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Published: April 28th 2010
Basic Route: Kathmandu - Besi Sahar - Ngadi - Jagat - Dharapani - Chame - Lower Pisang - Manang - Yak Kharka - Throng Phedi - Muktinath - Kagbeni - Marpha -Kalopani - Tatopani - Ghorepani - Hile - Naya Pul - Pokhara.
It's our last day trekking in the Annapurna region and as we sit on the grass in the tropical and very much rural village of Hile, we have a bit of time to reflect on the up hills and down hills of our journey.
As a result of our incredible organisational skills we were finally able to arrange yet another guide the night before we were due to start. Our guide was called Sangam - he had so much experience of trekking the circuit, spoke perfect English and was such a crazy funny character. We were due to catch the early morning microbus to Besi Sahar with Sangam and our amateur porter Ramesh (so amateur in fact that it was his first ever trek, bags or no bags). We therefore spent a couple of emotional hours submersed in farewell sobs from the children. Apart from Ashok that is, who at the time was totally oblivious, dancing around in the background.
The bus journey to Pokhara is notoriously dangerous for its hundred foot cliff drops and its deteriorating roads, all navigated by the insane high-speed bus drivers. About half and hour into our journey, we witnessed 6 or 7 men trying to heave a giant multicoloured bus back up onto the road, after it had plummeted off the edge of a cliff.
We knew the landscape on the Annapurna circuit would be diverse and would change day to day, but it was amazing to see just how true this was. Starting at such a low altitude meant that we were immediately immersed in tropical surrounding with banana and mango trees everywhere you turned and lush terraces of corn and paddy fields. As we continued upwards, the tropical vegetation was replaced by Rhododendrons ad pine trees. The alpine scenery of bare rocks, freezing Khola (river) and mountain peaks visible through dense pine forests was indescribably stunning. A couple of thousand metres higher, the land was barren with areas dominated by scrub, yaks and was generally a greyish, brown colour. Only Clare seemed to get a thrill from looking at such a multitude of rocks. We just can't describe how exhilarating it is to seer the Annapurna peaks for the first time and knowing you will wake up every morning to that sight.
Possibly one of the coolest things we can claim, is that we followed the vast Marsyangdi river right to its source in the Annapurna Himal.
Our first few days of trekking certainly tested our fitness, mainly since Sangam seemed intent on scaling sheer cliffs and climbing freshly formed landslides. This quickly resulted in sweat drenched backs, blistering feet and general grubbiness. All of which would become common features of our trek. It was awesome!
Our porter Ramesh spent the majority of the first day getting lost from the clearly marked path and failing miserably to follow our intrepid route. Therefore, it was pretty amusing to discover as we woke on day 2, that he had quit. He was just a little bit crap to be perfectly honest. Luckily, Sangam speedily found us a local porter, Ngolo as a replacement - A lovely man, kind of quiet with a taste for Rakshi and some unusual dancing.
So we started over again, with our route taking us through stunning medieval-like villages where the farmers ploughed with oxes, corn was stored over thatched homes as a sign of prosperity, the older generation weaved whilst sitting in a massive sling whilst the younger generation worked in the fields and shouldered large piles of grass to dry and feed the livestock.
We were often stopped in our tracks by long slow moving caravans of mules and the occasional water buffalo. This was a particular problem when you started a game of chicken with a mule on one of the many rickety bridges or on a narrow cliff edge.
The funny thing about trekking such a popular route was that you are pretty much guaranteed to bumped into the same faces the entire way up. The first people we met at our lodge in Besi Sahar were a group of efficient beer drinking Germans. They were slow walkers at first due to the presents of "the dead weight" but when they abandoned her behind with an unfortunate porter, they quickly picked up the pace and followed us around the whole circuit.
Other friends include a hash smoking American with an over-large bamboo pole, a couple of egotistical Danish boys whose exact words were "ve are proud to be America's bitch", an Aussie couple who we wasted no time in mocking about the Ashes, a bunch of infuriatingly arrogant Israelis, a group of three cyclists who were insane enough to bike the circuit in ten days and some Chezc guys who had just finished climbing Manaslu.
The guys who made the biggest impression on us however were two Irish girls (Deborah and Louise) and a young, rowdy bunch of Americans...sorry, Canadians (Drew, Janelle, Chance, Cody, Lancing and Steve). We really connected with all these guys and had countless hilarious moments. We all conspired to persuade our guides to let us eat and sleep in the same teahouses, a plan that frequently worked. Even now the trekking is almost finished, we plan to take on Pokhara and return to Kathmandu all together.
Sangam was more than just a guide to us - he was the funniest companion who knew everything about everything from birds to Buddhism. We had the most stupid laughs and anything, mainly over his ridiculous stories. A few stuck firmly in our minds - the reason why dogs sniff each others backsides, "madam, I am feeling my bottom" (as said in an Indian accent) and an infuriatingly confusing riddle about how "3 men go into a forest and collect 3 ooood. They build one fire with two ooood. How does the three fires with one ooood have two ooood?" It took us a 600m climb to ascertain what the hell "ooood" was. It was "wood" by the way. Trying to decipher what the question meant was a whole new level of bemused hilarity.
One evening in a Mustang coffee bar, he told us a joke about a man who sees a naked weeping seven year old and pays her twenty rupees to stop er cryi9ng. The sister thought she could get more money but when the man sees her, he only gives her two rupees saying "save it" - we totally didn't get it, so Sangam yelled to the whole bar "she had HAIR!" So funny, but still don't get it.
A traditional evening for us after our 6-8 hour hikes included a trip to the local Rakshi bar, followed by a highly competitive match of "teasing" (best card game ever which is essentially uno) against our Canadian and Irish friends. Rakshi is the local alcohol which people openly distill in pretty much every home. Its served warm and its custom to refill you glass at least once. So unfortunately for us, accepting only one glass of this pungent alcohol would have been disrespectful. Sangam always encouraged us to sample the yak jerky - so phenomenally good and a perfect accompaniment to rakshi. Playing cards afterwards was particularly fun with several mock death threats, extreme country rivalry and our desire to take down the irritatingly lucky Sangam. One game in Yak Kharka resulted in Rosie - 6, Sangam - 6, Clare - 0! Clare defied the rules of probability by loosing multiple times at a game of sheer luck. She was not happy.
One of the funniest days was our acclimatisation walk in Yak Kharka - a 300m scramble up a gorse covered mountain. All 3 of us chased each other up and around the mountain at 4200m, which was no mean feat. Sangam stealing Clare's hat and filling it with yak poo was the final straw and we vowed to bring him down! This involved rather a lot of swearing and inexpert tackling as our stupid guide was annoyingly a lot stronger and faster than we had anticipated. Rosie eventually got him back by peeing in his water bottle while Clare made him wipe away her runny nose with his bare hand. By the time we got back, all our faces were thickly coated in black yak poo dust.
After the disease fest which was the orphanage, we had faith in our strengthened immune systems. However, day four Dharapani to Chame, most certainly proved otherwise. At our first glimpse of Annapurna II summit, Clare spectacularly vomited everywhere in between awe-struck gasps of "wow". Rosie used this opportunity to expand her Nepali vocabulary with moral boasting phrases such as "Moi li san chyo cha tera mero sati biryami boyo" ("I am fine but my friend is sick"). After an hours premature lunch stop, where Clare lay pretty much unconscious while Rosie, Sangam and Ben the Irish cyclist tried to force feed her pills, we managed to continue to Chame. When we finally arrived, we lay completely spaced out on our beds with no idea how on earth we succeeded in getting there.
Whenever we were sick, Sangam placed complete faith in a tiny vile of "magic" oil which we had to rub on our nose, throat and forehead. One sniff immediately told us it was Vicks but we went along with it anyway. It smelt so good! Sangam really looked after us and would strap up our blisters and warm up our hands at higher altitudes.
Rosie started feeling the altitude the day before the Throng La on the walk from Yak Kharka to Throng Phedi. This bought back painful memories of Rosie's uncontrollable ass-peeing which led to her sprinting into the pine forest. Clare and Sangam found this just hilarious, even more so when Rosie came out saying she had set the floor alight whilst trying to burn the toilet paper followed by some frantic stamping out. We jokingly sent her back another two times to check the Annapurna's pine forest wasn't burning down. It was so funny to freak her out but after all, it was a tourist who burnt down Yellowstone.
The Throng La Pass is 5416m/17769ft. This is 4 time the height of Ben Nevis. It's a 1000m ascent from Throng Phedi to the pass followed by a 1600m rapid descent into Muktinath. This was an absolute monster of a climb but reaching the pass was both a massive relief and so incredibly exhilarating.
After a restless night in Throng Phedi due to the altitude, Sangam woke us at 3am to have breakfast with the Irish girls before embarking on the epic pitch black ascent to High camp-= the last form of civilization before the pass. It was a pretty awesome sight seeing the winding trail of head torches slowly meandering up the mountain face, as several groups of trekkers began the climb.
Rosie had to make frequent stops to suck in some hard to come by oxygen and get over the painful stomach cramps, which remain in the background the whole day no matter how many painkillers or altitude sickness drugs were taken. Clare however, who suffered from no more than a little light-headedness, proved herself as a best friend by stopping just as frequently as Rosie gasping for breath, not from lack of oxygen, but from laughter.
The trail up was like a moonscape - just rocks and craters with dispersed patches of snow, but the views, which Rosie couldn't muster the energy to turn around and admire, were stunning - awesomely huge peaks which looked close enough to touch. Being 5000+m and insanely early morning, it was beyond freezing. We both had 2 pairs of trousers, oversized down jackets and a highly attractive 125rs hats. To keep spirits high, all 3 of us sang brownies style songs with a couple of Muse singles thrown in. Sangam aptly taught us "Is your bum cold?" in Nepali, resulting in countless strange looks from the bemused Nepali guides we chose to ask on route.
So after 4 long hours we reached the pass. To say the least, it is a very bizarre place. There's a pile of rocks, a congratulatory sign and yet again A LOT more prayer flags. We spent our time on the Throng la taking photos and eating our massive bar of Dairy Milk we had lugged all the way from Kathmandu - saving it took a lot of will power. And then... the descent!
The scenery was immediately different, with the Mustan desert stretching to Tibet in the foreground and several 8000+m peaks on the horizon. The way down involved absolutely no walking; we skipped, ran and fell down the mountain. It was hilarious, if often a little painful. Sangam suddenly exclaimed that he could see Muktinath, our destination. This far from motivated us as it was a tiny speck in the distant corner of the landscape.
Rosie therefore slumped on a rock and refused to move for a good 45 minutes. Clare and Sangam laughed and threw stones at her - yes, they were bullies and yes, they did bring back bad memories of primary school for Rosie.
Muktinath has a massive temple complex full of Indian tourists/has smoking holy men all of whom are driven unnecessarily for the two minute walk up the hill to the temples. It was wholly unsettling having vehicles reintroduced into our serene world and for this we loathed Muktinath.
The predominant religion in the mountains is Buddhism and we were fortunate enough to have a Buddhist guide to explain about the many rituals and monasteries. It was fascinating and we had many a debate on the subject. We visited several monasteries which were often 500 odd years old. They were astonishingly well preserved and you could quite literally spend hours at a time absorbing the detail in the paintings covering entire walls and ceilings. There were incredible depictions of the “circle of life” which illustrated all the different type of being and levels of suffering in Buddhism. Sangam told some amazing, if more often than not, surreal stories about the history of the monasteries, karma, reincarnation and the transition between the different types of being.
Our next stop after Muktinath was Kagbeni, a quiet beautiful little village with hundreds of prayer wheels and gale force winds as air was funneled up the river valley the settlement lies on.
Unfortunately, there was an issue with our guide which led to a big falling out so, for the remainder of the trek, we tagged along with the Irish doctors and the Canadians, whose guide was overjoyed to have “two more children in his family”. We all had a wonderful time relaxing in the hot springs at Tatopani, plus there was the greatest food, namely the spinach pasta. Thus, we chose to spend one more rest day there with the Irish girls and catch the Canadians the day after. This meant that we had to endure the notorious 10 hour steep steps uphill to Ghorepani in sweltering heat in a single day. We loved it - with our new quads of steel we basically skipped up, while our newly adopted guide Pasang (primarily the Irish girls guide) made strange noises, threw “snakes” at us and talk to his favourite animal, the sheep, for the entirety of the walk. After sleeping in Ghorepani, we woke extremely early once more to ascend Poon Hill with everyone before dawn. It is an awe inspiring sight. When standing on the hill, you get a panoramic view of mountain peaks including Dalaugiri and the strip of orange shrouding the summits as the sun begins to rise. It was brilliant to watch the peaks appear out of the dark night sky and turn slowly from blue to red. It was just the best experience.
And now you find us in Hile. Luckily we love this little village and have already been adopted by the lodge owners family, since we have just been informed that we have to spend another night here due to a two day Maoist strike in Pokhara. No doubt tonight will be spent similar to last night - dancing in a circle to Hindi music with the family. We look forward to it.
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anonymous
non-member comment
Great writing. I wish I had trekked the circuit with you guys. What did happen with your guide? it sounds like you loved him at first. Gavin