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Published: December 21st 2007
High Altitude Cricket: The Next Frontier
The world of cricket has been stagnant too long. No major advancements have been made in the game in recent years, excepting of course any advancements that have been made, and something needed to be done about it. Enter Team High Altitude Cricket, or HAC for short.
The mission was simple: to play cricket at any altitude higher than Australia. It turns out that this is not a particularly difficult task thanks to Australia's highest mountain, Mt. Kosciuszko, being only 2228m tall and because Nepal is, on average, really stupidly high.
The team gathered in Kathmandu in preparation for the series and then bravely stepped on to the Annapurna Circuit in search of the ultimate game of cricket at 5416m above sea level.
My Dad, my brother, Ben (a work friend of my Dad), our guide Raj, Marjie and I constituted the team. Despite two of the team members not understanding the laws of cricket fully (Marjie from the US and Raj from Nepal), Team HAC undertook a remarkable feat of stupidity and youthful craziness at altitudes that should be reserved for professionals, or at least for the remotely sane. This
Marjie on the Hillside
This is one of my favourite pictures.is the story which follows.
The Annapurna Circuit
The Annapurna Circuit is a 300km long walking trail in mid-western Nepal which circles around the Annapurna Himal, a range of awfully tall mountains. Annapurna I, the highest of the mountains reaches 8091m and was the first 8000m peak ever conquered by man, plus a second mountain named Dhaulagiri which sits in the adjacent range reaches a staggering 8172m. Another handful of mountains (five) in the range reach higher than 7000m and I couldn't even be bothered counting the 6000m ones. To put it simply, the mountains in this part of the world are high enough for you to think twice about how they came to be.
The most common circuit around the mountains, and the one undertaken by us, took 21 days and circled close by the northern edge of the mountains. At one point we were standing at the very foot of Annapurna III which reared more than three kilometers above us in one single rise. About midway through the hike, which was for the most part well in excess of Kosciuszko altitude, the trail leads over Thorung La, a pass which reaches a height of
5416m. This is the kind of altitude where you have to be seriously cautious, and was by far the highest point that I had ever attempted to reach.
On the far side of the pass the trail joins the Jomson trek which is the most popular trek in Nepal. Coming down from the pass the trail heads around the west of the Annapurnas where you can get a fantastic view of the mountains from Poon Hill (a mildly humourously named "hill" at 3200m).
Rajkumar Basnet: An Example of Understatement
Our guide for the trek (for we chose not to go alone as a guide makes things a lot easier and doesn't cost much when spread across five people) was one Rajkumar Basnet, or Raj for short. At little over five foot tall, and weighing less than most 12 year old girls, Raj was doing well to look the part. We found out later that he was actually 25 and married with a daughter, but when he was clean shaven he looked no more than 18. In the end we determined that the length of his moustache was a direct indication of his experience, and that he
should stop shaving if he wants to get more jobs.
Despite his appearance, Raj proved to be the perfect guide. He spoke well, he looked after us, he became a good friend, and he even carried some of our bags when a team member was ill (although on one day I carried his, and he didn't even pay me a porter wage!). Most of all though, Raj had a mystical way of making everything seem so much easier than it actually was. Here are some examples.
Nepali Flat Every morning, or sometimes during the previous evening, and all throughout the day for that matter, we would ask Raj the important questions:
"how much further is it?"
"what is the path like?"
"do we have to climb another bloody hill?"
While not actually lying to us, Raj always dodged these questions with such apathy towards the extremely hard task at hand that we simply gave up on caring. In hindsight we could have answered the questions ourselves: "a long way, hard and steep, yes of course".
Raj would describe the walk using hand gestures and simple expressions like "forty-five hours" (thankfully this meant four
Roadside Dal Bhat
Traditional food on the way to Beshisahar. Unfortunately this gave Dad and Ben food poisoning. to five hours when translated into Australian), or "the path goes like this for a while, then like this, a bit up, across a bridge and then up like this for five minutes" while using sweeping arm movements to graphically display the undulations in the path.
