My fabulous journey to the Annapurna Base Camp (part 2)

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In the first part I told you how we reached the place with the misleading name Himalayan hotel at 2870m. The next morning we started really early, because the clouds like to crawl up the river and start pouring rain rather early. In our 4th day we climbed over 1250m. The path wasn't too steep, which meant it was very long... Nothing comes easy here. As we reached the Machapuchre base camp (3700m) the canyon of the river we followed opened up and we started to understand what we were going to see - the snowy peaks all around us, it started to look even more beautiful. We ordered chocolate cake and Kate brought a candle and we sang happy birthday to Shai that turned 40 today. Unfortunately the cake itself was less edible than a candle would be :-(
BTW the food along the track wasn't as bad as you'd expect. Well, if you order a pizza or lasagna you might be disappointed, but if you stick to simplicity you're satisfied. The local bread called Gurung bread reminded me a lot of Moroccan "sfinge". It's same-same all around the world :-)
When we left MBC at noon we already had to walk in the clouds that last 1.5 hours to ABC. We didn't see anything and it was much colder than yesterday night, at an altitude of 4130m. It was rather gloomy, this place that we walked 4 days to reach (raining and later snowing outside), and we stayed forever in the heated dining room, only us and a crazy Dutch guy with a death-wish... We had another birthday celebration for Shai - we used m&m candies on a plate as a cake with a candle stuck in the middle, and had songs in Hebrew, Dutch and English. Puran said there were no Nepali birthday songs.
It wasn't comfortable in this high altitude, breathing came rather heavily and when I had to pee in the middle of the night it took me ages to decide to go out of my warm sleeping bag. But when I did I saw that all the clouds were gone. In the soft moonlight the mountains around looked so elegant, so amazing.
When we got up (at 5am) it was even better. The Annapurna Base Camp, located in a place called Annapurna sanctuary, is like a center of an amphitheater, with great peaks of the Annapurna region surrounding. At first we still saw stars but the sun was coming up, first rays of sun coloring the peaks yellow, and slowly climbing down the mountains till we had full daylight.
As we were standing there, taking more and more pictures, other trekkers arrived, some had climbed from MBC before sunrise.
It was really hard to leave the magnificent place, although I was very happy to go down, to more comfortable altitudes. On that day we had a big motivation to reach a place called Bamboo - it's the first "guest house village" with hot showers! Before that, coming down from Himalayan hotel, Shai's shoe "finally" fell apart. The super-glue that he found at ABC (and paid 50 rupees for 2 drops!) didn't last long. He wrapped the shoe with a bandage for a while, till we reached the next "guest house village", Doban. Again luck was on our side. First they had super glue there, but it seemed to be of a very low quality. And then just before despair came, Gal, Nir and Eran did. And they had loctyte glue. Not only they saved Shai from walking bare-foot all the way down, they also joined our little expedition and in the last days we became a loud group of 6 (and our lunch breaks turned into a 2 hours long saga).
The way down seemed harder than the way up, probably the adrenaline wasn't the same after reaching the top. Luckily there was one more attraction at the end of the 6th day - the hot springs at Jhinu. It wasn't much more than 3 little pools by the river but it was a dream after 6 days walking. We arrived rather late so we walked up in the dark. we didn't have enough flashlights, so it became a surreal play: me walking first with my head flashlight, leading 3 lightly stoned but very tired guys, up a steep trail full of leeches. The guys who wore shorts and sandals had some unhappy leech encounters... Shai and me arrived safely :-)
We are getting close to the end of the story. The 7th day was the last one. So maybe I am not so unfit after all, I thought it would take at least 8 days, maybe more. I was happy to get back to the comfort of Pokhara, an event we celebrated with the other guys over 2 huge Chateaubriand steaks.
If you stayed with me the whole way you might get the impression it was so hard and ask yourselves why I did it. Well the challenge is part of the fun, but it's a lot more. It's the amazing views at the base camp and on the way. It's the unique atmosphere of being away from civilization for a week. It's the people you meet. And yes, knowing that you made it makes you feel great. It's the entire experience that is simply unforgettable.

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