The Top 10 Tips for Trekking in the Himalayas

Mark Pawlak    ash     Himalayas, mountain walking, Nepal, Tibet, training for trekking, trekking, Trekking in the Himalyas, Walking

The good news is that no matter your age or abilities, most everyone can go trekking in the Himalayas – you certainly don’t need to be Sir Edmund Hilary or the like! Read on to find out about the top ten tips for trekking in the Himalayas!

Get ready for trekking in the Himalayas

Before you go:

Head for the hills

Fitness goes hand in hand with enhancing your overall trekking experience. The fitter you are the more pleasurable your experience will be. Trekking in the Himalayas involves many days walking at a time, up to 8 hours, with distances upwards of 10km/day. The key is to build your endurance levels over time.

3-6 months before you set off on your Himalayan adventure head to the hills in your own backyard! Practise walking with a daypack, starting with half-day outings. As you build your fitness increase the amount of time and distance covered in your walks.

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The AZAB racers – heading home and searching for wind

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts, sailingbreaks     AZAB 2011, AZAB race, Sail4cancer, Sailing, Sailing for charity, sailing race

Overall summary: the sun is out, we are 420 miles west of Brest (no pun intended) and boat is going well with no major problems yet, touch wood, (we sailors are a superstitious bunch)   – and certainly no probs such as we had on the outward leg to the Azores. However, we still have a leaky water tank, so no water on board, except bottled, making basic hygine a toughy! We are completely exhausted – managing 2-3 hours sleep each night. It’s not easy sleeping on board a rolling, banging boat doing 10 kts much of the time – which is fast for us.

James Hardiman

Day 1 – Start. Boat is generally going well since leaving Ponta del Garda after a very bad start. We had reaching sails up for a windward start in strong winds and so were way back in the pack. However ‘Fluke – iGOSKi’ quickly regained her composure and we had a good fight with some of our class equals (‘Lady First’, ‘Fan Fan’ and ‘Comedy of Errors’) along the back of the island where the wind gusted and we had lots of mini broaches (for non sailors – this is where the boat skews out of control)! We then got a good lead (we go well on gusty winds when we are no broaching) and caught up the class in front, passing some of them  in the evening’s lighter going air to take a great overall position for a short while (so I’m told via Sat phone).

Day 2-3: Had two good days of Spinnaker runs in 22kts, lots of surfing and high boat speeds, a couple of broaches but overall covered quite some miles and, I was told by Sat phone that we were well positioned on the leader board. Not that it means much so early on when boats go in all directions in search of depressions, but it was a good boost to hear.

So having made good ground on our chosen course – just west of the Rhumb line (an imaginary  straight line from the start to finish lines, we then headed North a 2nd time to avoid some wind holes (no wind) lurking around Biscay. Heading Nor West when home is Nor East is hard to do in the search for wind, especially when it’s all estimated from weather data files you get on board (via Sat phone) and interpret yourself - using your own inexperienced methods!

During the night on day 3 we shredded the No.1 Genoa and spent all of Friday hand stitching a 3 metre tear (no joke!), and two smaller ones. Sorry Pete (at Sailtech), I’ve killed a brand new Carbon-Kevlar racing sail!

Day 4: We must have slipped quite a lot now because the wind has been light for the last day, and most class 4 and the best class 3 (our class) boats have gone more nor-west than us – where the wind is best. They have had 20kts all day yesterday when we had 14 kts at best. We are bound to have lost a lot of miles with that.

Day 5: Sun is shining and all OK thus far. Only doing 6 kts and wondering if everyone else is screaming past us in 15kts Nor West of us.

Got a nasty beat ahead to look forward to in strongish winds. (for non sailors – this is sailing into the wind, and means an angle of 45 degrees and lots of banging, possible breakages, even less sleep and general nausea all day long). Oh well, hopefully we will have pasties and a level bed to look fwd to on arrival in Falmouth, whenever that may be…

To support James’s AZAB challenge visithttp://www.sail4cancer.org/JamesAzab2011

Find out more about the race at AZAB 2011 and more about his nominated charitySail 4 Cancer

The Camel Trophy: the original overland challenge

Tina Irving    overlandholidays     4x4, Adventures, Camel Trophy, Land Rover, off-road, Overlanding, overlanding holidays

The Camel Trophy, an overlanding extravaganza of adventure and exploration was launched in 1980, and there have been some fantastic expeditions to remote destinations such as the San Pedro Volcano in Guatemala, South America in the 1990s.

Overlanding needs a good 4x4! credit: Flickr/indigoprime

Robust vehicles were fundamental to winning the Camel Trophy, as well as committed participants with the relevant expertise and knowledge to keeping the vehicles well maintained, and of course good navigators!  When the Camel Trophy was first launched, the vehicles used were German Jeeps, Range Rovers and the whole spectrum of Land Rovers.

The Camel Trophy ran until 2000 and was superceded by the G4 Challenge in 2003,  using Land Rovers and supported by competitors from 16 nations.  Despite the large “gas guzzling” vehicles, overlanding does have a social responsibility and Land Rover supported the Red Cross Societies until the cancellation of the event in 2009.

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Beach Holiday: Why black sand is sometimes the best sand

Mark Pawlak    Adventure Sports & Travel Thoughts     beach, beach holiday, Canary Islands, hawaii, puerto rico, Scuba Diving, Surfing, Windsurfing

Most people’s idea of a beach holiday includes time spent wasting time on a white sandy beach. Well, there are plenty of spots around the world that serve up exactly the same beach experience, just without the white sand – and why waste time when there’s wind and waves in which to play?