However, the most often used description of the trail would be "Nepali flat" which was Raj's way of saying "this is easy guys, why are you struggling?" After extensive research I now feel confident to say that the word "flat" was seriously mistranslated or illdefined at some point in Nepali history as there is no place in this country that is even remotely flat. Basically, a path is Nepali flat as long as the end point is on marginally higher than the starting point, regardless of what happens in the middle. For example, we spent entire days trekking where we barely gained any elevation at all while we actually spent five hours walking up nearly vertical hills. We would walk up a dirt and mud track, precariously situated on the side of a hundred meter high cliff, climbing a few hundred meters in a single climb only to walk right back down again
TATA Bus
Colourful transportation. on the other side of the mountain. At a rough guess I would say that I climbed up and down several vertical kilometers of Nepali flat during the trek.
With that in mind, we approached the trek extremely carefully when it deemed a description such as "slightly up", "a little steep", or "a tough climb" because these would clearly require ice-axes.
In case I haven't indicated it well enough already, I should point out here that the trek was horrendously difficult. Even before the pass day (which I'm covering a little further down in this journal) we were climbing some very steep terrain with some very heavy bags on our backs. Some days would be easy than others, some would be short (four hours or so), some would be long (eight hours), some would only give us an elevation gain of 200m and some would rise 600m. Each day brought a different challenge and none of them were easy, but we powered on through them all.
The Slow and Easy Way Down At the end of the trek, after the pass and after climbing Poon Hill, we were planning on taking a long route down
from the hills. Unfortunately though, my Dad got sick (not deathly so, just uncomfortably) at this point so we changed our plans and opted for a faster route down. Raj showed us the new route and said it was "easy, straight downhill".
We were given the option of doing the new route in either one big day or two short days. We instead opted to do it in two long days thanks to Raj's lack of descriptive skills and the word "easy" have multiple meanings in Nepal. Easy turned out to be 3280 stone steps one after another.
Now, some of you might be saying to yourself that anything downhill must have been easy compared to walking uphill, but I am willing to bet that none of you have ever stayed on a Stairmaster machine for five straight hours and you don't know what you're talking about. I didn't fare too badly, but the rest of the team struggled a lot in the knee self-destruction department. It was true that the path was straight downhill, but that made it even more painful than a slow and steady descent would have been. Once again, Raj's description was a little
understated.
Be Careful When Buying Maps in Nepal When buying a topographical map of Nepal remember to take this into account: mountains in Nepal go up and down awfully quickly. We neglected to think of this and ended up with a map that was somewhat less than functional. Sure, the contours and markings were accurate, but the mountains just moved too fast for them. The map would often show something like a smooth ascent where the contours gradually increased over the course of several kilometers and the path took a direct line over the terrain, whereas, in reality the landscape would rise and fall in successive concertina folds with steep ridges filling in the gaps between contour lines that were spaced too far apart to be able to show such horrifying details of the Nepali countryside. To make matters worse, the trail would have to zig-zag constantly back and forth in order to get over the ridges and back down their opposing sides. The result of all this was that any distances on the map could be thrown completely out of the window. Two towns could appear to be less than a kilometer apart on the map,
Every Journey Begins With a Single Step
The very start of the Annapurna Circuit trail. and only separated by a shallow climb, but when we actually got there we found a five kilometer wiggle of a path that climbed up and down a kilometer or so and took us the majority of a day to complete!
Looking back on the map now, I can see days where we covered huge distances, easily crossing ten centimeters of the map or more in just a few hours, and I can also see days where we struggled for hours and hours to cover no more than three centimeters of the map. Perhaps this is the reason why the guides never quoted distances; only walking times are useful to know.
Nepal is Not for the Faint Hearted
Nepal is a dangerous country, full of horrendously evil spirits that wish you harm at almost every turn. During our 21 day struggle against nature we were faced with such horrors as avalanches and falling rocks, icy paths and muddy trails, Drop Donkeys and Rare Blue Sheep (which are not rare, don't look blue, and are technically not sheep).
