physically and mentally demanding activity I have ever undertaken, but was equally fascinating and stunning at the same time. Our trekking was hampered by unseasonably bad weather, including rain, sleet and (a lot of) snow, along with temperatures ranging from -10 to 35 degrees during the course of the trek.

The remote areas of Bhutan in which we spent the bulk of our time really are like walking back a few hundred years to medieval times. The villages have no roads, in fact, no vehicle access at all (not by air or by land) – everything is brought in on yaks, ponies or carried by people who, like us, must make the multiple-day trek along steep, narrow, rocky paths from the nearest road-accessible towns. There is (of course) no mains power or water.

Over the next few days (and probably weeks), I hope to publish a selection of photos and stories from our epic journey in the mountains. Feel free to leave any comments or questions as they arise – Bhutan is a truly fascinating country that I’m still very interested in learning much more about.

Our final week’s lead-up to the Hawkesbury Classic was far from ideal. After peaking the weekend before the classic with our 60+km paddle, we planned a week of rest, no stress and little exercise to ensure we were in peak condition for the actual Classic. As it turned out, the week was a crazy, hectic one for both of us. I ended up spending 2 days in Canberra for work, which involved getting up at 5am on Wednesday morning for an early flight. As a result, I was feeling rather sleep deprived and could feel the onset of sickness – runny nose, sore throat and blocked sinuses. On Wednesday evening, I was feeling a bit worse. After carbo-loading on a big serving of risotto and hot chips I had a long hot bath and early night in my hotel. On Thursday morning, I couldn’t even bring myself to walk the 15 minutes from my hotel to the office – opting instead to fall into a taxi for a $6 taxi ride. By Thursday evening, when I returned home to Sydney, I was feeling pretty crap. Our land-crew for the Classic (both our fathers) were flying up from Melbourne late on Thursday night, and our original plan had me going to pick them up around 10pm. As it was, I arrived home from the airport around 7pm, ate some carbo-loaded pasta for dinner, did some quick tidying to make room for our dads to sleep and crashed into bed, leaving Shell to stay up and greet them as they arrived via taxi from the airport.

Under any other circumstances, I would have stayed in bed most of Friday feeling sick and sorry for myself. As it was, I had yet another unavoidable early morning start, since we had an interview candidate who we had specially flown out from St Petersburg in Russia as a candidate for our software engineering position. Friday was the 1 day he had to spend with me in Sydney, given that I would be on leave (recovering from the Classic) on Monday, and he would spend Tuesday and Wednesday meeting the rest of our team in Canberra, before completing his epic journey back to Russia. As a result, I was up and in the office early, preparing and fine-tuning problems for our Russian candidate to work on. I spent most of the day in a rather intense discussion and problem solving sessions with our inevitably jet-lagged candidate, and by the end of our day, I was probably as exhausted as he felt. Thankfully, after pumping myself full of herbal and cold-and-flu tablets, I was feeling a little (but not a whole lot) better by Friday night. Another carbo-loaded meal of pasta shared with our dads was followed by shopping for last minute food and drink essentials (gatorade, bananas, high-protein snack foods etc), ready for our big endurance test. The rest of the evening was spent gathering all our gear and supplies for the Classic, deciding on expected checkpoint times for our race plan and preparing last minute equipment.

The day of the Classic dawned rather overcast and cool. Long range forecasts from the weather bureau had originally predicted thunderstorms and showers, but this had been revised to the chance of afternoon showers but an otherwise fine and clear day and night. I woke feeling a bit brighter than Friday, but still far from on top of the world. After some cold and flu tablets and a big breakfast of weetbix, tinned fruit and pancakes, we loaded up the car with PFDs, paddles, food, camelbacks, clothes, maps, compasses, torches and other essential paddling supplies and headed off up the M2 to the starting point at Windsor. Suffice to say with all that gear and 4 people in Starla, we were rather squished in for the hour-ish journey to Windsor.
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So on the final weekend before the Hawkesbury Classic Shell and I decided that it was time to up the ante a little. Although not blogged here, in the past few weeks, we have paddled on the Hawkesbury from Sackville to Wisemans Ferry (~35km), from Wisemans Ferry to Spencer (~32km), and completed a paddle in somewhat choppy seas from our usual launching spot on the Lane Cove River across to Birkenhead Point at Drummoyne (on Sydney Harbour). Each of these paddles happened on different days though, and we were yet to paddle more than about 35km in a single day.

With the actual Hawkesbury Classic being 111km, we decided that we needed to stretch that distance a little. Having previously paddled from Windsor to Sackville, this weekend’s organised familiarisation paddle was in the reverse direction – from Sackville to Windsor – and timed to start an hour or so before sunset such that most of the paddle would be completed in darkness. Shell and I decided to start out just before lunchtime and paddle on our own from Windsor to Sackville before completing the return leg with the rest of the crowd completing the organised paddle.

The number of boats taking part in each paddle has certainly increased as we’ve got closer to the Hawkesbury Classic date. Despite the crowd, our boat continues to be "distinctive" (that’s what a number of people have told us) in that it is one of the wider and slower in the fleet. (We like to emphasise that it’s stable, comfortable and carries lots of gear!). In fact there have rarely been any other plastic boats on the organised paddles. On a couple of the paddles, there have been two guys in a canoe, but even they have swapped over to a speedy fibreglass kayak for the past couple of practice paddles and for the actual event. Still, even if it takes a bit more effort, we’re determined to attempt the Classic in our own kayak .

So the big question that should be on your lips is: did we actually make the distance? Yes – all 62.4km of it!! We arrived back at Windsor sometime around 8:30pm – didn’t actually check the time, but it had been dark for a few hours when we finished. The paddle was very challenging, and the last few kilometres of the return trip to Windsor seemed to take forever! Let’s just say we can certainly feel the trip in our muscles this morning! Somehow, no matter how many calluses develop on our hands, long paddling sessions always seem to uncover fresh areas to become blisters and hot spots. Thankfully we’ve also invested in some kayaking gloves which are a great help once our hands become too sore, and also help to keep our hands warm in nightime paddling.

It was actually a beautifully still night, so the water was pretty glassy for most of the return trip – in contrast to the head-winds that we experienced for most of the way from Windsor to Sackville. Every boat was also carrying a cyalume light (mostly pinned to the PFD of the back paddler) so for many stretches of the river, although we were paddling in darkness, we could try to follow a somewhat eerie collection of glowing greeny-yellow lights off in the distance ahead of us. A shame that we had neither a camera nor the energy to take a picture of it, as it looked quite cool with these lights dotted over the river ahead of us.

Anyway, we’re very satsified to have proved to ourselves that we can paddle 60+km in a single day – that should at least see us through to Wisemans Ferry for the actual Classic. Our challenge now will be to actually continue beyond Wisemans. We’ll probably arrive there sometime around midnight, and we’ll be tired and sore. The tide will have turned against us, and be stronger than further back upstream. So will we actually finish the Classic? I honestly don’t know, but life’s nice when you’ve got challenges Wish us luck for next weekend!

Shell and I completed another Hawkesbury River Classic training paddle on Saturday, and in doing so we set a new personal record for the furthest distance we’ve paddled so far in a single, unbroken session. As you can guess from the post title, the paddle was from Windsor to Sackville, which is actually the first leg of the Hawkesbury Classic. Windsor is a good 30-40 minutes drive from home, so it was an early start to get up, ready, packed and out to Windsor by 7:30am.

After dropping Shell, our kayak and all our gear off in Windsor, I had a quick car shuffle (which included a ride on the Sackville car ferry) to have the car waiting for us at Sackville when we finished. By the time we’d all sorted out the car shuffling, got kitted up in PFDs, registered, attached race numbers, had a quick briefing etc. it was about 9:30am when we got on the water. Again, we were certainly amongst the more recreational paddlers on the day – in fact there was really only one other boat there that wasn’t a racing kayak (that kayak had a home made keel attached to the bottom to keep it tracking well).

Without going into the details of nearly four hours of continuous paddling (I think we finished in about 3 hours 50 minutes in the end with two approx. 5 minute breaks), it was a really enjoyable paddle, although the final few kms were tough. We set off from the starting line at breakneck speed, with a stroke rate that was way above what we are able to sustain for anything more than a few minutes. (Shell later confided that she’d kinda got caught up in the moment and was seeing if she could match the stroke rate of the more hardcore marathon paddlers around us). After our flying start, we eased into a more regular rhythm. The first 25 or so kms went by pretty happily – we made good time, and had the opportunity to chat with a few other paddlers along the way and take in the varying scenery we were paddling through. The final few kilometres were quite a bit harder, at least for me, but eventually we caught sight of the Sackville ferry and knew we were going to make it. Of course, shortly before we finally reached Sackville, we were passed by some of the more enthusiastic paddlers heading back to Windsor – apparently 32km on a Saturday morning isn’t enough for some people!

One thing that made the paddle a lot easier was our new CamelBak drinking bladders. With these fitted behind our seats and the drinking tube tucked into our PFD, it was a lot easier to have frequent drinks without having to stop paddling to unstrap and unscrew a bottle each time. We still have to work out the correct positioning of the tube (sometimes we still needed to miss a paddle stroke to position the tube correctly for drinking), but it’s a vast improvement over using our Sigg bottles. Surprisingly, they were quite cheap too (well, cheap compared with most of the other CamelBak systems), because they don’t come with a harness etc. We reckoned we’d be better off without having to carry the weight on our backs, and after Saturday’s paddle, I think that was an excellent decision!

