Hey this is TA calling in from day 62 of the great big walk. May 1st. We are in a little village called simi or simigong depending which sign you look at at an elevation of 2000 m above sea level and this is a big celebratory day on the great big walk because we’ve reached our goal of 1 million steps. That was just a tea call but I am going to keep going now with our handy dandy update because we are celebrating 1 million steps today so that is pretty exciting. Also 622 km. It is raining at the moment. We are going to have to get dressed up and run off to tea to stay nicely hydrated since we’ve come down. We’ve made so much haemoglobin in our blood. It is important that we stay very well hydrated because we don’t want to have any problems from having so much hemoglobin.

Kind of fun here. We arrived this morning just before the thunder showers struck so that was excellent timing and now we will venture out a little bit. We don’t have to go too far to go for tea. We’re staying at a little guest house. We are camped in their yard as per usual. But of the things that is fun is that they have a log book and we are able to see other GHT’ers other great himalayan trail hikers in the log book so it feels a little bit like acknowledging the small short lineage that we’re being a part of.

You can definitely tell we’ve been going downhill. I know for me, I’ve got a little bit of a sore knee and a sore ankle on the go. We’ve lost almost 4000m in the past 5 days and I think tomorrow we drop another 700 or 800 m. So just try to do that thoughtfully and carefully as we go down and we saw a road today. That is the first road that we have seen in 58 days. Tomorrow we will actually be by that road and see cars and I think that will be a little bit jarring but we will then head back up and go around one more dhonda. Dhonda is a Nepali word for hill. So we will be making our way towards Bigu Gompa over the next few days and our ending spot for the great big walk.

I heard from Bishop Abraham, that elementary school in St. John’s that they walked around the gym 30 times with us the other day to celebrate our 600 km and so congrats to you all that is a great number of times around the gym and again just a very exciting day for us here having reached our 1 million steps mark as a collective and I am sure over the next few days, each one of us individually we will also hit the million step mark.

So that is it for us here. It is raining. It is May 1st and on day 62 we are celebrating over 600 km and over a million steps for the great big walk. So please celebrate with us, get out there, go for a walk, go for a roll, go for a stroll take a friend, take a pet and get out there and be active with us on our last few days here on the great big walk. Thanks and have a great day. Bye!

Great Big Walk acknowledges the support of the Memorial University of Newfoundland Quick Start Fund for Public Engagement in making these updates from the field possible.