Wait a minute. . . Drop Donkeys? Well, Nepal is actually packed full of a variety of weird
Donkeys that require description here. You see, Donkeys are the main method of transporting goods to the remote villages scattered throughout the mountains, and without these animals the people living there would be completely isolated from the rest of the word. Every day we would have to hide on the side of the trail, hopefully on the uphill side, tucked into whatever small gap we could find in the surrounding rocks, while train after train of Donkeys slowly plodded past us.
On one of these occasions I was standing off to the side while a train of Donkeys passed by when a great calamity occurred. One Donkey realised that it had to merge to its right a little in order to avoid me and in doing so he crashed into another Donkey. This in turn caused the second Donkey to lurch a step to his right, thus colliding with a third Donkey. This Donkey however was unfortunate enough to be walking on the very edge of the trail and he was rather efficiently knocked clear off the cliff! We all rushed over to see what happened to the animal (thankfully we were passing a small town so the cliff
was only three meters high at that point) only to find that it had kept on walking as if nothing had gone wrong; the Donkey simply walked along until the path dropped to his level and he could rejoin the precession. After witnessing the incident we were all rather cautious and we kept looking above ourselves in case another Donkey decided to drop off a cliff; we are convinced that the Donkeys are planning to attack tourists via this method.
There are many other kinds of Donkeys in Nepal as well: Pirate Donkeys (the Donkey's usually have ornate headdresses that act as blinkers, and some of these look more like eye-patches, yarrr), Corporal Donkeys (where the headdresses have morphed into full on Mardi Gras outfits, we believe that these ones are in charge of the standard Drop Donkeys), and Chicken Donkeys (where 32 chickens are strapped to their backs; also, on a side note, we saw Chicken Men who were porters carrying 16 chickens in a giant cage on their back).
To put it simply, there were as many interesting Donkeys on the trail as there were people. It even got to the point where Ben wanted to
hire himself a Donkey to carry him the rest of the way.
We faced other dangers as well of course. At one point I managed to sit on a wasp (less funny than it sounds I can assure you), one of our friends was hit on the head by a falling rock near some roadworks (roadworks which seem as though they will never be finished as the avalanches destroy the road as fast as it can be built), and we even saw a rock the size of a beach-ball career down a hill within a few meters of some tourists. Trekking in Nepal is not to be taken lightly!
Also Beware of the Tourists
As if the natural dangers of Nepal weren't enough, we also had to face the horrors brought about by other tourists. For the first half of the trek (climbing up the Manang side of the range) there were relatively few other tourists about and the trek was incredibly peaceful, however, as soon as we crossed the pass we were met by hordes of day-trippers. While walking from Muktinath to Kag Beni, we actually found ourselves walking amidst a group of 100 or
so old people, all of whom were carrying small day packs and generally destroying the peaceful surroundings. We decided rather quickly to get ahead of the group and set off at a faster pace until we were a good hundred meters ahead of them, but then, I turned around to look at the view only to find the most terrifying sight imaginable: the Orcish Horde of tourists thundered towards us, hundreds of them in battle formation, charging forwards in a column, dust billowing behind them as they came. It really looked like an army from a bad hollywood movie as they closed in on us; nothing could have been more out of place in the barren and peaceful Tibetan-esque surroundings.
As if a horde of octogenarian orcs wasn’t funny enough, we managed to meet some really crazy people on the trek. As a classical example, take the young Spaniard we met on the first day. He came up to us and asked if we could pump some water through our filter system for him (all water has to be filtered or treated in order to be drinkable). When we asked him why he didn’t have any way of cleaning
his own water he said the following: “I read on the internet that if you use a water filter then the locals will laugh at you.” And because of that he left his at home. . . as well as his iodine tablets. . . hmm. . . smart guy. We ran into him later in the trek and he seemed a little thinner, as though he’d been sick during the walk.
Dietary Requirements of Four Australian Men
Being a trekking guide in Nepal must be difficult. For starters, you’ve got to put up with tourists and, to be honest, we aren’t always the easiest people to please. But when faced with four gigantic Australian men, and their appetites, Raj must have shuddered as his food budget disappeared at an alarming rate.
In a single day your typical Australian male eats roughly two whole cows worth of meat, with chickens as garnish, and such amounts of meat are impossible to find around Annapurna. In fact, for the first seven days the menus in every restaurant were the same and we were stuck eating veg and egg versions of fried rice, noodles, chow mein, or spaghetti. Everything
Raj on Day One
He doesn't know what he's in for yet. . . on the menus was essentially the same, only with a variable choice of noodle shape. After a few days of this we were all suffering from a severe case of forced vegetarianism and it was showing: bodies were thinning, complexions fading, and conversations were centering around all-you-can-eat buffets at pizza restaurants and steakhouses. As you can imagine, when we reached Manang and found a slightly different menu we went “crazy” and all ordered Mushroom and Fresh Tomato Lasagna. Of course, they didn’t have tomatos on hand so even then we had to settle for less.
Eventually though we did get some meat into our system, just a little bit, and we somehow survived until that point. On our last day though we were so desperate that we requested Chicken even if they had to kill an animal especially for us. Raj was kind enough to organise this, and we all happily finished the entire bird in a single night (we simply added chicken to everything that we were normally eating: veg and egg fried noodles with chicken, tomato lasagna with chicken, chocolate pancake with chicken, hot chocolate with chicken etc.)
Walking all day long take it’s toll, it
Another Bridge
We crossed dozens of these ricketty looking things. requires a lot of energy expenditure, and a diet of pure carbohydrates with a small smattering of vegetables (laced with six to eight eggs a day) is not enough to keep you going. Because of this we started craving all sorts of foods; the most popular being chocolate. This brought about the great Snickers’ cravings that underlie the entire economy of the Annapurna region. Between the five of us we consumed an unimaginable number of chocolate bars (I had three on the pass day, along with two muesli bars), and we weren’t even the worst culprits. One girl that we met towards the end of the trip confessed to having bought three Mars Bars on her very first day of trekking!
The Diamox Urination Blues
Diamox is a drug that you can take which supposedly speeds up the acclimatisation process (which you need to do in order to prevent death during any high altitude sporting venture). It’s not completely necessary, and most people don’t require the pills to cross Thorong La, but as a preventative and precautionary measure most of our team started taking Diamox at one point or other.
Ben was first, mainly due to him
being wimpy (he’s an extreme wuss), when he started pill-popping at 3500m. Dad and Andrew were close behind at 4000m, and Marjie joined the Diamox club after having a bout of food poisoning (which has very similar symptoms to severe altitude sickness) at the same place. This left me alone as the only trekker not abusing substances (this makes me tough, and perhaps also stupid) so I eventually caved in to peer pressure and took a pill for the day where we climbed over the pass (at 4450m).
Thus, I can give to you a first-hand report of what is known as either the Diamox Tingly Blues, or the Diamox Urination Blues (both to be released on Sony BMG Records as soon as we get around to finishing the lyrics). This, of course, refers to the side effects of the drug: tingles in your extremities and a surprisingly over the top need for the toilet. It was shocking! I felt worse after taking the pill because ever step produced tingles which ran up my legs or arms. I constantly felt as though some horrible cold-related disease was taking away my circulation: frostbite, gangrene, unnoticed amputation, etc.
We have
First Rest Stop
A small town and a chance to drop the packs for five minutes. since found that the two side effects of Diamox are actually fictitious (hopefully this will not impact on our record contract). We’ve since experienced the tingles from the cold alone, and, well, when it’s cold you have to go to the loo a lot anyway. All diamox did was give us an increased chance of consuming lethal chemicals in badly made pills.
So. . . About the Tour
This journal was originally intended to be about cricket and I guess you’re wondering how serious I was about that. I was completely serious; our trek was fashioned as a four game cricket tour (two games will be covered in a later journal).
The first game in Team HAC’s tour was chiseled in to be played at Danagyu as it was the first town we came across which was higher than Australia (2300m or so) and in proper fashion we got out the gear that afternoon for a quick warm-up match against the local team.
