Desert brush

Doesn't this just look like a scene from a cowboy movie? Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Misty mountain hop

The road to Kagbeni was dusty and dry (and still very cold) -- the wind, however, was so strong that it blew a lot of dust around, and after awhile, I decided to stow my camera back inside the bag, as dust was beginning to get into my lens. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Little Tibet

As you can see, the architecture in Kagbeni is distinctly Tibetan, with whitewashed walls and red windows and doors. And it's pretty cold. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Perpetual motion

This little girl was quite happy to pose for us, although she rarely stood still long enough to get a sharp shot! Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Kagbeni

A view of the rooftops in Kagbeni. The thing about Nepal is that as you get higher, the architecture looks more Tibetan. To me, it actually reminds me of a small cowboy town, complete with high mesas and desert all around. The rooftops here are actually connected to one another, and I can imagine neighbours visiting each other by walking from one roof to another! Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Up the stairs

Nothing great about this shot, except that it sets the scene for the next few pictures -- this is a Tibetan Buddhist temple in the small town of Kagbeni. Notice the prayer wheels on the right. Generally temples in Nepal are to be climbed using the left side of the stairs, and you come down on the right side. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Through the doors

A quick grab shot. While I got the shot, the light levels were so low that there's a bit of camera shake here-- so it's only good enough for the Web, but won't stand up in print in terms of sharpness. :( Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

High Nirvana

A shot of the interior of the Tibetan Buddhist temple in the small town of Kagbeni, just before Muktinath. There were quite a number of tourists here, so it was a challenge to shoot without the intrusion of a tourist in the shot. Since this is a place of worship (with loads of chanting) I shot this quickly and without flash to be as respectful and unobtrusive as possible. In fact, this shot was just taken from the front door as I felt it was just too much for me to go waltzing in, snapping away with the camera. ISO was set at 640, in case you're wondering. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Road to Shangri-la

By the second-last day of our 12-day trek, our legs hurt so much that for this (relatively) short but very high stretch of our journey, we decided to hire ponies. It may look like a gentle slope, but what I can't show you (because I was afraid my camera would get in the way) was the road up while we were riding the ponies -- the track was often so narrow it was only large enough for a person (or a pony) to pass and on one side, it was a sheer cliff! In fact, if you look at this picture, just behind the little hill in the middle of the picture is a sheer straight drop. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Horse handler

A portrait of the boy that was responsible for minding our ponies. While he often shouted encouragement to the horses to go faster, he wasn't actually holding on to them -- we had to control the direction of the horses ourselves, something which worried me a little, since I had never handled a horse myself before. Oh yes, notice the lady behind the boy, who's making the scarves you see below. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Relief

Yes, that's the pony, er...relieving himself. Actually, due to the high donkey traffic in these remote areas (for carrying supplies, etc) there's a lot of poop along the trails. You soon learn to avoid it, though sometimes, especially in populated areas, there's just too much of it NOT to step into some. :D Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

High desert

If there's one thing I can impart to the aspiring landscape photographer it's this -- foreground, foreground, foreground! Most people tend to shoot, say, the mountains, but forget all about the foreground. In wideangle landscape shots, it's really important to include some foreground interest to lead the viewer into the picture. In this case, I framed the shot so that the interesting rocks and brush dominated the lower half of the shot. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Great yarn

Here's a shot of the rolls (they're certainly not balls) of yarn used to make the scarves below. The scarves are made on the loom that you see a little bit of in the background. Shot cropped of course. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Scarves

Although it looks like a hot desert, Muktinath is in fact pretty cold all throughout the day, owing to the high altitude. In fact, frost develops on the ground overnight, and during winter, it snows. Scarves are made and sold by the people here to cater to tourists (like me) who came unprepared. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Zig zag

I was fascinated by this zig zag road going through the mountains. At nearly 3800 metres, Muktinath is very remote and nearly inaccessible by large vehicles. Most transport is via donkey or pony. However, some motorcycles have actually been airlifted to one of the lower towns and this serves as alternative transport to people here. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Went up a hill, came down a mountain

Being behind the camera all the time, I don't usually appear in photos much, but on this trip, I made a conscious effort to have myself photographed at various sites just to prove I've been there. This shot was taken at our lodge for the night at Muktinath, our last stop on our trekking trip. The light coming from behind us was actually very, very strong, and to ensure that you could see our faces, I set my camera to provide a short burst of flash to fill in the shadows. The trick here is to make the flash NOT look like a flash -- flash at full power would have been a little unnatural, so I set my flash to shoot a weaker burst using a flash exposure compensation value of -1.7EV, which produced a more natural result. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Chairs and tables

A shot I intentionally shot in B+W with my D200. While it's really easy to turn photos into B+W in Photoshop later, I sometimes like shooting directly in B+W in camera so I can immediately see the result. The cool thing about the Nikon D200 (and also D80 and my old Fujifilm S2 Pro) is that it has a B+W mode. Even cooler is that since I shoot in RAW mode, the colour information is still retained in the file and I can simply turn the colour back on in the Nikon Capture software later. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR.

Muktinath

This is a panorama of the final destination on our long trek, Muktinath temple, a Hindu and Buddhist temple situated just south of the Thorong-la high mountain pass. The image was joined from two images which I just shot handheld then joined in Photoshop. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Portrait

A whimsical portrait of our porter, Bhorje (I hope I got the spelling right). Bhorje was great -- in his own quiet way he was always looking out for us and could carry a load of our stuff as if it weighed nothing. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6
NB: Changed the name to correct spelling in this post.

Mountain view

The final mountain view of the mountains as we flew out from Jomsom back to Pokhara. Looking back at these mountains, it's ironic that what took us about 12 days and over 120km of trekking only takes 18minutes by plane. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Boats

A closeup of the boats on Fewa lake. If there's one thing I remember about Nepal is that everything is brightly coloured. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Boat lady

While this is an acceptable shot, I can't help but feel that it could have been better -- the framing and expression is just a little off somewhow. Oh well, you can't win all the time. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Getting there

There're tons of boats which ply the short distance between the the shore and the temple in the middle of Fewa lake in Pokhara. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Lady of the Lake

Fewa Lake is the second largest lake in Nepal with many hotels and guest houses situated right on its banks. In the middle of the lake is a small island with a Hindu temple which is quite busy all throughout the week. Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6VR

Final day

There's of course nothing arty about this shot -- it's just a shot of the Delima restaurant we hung out at on our last day in Kathmandu. The place is recommended by the Lonely Planet guide to Nepal and the food is truly excellent and prices reasonable.
Nikon D200, AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR