A bunch of silly statistics from my time in Nepal and Thailand

I thought it would be fun to do a post about some statistics of my roughly 4 months in Nepal, and for comparison, my 23 days in Thailand.  So, let's begin:

Cheers!  This batch of Chang didn't result in my visiting a Nepali hospital.  And retrospectively, holy shit were my beard and hair short.

Time:

• Days spent in Nepal: 118 (September 11, 2011 – January 6, 2012)
• Days spent trekking: 59 (5 days just north of Kathmandu, 20 days on the Annapurna Circuit, 34 days on the Shivalaya to Everest Base Camp to Gokyo to Shivalaya trek)
• Accidental coincidence: 50% of my days in Nepal were spent trekking.
• Days with and without Katie: 84 with Katie (Until December 3^rd), 34 without.

Money (Unless otherwise noted, the figures here are for both Katie and me):

Couldn't find a better photo to go under the "Money" headline.  Here's Katie.

• Total trip cost: $7,715 – deceiving because this is the cost for me AND Katie. It also includes weird costs like my flight out of the country, repairs for the tons of things that broke early in the trip, etc. Figuring this out more accurately would be way too complicated. My finances spreadsheet for Nepal is 1132 lines long and a total disaster.
• Average cost per person per day: $38. Again, this figure is screwy, and should be much lower because of Katie's departure, my weird repair costs, hospital visits, Katie's donation to her rescue squad, etc.
• Money spent on lodging: $529.

  

  Normal lodging on the Annapurna and Everest Base Camp treks.
• Average cost of lodging per person per night: $2.62 (Wow!)
• Money spent on food: $1,754.
• Average cost of food per person per day: $8.68
• Money spent on alcohol: $456
  
  

  

  Tongba.  An awesome Nepali drink that keeps you warm in the freezing cold nights for next to free.
• Average cost of alcohol per person per day: $2.26
• Money spent on transportation: $961
• Average cost of transportation per person per day: $4.76
• My total cost for stupid repairs of broken gadgets: $757
• Hospital costs (There's a whole post about this experience a few months back): $146. I filed for a refund of this cost with my travel insurance company after 87 (of 90 eligible) days, and got it all back. Nice.
• Average cost per person per day for lodging, food, alcohol, and transportation: $18.32. This is why the $38 per person per day figure above is deceiving. I don't know where that extra $20 came from. I could probably figure it out but it would take way too long.

Trekking:

• Days spent trekking: 59
• Showers taken while trekking: Not very many. Seriously, probably less than 10. I'd need to look at the map I sent home to my parents to figure out the exact number, but I did go 27 days without showering at one point. I mean, wait, no I didn't. That's gross. You're gross.
• Highest elevation reached: 5550 meters (18,204 ft) at Kala Patthar.
• I hope to update this someday with information on total distance trekked, elevation gains, etc.

Other (figures are for me only):

• Books read: 21
• Pictures taken: one billion
• Gigabytes of pictures kept (I deleted probably 10x this many): 80 GB.
• Leeches: 3 for each Katie and myself. This was only a problem early in the trip, on our trek in the region north of Kathmandu, and when we walked around Pokhara.
  
  

  

  Ah, leeches.  What fun.  At least Katie was man enough to wait for this picture to be taken before freaking out and pulling the little bastard off.  After a brief search through my pictures, I don't think I was.  That sucks for me.  You know what else sucks?  Leeches!  Ha!  I just made that up.

  
  
• Longest stretch without a shower: 27 days. Seriously.
• Longest stretch without an alcoholic drink: 31 days. I think. I might have had a drink in Namche Bazaar on the way to Everest Base Camp, but I don't believe so. If I did, the correct number is actually 22 days. This is also a lifetime record, since I first found the joys of the drink in high school. I mean on my 21^st birthday.
• Times threatened by children with knives (1-12 years old): 3.
• Hotels / Lodges / Teahouses / Hostels / whatever-other-name-you-can-come-up-with stayed at: 52.
• Pieces of cake eaten at Snowman Cafe: a million.
• New movies / television shows seen: 0.
• Longest stretch without seeing a road-vehicle: 30 days.
• Highest level of terror reached on a Nepali bus (1-10 scale): 11.
• Tigers seen in the wild: 1.
  
  

  

  The paw print left by the tiger that I accidentally awoke from ~15 meters away.  There's a whole blog post dedicated to this experience, unfortunately, this is the best I could do photographically.  I've got a million pictures of tiger paw prints WITHOUT extended claws.  The fact that the claws were obviously extended as he / she ran away from me and my guide makes me all the more gracious for my continued non-tiger-food existence.

  
  

And I'm off to Cambodia in 7 or so hours from the time this fascinating statistics-filled update has been posted. So I might as well throw in a few Thailand statistics, since I'm done here way soon.

• Total time in Thailand: 23 days.
• Total cost in Thailand: $694.
• Average cost per day: $30.17. This just further proves how effed up my Nepal figures are. I really can't believe that Nepal was more expensive on a day-to-day basis than Thailand. Someday I might get around to figuring out where this discrepancy came from. But here are some figures that I can stand behind, thanks to a newly-designed expenses spreadsheet. Yup, I'm a nerd.
  • Total lodging cost: $201.
  • Average cost of lodging per night: $8.74
  • Total food and (non-alcoholic) drink cost: $142
  • Average food and (non-alcoholic) drink cost per day: $6.17
  • Total alcohol cost: $132
  • Average alcohol cost per day: $5.74
  • Total transportation cost: $74
  • Average transportation cost per day: $3.22
    That's it!  New post soon, hopefully!