The Nepali team challenging us consisted of a few ramshackle guides and porters, a number of startled tourists who couldn’t believe their eyes, a couple of kids from the town, and Mr.
“losing the ball sounds like fun” who was named in honour of his complete lack of common sense.
The pitch was slightly damp, and titled slightly towards the Darapani end with a small, six inch high step at the popping crease. Bounce was rather erratic thanks to the cobblestones (we were playing on the main path) and the key test failed completely.
For the first game of the tour things went exceptionally well for Team HAC. The altitude proved to be no challenge as instead our general lack of fitness proved a more significant obstacle. Also, the fact that the bat was a two and a half meter long plank of wood proved difficult for some players. Somehow, Marjie top scored despite not knowing all the rules, Andrew nearly killed a cat by hitting it with a well placed off break, I managed to get four-and-out through a combination of unlucky bounce and a surprisingly low fence fielding at silly mid-on, and the aforementioned Mr. “losing the ball sounds like fun” decided that it was perfectly ok to hit the ball as far as he could in the direction of the ravine/river/poison ivy which resulted in a frantic
search for the ball (as with all ill-planned sports trips more thought had been put into alcohol supplies that into bringing a replacement ball). All in all, the game was a success with Team HAC just managing a win.
The Morning of Game #2
The morning dawned early; a 3:45am alarm pulled me from my lukewarm bed. Outside it was cold, dark, and 4450m higher than usual. It was the day of Team HAC’s second, and most important, game which was to be played at Thorong La. The team was in decent spirits, we were all somewhere in-between the states of match fitness and death which was all that we could ask for given the conditions. As I watched the team assemble inside the dining hall (which, for reference’s sake, had to be reached via a 20m hurried shuffle through the freezing outside) I noticed a general lack of enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the time of morning, perhaps it was due to the team’s complete unpreparedness for sub-zero temperatures, or perhaps it was the seven or eight layers of clothing that we were all covered in but none of us seemed ready to face the day ahead.
That was all to change of course. A stirring talk over breakfast (if that’s what you want to call the sloppy eggs and pancake I ate) got us into the mood and soon enough we were on our way to the grounds.
Now, unlike for a usual game, the hotel was situated somewhat more distant from the stadium than would have been liked. A vertical climb of 1000m awaited us before we could even strap on our pads and after that another 1600m descent had to be completed before the day was out. It wasn’t going to be easy to even get to the game, let alone play successfully once we got there. Nevertheless, Team HAC is built tough (spelled tuffphghz for the initiated) and we started the walk with a purpose.
The first hour and a half was almost directly vertical; the path zig-zagging back and forth up a rockfall towards High Camp (4950m). Ben set off at a good pace and tried not to stop his rhythm during the climb (it helped to stay warm and kept his ankle in good condition) and I fixed in behind him so that he wasn’t alone on the
The Addiction Begins
Because of the trek, all five of us are now hopelessly addicted to drinking tea with two tablespoons of sugar. It was the only way to get enough energy. mountain in the darkness (did I mention that we were doing this walk in pitch black thanks to it being bloody early and a new moon). The rest of the team made a slightly slower way behind us and soon disappeared into the darkness. When I stopped to quickly look behind all I could see was a procession of small headlamps bobbing up and down as the wriggled up the slope. Faint silhouettes of rocks and mountains outfitted themselves amongst the stars and ahead of me I could see a faint gap in the rocks which marked our goal.
Walking in the cold air was difficult; the freezing temperatures seared my nose and ears and breathing was difficult both when I drew directly from the outside and when I warmed the air through a layer of clothing. Panting from lack of oxygen and exertion I trudged on slowly, trying to match Ben’s pace as he stoically attacked the mountain.
Finally we saw a faint glimmer above us and we found ourselves walking the last few meters up to High Camp where we took shelter and warmed ourselves with hot tea. The sun was just beginning to dawn and
My Dad
Lunch on day one. from its light we were able to see the horrors which awaited us: unlike what we had been doing until then the path only climbed small hills in each rise, but a continuously rippled rising and falling of hills stretched ahead until the pass, and all the while the path was covered in ice and snow. When the rest of the team arrived, only five minutes behind Ben and I, we banded together for the last stretch where we would climb the remaining 500 meters to the top.
