Day 5 - Annapurna Circuit - Upper Pisang (3305m) to Mungji (3330m)

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We got up bright and early again at 05:30 to be on the trail for 06:00. Well at least some of us were. Tommy was suffering the most out of all of us. I think he spent a good hour on the toilet trying to feel better! As we set off beside the river 100s of metres below us we heard a sound - it was an avalanche on Annapurna 4! It was over ten kilometres away from us and we could see the puff of snow cascading down the side of the mountain. It was a real sight and a show of the mountains power. The amazing thing was that from our perspective it looked like slow motion even though we knew it would be moving hundreds of miles an hour. After watching the avalanche with the group and Jack having his first nature Himalayan poo, Jaap and us pressed on ahead as we had a faster pace than the others. It was really good to spend some time with Jaap and the conversation flowed to all sorts of subjects. We had a huge climb of 400m ahead of us and we ploughed in really feeling the breathlessness for the first time. The view at the top by the Stupa was amazing. We could see the endless 360 degree view of mountains and even got treated to an apple pie from a woman selling them out of her shack. About 40 minutes later the rest of our team made it up. Alberto had a dodgy knee so jack prodded and poked and made it feel a little better. We had a team chat and all agreed that the 3 of us carry onto our destination and find ourselves a tea house for the night. We headed onto the next village, Nagwal and we bumped into our old mate Christopher from the bus. We had a catch up over a snack break and then headed to Chulu. This place was totally medieval. We could see a few wisps or smoke from the rubble, stone houses and if it wasn’t for this we wouldn’t have even thought it was a village. We stopped for tea at a woman’s home/cafe. We had to head through a barn door into where the horses and cows sleep, up a ladder carved out of a tree trunk and onto a roof of the building where a table sat. Over a ginger tea we found out that only 10 people lived in the village (4 of them in the tiny house we were in). This consolidated Jaap and ours plan of staying somewhere more local and less luxury that night. We trekked on passed an amazing monastery where we had to get the builders to unlock it for us. We found behind the door a dark room covered in gold and red tapestries with drums, scrolls and pictures of the monks that worshipped there. We continued walking in the ever increasing heat of the day and were thankful to reach our destination for the night; Mungi. We arrived into the village and went into the first house we saw to ask if they could sleep 7 people that night. Our host showed us 2 double beds and a single bed in one room and then another double in a much smaller and more cluttered room we suspected might have been their bedroom when they don’t have guests. Perfect, we thought, tiny place, Asian squat toilet in an outside shed, clutter, drafty windows, no shower and a discount on beer.. this is the place for us! We sat down and ordered some food waiting for the rest of the group to join us and met an Italian mountain man called Stefano. Unfortunately when the rest of the group did show up they weren’t as impressed as we were with the little tea house. Tommy decided to stay but Kerry, Pilu and Alberto walked onto the next village in search of more luxury accommodation. We were all having a great evening drinking beers when some locals arrived at the house. We then watched as the hosts wife pulled out a huge bag of grain filled with weed to sell to the two local lads! Ah ha, we thought, count us in on that! They told us that in a few months time the whole area is filled with so many wild plants they don’t know what to do with it all. The guys asked us how much we wanted to buy and Char thought a reasonable starting price would be 500 rupee, roughly $5. As it turned out that bought us about 3 ounces and so for the first time in our lives we were actually giving weed away to people for the rest of the trek!

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