Of course, we’re back at it again this Saturday – this time from Sackville to Wiseman’s Ferry, which is I think a shade over 40km. I think we’ll need to buy some kayaking gloves before then – even with calluses on my hands, they are still starting to blister by the end of each paddle. Not to mention the dry and rubbed skin in the webbing between the thumb and forefinger.

So Shell and I had our first paddle on the Hawkesbury River this morning. Got up reasonably early to join in a familiarization paddle organised by the Windsor Canoe club. They were a very friendly bunch of people, but it’s fair to say that we were amongst the most recreational of the kayakers there – there were a lot of very serious people with fancy, light-weight boats who seemed to think a 24km paddle was a nice warm-up before breakfast! Our Dagger Trinidad seemed rather wide and bulky compared to the racing lines of many other kayaks.

The paddle was from Brooklyn to Spencer and back, although we did actually turn around just before Spencer, making the total distance somewhere around 24-26km. Thankfully, the weather was fantastic – sunny and cool with very little wind. The trip was also organised to have the tide on our side for the return trip, which no doubt helped, although I can’t say I noticed too much assistance!

There were just under 50 boats taking part, and after crowded start, the boats stretched out, and we found our pace in the back third of the group. We were quite happy to make the 12-13km mark in around 75 minutes. The trip back was probably slightly slower, at around 80 minutes. To put that into perspective for us Cooinda folks, that equates to paddling from Banksia Peninsula to Wally’s farm on the Nicholson River in around 2 and a half hours. With canoes, gears and kids, that’s normally the best part of a whole day’s paddle!

We were very pleased (and tired) as we came off the water around just after 12pm. I’m sure my muscles will be reminding me of the paddle tomorrow!

Made sure we had another short paddle on the Lane Cove River this morning. We intended to paddle as far as we could upstream; unfortunately, this was trivially easy, since we couldn’t get any further than the Steakhouse at Fullers Bridge due to the Parramatta Epping to Chatswood Rail Link tunnel works, which have blocked the river. Bugger.

So we ended up paddling up and back between Fullers Bridge and Magdala Park. We both felt pretty sluggish this morning, so we only paddled for about an hour. It rained for much of the paddle, but that didn’t make it any less enjoyable. In fact the sound of the rain on the river was quite soothing.

Have been trying to focus on writing my dynamic time warping speech/speaker recognizer in R this afternoon. Hrm… it’s turning out to be trickier than I thought, but that’s largely because I don’t know R as well as I should. I know exactly what I want to do conceptually – it’s just a matter of working out a smart way to do it in R (like finding out how kmeans clustering works, to avoid having to reinvent the wheel). Back to the grind-stone now. Wish me luck!

Just got back (ok it was actually a few hours ago!) from 2 hours of solid paddling on the Lane Cove River. We had a nice tail-wind for most of the paddle from Chatswood/North Ryde through to Riverview, from where we had an unexpectedly great view of the Harbour Bridge and city skyline. Of course, given the downstream tail-wind, we had a monster head-wind paddling back upstream, but surprisingly we managed to make the return trip in almost exactly the same time as the downstream journey. I think at least part of that was because we refrained from stopping to often, due to the fact that we started drifting backwards every time that we did stop paddling to rest.

I’m not sure exactly how far the paddle was, but a quick guesstimate would be something like 12-15km for the whole trip. Not bad for a Sunday morning! Fear our tanky kayaking muscles!!

We finally found time to test our new Dagger Trinidad sea-kayak on the Lane Cove River yesterday afternoon (pictures are not of us, but give you an idea of the scenery). That, of course, was after working out how to fit a 5.5 metre long boat on the roof racks of our Subaru, which is substantially shorter than that We need to buy some more of our very cool kayak straps to make things a bit simpler in the future (for attaching the kayak to the roof bars, tow hooks at the front, and tow-ball tongue at the rear).

Anyway, we found a great launching spot on the Lane Cove River, only a short distance from our house, thanks to the Lane Cove River Kayakers, who publish their meeting location on their website. It’s a perfect spot to launch from – lots of open space, plenty of parking, and as I mentioned, quite close to home. That should remove some of the inertia from getting out on the water regularly, as we’ll have to do if we have any chance of finishing the Hawkesbury River Classic!

We had a great paddle for an hour and half or so, paddling down-stream towards the harbour past Lane Cove, and then back upstream again. Our kayak is great! Very comfortable seats, feels very stable in the water, and has very easily adjustable foot pedals in the rear, and foot braces in the front. The only downside is that it’s a bit heavy to maneuver when it’s out of the water. I guess that’s the disadvantage of plastic boats. Still, lifting it on and off the roof racks will be good for our muscles