Setting out for the final assault was easy; actually completing the walk was a different matter. Walking was made difficult as we had to avoid the ice (which seems to form on the more heavily walked paths) and deep drifts of snow. Often I found myself walking a precarious line between ice and a steep drop down the side of the mountain. For some sections the path was not so difficult as the snows had melted there leaving bare rock for us to walk on, but these were invariably the steepest sections of the trail which proved an entirely new challenge of their own.
Without whining too much, I’ll quickly
describe the effort required to walk above 5000m. At such a height there is very little air available to breath (<50%) which makes even the simplest of tasks seem not worth doing. In order to climb the hills on the way to the pass (some of which were ten meters tall while others were fifty) I had to slow down my steps so that I could take a full breath in and out with each one. Breathing in as I lifted my foot and out when it landed some fifty centimeters further along I slowly pushed up the mountain one step at a time. I found myself trying to make it to the top of each rise in one continuous effort as stopping halfway made for an incredible mental challenge when I tried to start again. When I reached the top of each section I would stop on a rock and catch my breath; an event which started with a complete collapse into convulsive breathing fits for a few seconds before I could bring my body to a normal breathing rate. After this I would try and drink some water (until around 9am when it froze) which would again result
in insufficient oxygen levels and another fit of panting. Over and over again I would have to stop like this and attempt to get air back into my lungs before I could continue walking. For a full three hours we continued like this until, at 10:30am, I finally saw the prayer flags marking the top of the pass.
Pushing onwards up the last hill, following the deep footprints in the snow for the final hundred meters of uphill, I told the mountain exactly what I thought of it and how it had failed to stop me. Head down, bum up, one foot in front of the other, over and over until I got there. As the slope eased out into the small flat plain at the top of the pass a feeling of success came over me like I had never felt before. A rising buzz filled my whole body as I stepped onto the top and realised that I had made it all the way up to 5416m.
While we were at Thorong La (Thorong Pass) we did what was necessary: we ate Cherry Ripes (thanks Ben for bringing those up for us all), we took photos
The Path Thins
This was where we started walking along a small, single file style track as opposed to a road. in front of the sign (we brought a large Aussie flag for us to hold as well as a significantly lower and less impressive US one for Marjie), and we set up a game of backyard cricket.
The pitch at the TLCG was horrible. The curator needed to be sacked. Wet was an understatement, but at least the water was frozen, and talk about rough! Rocks dotted the pitch at random (one was on a perfect line and length) which resulted in completely unpredictable bounce, but thankfully the outfield was as slow as a grandmother on market day.
The game progressed slowly as batting was difficult in the conditions. Up first with the bat, I struggled to hit to ball thanks to a severe case of over-enthusiasm from the bowler (Andrew was out to get me) which turned out to be a blessing. When I finally did hit the ball I was faced with the prospect of having to run ten yards to the other end! Doing so totally exhausted me and I nearly collapsed when I reached my crease. Thanks to the altitude it was nearly impossible to make more than five runs, but thankfully the fielding
Nepalis (a few other guides and porters joined in for a laugh) were similarly slow on their feet so the chances of getting out were slim. In the end I figured that I would use less energy fielding and I retired “hurt” citing breathing difficulties.
Raj was the star player for team HAC at Thorong La (mainly because he could breathe there) and he easily would have top scored if he had been better versed in the “tipsy” rule.
The views on the way to Thorong La were fantastic: sweeping vistas down the valley and across the snowy peaks which echoed into the distance. However, the actual top of the pass is rather uninspiring. It is not the highest place around (because it is a pass and not a peak) and the view to either side is cut off by low rises. From the top we weren’t actually able to see that much, but the views on the way up certainly made up for that.