Here are three destinations with black sand beaches to go on your next travel itinerary.

Canary Islands

As well as the miles of pristine light sand, these islands have a dark side. On the north shore of Tenerife, there’s La Grañosa and Los Roques (the later very popular for scuba diving) as well as several bays and ways to the sea that are dusted in black sand.

Gran Canaria also offers beach life in black and white, as does the east coast of Fureteventura, an island that’s one of the windsurfing capitals of the world.

Black sand beauty Image: Flickr/Ryan Devenish

Hawaii

One of the most beautiful, and sought after island holiday resorts sports a black sand beach. Visitors swim up to 800 miles to rest on Punalu’u beach – that’s the sea turtles that come to lay their eggs here. The black sand is so prized it’s illegal to remove it, so stick to wandering and marvelling at the scenery.

Puerto Rico

If surfing is your sport, you may have heard of Playa La Boca in Puerto Rico. Just east off this black sand beauty is a great point-break best suited to experienced surfers. The beach here runs west from the mouth of the river, and runs for miles till it whitens past the distant headland.

Black sand beaches are formed as boiling larva meets the ocean. So, if you’ve black sand under foot, you know that where you’re holidaying was once a bubbling, flowing mass of volcanic sludge (the heat you feel searing through your toes just comes from the sand’s absorption of sun rays – in case you were getting worried for a minute!)

The AZAB race: ready for the return

Mark Pawlak    sailingbreaks     AZAB, AZAB race, James Hardiman, racing, Sail4cancer, Sailing, sailing holiday

Been here in the Azores for 8 days and really really ready to go now. Just want to get on with the punishment to come! Done a few shoreside parties/events but I’ve been working all week from a laptop so its been muted – and working on a dial up connection is v frustrating! However it has also (sadly) meant we still havent even left the marina yet! I havent even seen the volcano’s, hot springs or ANY of the island.

The start of the AZAB race

We have fixed our auto pilot and many holes in the sails, replaced a few ropes that chafed through and a bent stanchion pole (post on side of boat).

You may remember that we lost all our fresh water after the start in Falmouth – well, closer inspection shows it was due to an actual hole in the tank – so it is unfixable here. We will have to stock up on plastic bottles! Also they dont sell pot noodle or tinned mince (oddly) – and yes that is the only diet we can cook at 45 degrees!. So, our food supplies for the way home are limited to say the least!

Start is at 12 UTC tomorrow (Tuesday), and most boats are ready. Had the Portugese TV filming me yesterday doing repairs to the boat – which was odd because clealy there was a language issue, so I thought that was a bit of a waste of time, but they didnt seem to think so.

Anyway – we will head west after the start and then have to go north for 2 days to avoid a ridge of high pressure (which means no wind). This will be hard to do when home is to the north east and over 1100 miles away! High pressure will mean sitting like ducks and bobbing no where, so we will have to hunt for the lows.

Remember to donate if you would like to – Sail 4 Cancer is a really great cause. <http://www.sail4cancer.org/JamesAzab2011>

Kitesurfing: a newbie on the world tour

Tala    kiteboardingholidays     Competition, kitesurfing, kitesurfing holidays, kitesurfing world tour, women at war

I guess it is safe to say I am a newbie on the PKRA world tour. Having only turned professional a few months ago, the door was opened to a world filled with non-stop travel, living out of a suitcase filled with bikinis and board shorts, competitions and always in search of that perfect wind to keep on training.

Kitesurfing and loving it! Image: Flickr/Bitten Dallas

Last year I was living and working in Cabarete, and along came the world tour stop in June! I was asked to take part in the competition as they needed more girls to compete – in such a male dominated sport they only had about 10 girls competing compared to 40 men!

So there I was with absolutely no clue what the rules were, what the flags meant or even where I was meant to be on the water – as a result, I missed the first two minutes of my first heat with only five minutes to go, but what an adrenaline rush though of having to show everything you have in only seven minutes!

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The world’s top 3 dive sites

James    scubadivingholidays     diving, Diving Holidays, diving sites, Scuba Diving, shark diving, snorkelling

What makes a great dive site. Fish? Wrecks? Clear blue water? Here is my choice for the best three places in the world to rubber up and get wet.

3 – The Great Blue Hole – Caye Caulker – Belize

There are many Blue Holes around the world but this is the best. The reef at 14m is great but in the centre is the hole that drops 150m throughit. At 25m there is an overhang with stalactites and stalagmites as well as reef and hammerhead lemon sharks welcoming you into this strange subterranean world. With 60-metre visibility, water doesn’t get much clearer than this paradise for divers.

2 – The Thistlegorm – Ras Mohamed – Red Sea – Egypt

In 1941 a Scottish supply ship went down off the coast of the Sinai Peninsular. The Allied Forces loss was a wreck diver’s gain. This 131-metre long wreck contains all its original cargo including rifles, trucks and even full train carriages. It lies in only 20 metres of water, on a fish-covered reef in the crystal clear waters of the Red Sea. And there is over 30 metres of visibility. The currents can be strong around the wreck so it has some technical challenges too.

1 – Barracuda Point – Sipadan Island – Malaysia

Sipadan is a Mecca for divers. Limited numbers of permits ensures this tropical dive island remains an isolated paradise with 14 main dive sites, many of which could make a top ten list. Barracuda Point is alive with white tip sharks, clown fish, countless turtles, parrot fish and many more. An incredible diversity of fish inhabit this wall of reef that that drops off 2000ft into the abyss below. It gets its name from the swarms of Barracuda that hang like a silver living.