The way down though proved to be absolutely horrible. All five of us were exhausted (Raj was happily skipping down of course) from the climb, the lack of good breakfast, and from
Fields in the Hills
Below where we slept on our first night. being run down after ten days of trekking. Because of this, the 1600m which we had to descend, and the ice which covered large sections of the path the descent was very slow and painful and it took us until 3:45pm before we reached the town of Muktinath. It had taken us a full eleven hours to cross the pass and we collapsed with complete exhaustion after it all.
A Few Extra Incentives
Sure, the trek was hard, but we had a lot of things to help push us along. The fantastic views and scenery, the great company, the feeling of success we got at the top, and the drive of professional cricket players helped us make it through. There were also many other little things that helped as well though, and I’ll share just a few of them here.
For starters, there were two pretty German girls walking up to the pass on the day that we did and that gave me an incentive to walk faster. Only kidding Marjie, I wasn’t looking, honest.
In Manang we climbed to a Tibetan monastery in the surrounding hills for an acclimatisation walk and found an Aussie
Wise Words
Written in our guesthouse.
Photo courtesy of Ben. Lama. For some reason, the Lama who lived in the small monastery loved Australia and he had little pieces of Australiana lying around: an Australia clock, an Australia hat, etc. While there, Ben and Marjie got blessed by the monk (more for the free tea than for the blessing I think) which gave them good luck for the pass.
Before leaving Kathmandu we had all visited the “Reggae Bar” for a quick drink or two where we were lucky enough to listen to a live band play Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” four times in a single hour (twice by request) before an Israeli woman took her turn to perform. Taking to the microphone by herself with a guitar in her lap she drunkenly began an abhorrent rendition of her own song “Kinky Reggae”. The combination of discordant music, bad English, and the theme of the song made for, well, the most hilarious tune ever made. We struggled to leave the venue without laughing audibly and then spent the entire trek thinking up potential lyrics for her song. Without our Kinky Reggae we simply would not have made it over the pass.
On our last day of
Our First Mountain
The early morning air shows a snow-capped mountain in the distance. the trek Raj put on a special treat for us all. After our chicken dinners he brought us local Rum, the restaurant turned up the music in the kitchen, the lights were turned off, two headlamps were hung from the ceiling and put on flashing mode, and an impromptu Nepali disco was underway! Never before have I seen such an unexpected disco. If only I had had the energy to truly show off my moves. . .
Looking Back on the Trek
I’ve tried not to make this journal depressing and I’ve avoided talking about a lot of the difficulties involved in the long trek. Nevertheless, looking back on it the whole thing does seem a little despondent and I must appologise for this. However, most people just look at the pictures anyway and that’s where the good parts of the trek lie.
I had a fantastic time on the circuit thanks to all the good jokes and stories shared with the rest of Team HAC and thanks to the fantastic places through which we walked. The mountains, rivers, forests, plains, valleys, gorges, waterfalls, glaciers, monasteries, villages, people and places around Annapurna were all amazing to
Rainy Morning
It had rained overnight and the first hour or so of walking was damp and depressing. see and interact with. The region is truly blessed with beauty but that is a hard thing to write about (maybe that’s why I’m not a writer). Also, the feelings I got when I reached the top of the pass, at the top of Poon Hill, or even when I reached the end of each day made the walk worthwhile. Proving to myself that I could put in the effort and survive in those conditions made me feel good, and the views that we saw rewarded every step. If only I had the space here to tell you all of the great things that I saw.
However, what can be said is this: playing cricket at 5416m is no joke and should not be carried out by anyone. It was hard to play up there, the ball weighed a lot and I had to carry it a long way, and in the end most people just thought that we were crazy.
At least now we can say that all of us in Team HAC are trained and experienced extreme athletes in our own niche sport. The only question remaining is whether we should rename ourselves Team SAC (Silly
Altitude Cricketers). Just wait for the next installment of the team’s tour: Team HAC vs. Everest.
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Nothing compaired to Tazzy
Top story... I am sure that we will all hear from Ben how he saved the day on more than one occasion.... I can hear all the Donkey stories now.... Some one needs to take some round up for those weeds... looks like an infestation. Stay safe and merry X-mass to all.