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We left Lower Pisang around 7:30 in the morning and began the relatively easy hike to Manang. Kapil said that the hike would only take about 4 hours and the evelvation gain would be about 350 meters. The much shorter hiking time and elevation gains for each day of travel are becoming the rule as we approach the Thorong La Pass. Above 3000 meters, you do not want to gain more than 300 meters of elevation per day to avoid altitude sickness.
The weather was very good for the hike; sunny with a cool breeze blowing. Andre, Catherine, Matt, the guides, and myself hiked together. After crossing a bridge, we stopped for a break where we ran into Melanie and Gregory, the French couple. Then just as we were getting ready to hike again, up walked Lee, Seo, and Pasang! Lee was feeling better though Seo was still carrying his pack.
Happy that our group was reunited, we continued on our way. The views of the mountains began to be very good. We saw Pisang peak, Annapurna II, Annapurna IV, and Annapurna III. I was becoming interested in the geology. When we had been lower in elevation, the rocks
had consisted largely of metamorphosed granite or other intrusive igneous rocks as well as gneisses whose parent rock were impossible to tell. Towards the end of the hike today, we started to get into volcanic rocks. Low on the valley wall were rocks that appeared to ash/pyroclastic flow deposits. Above those were layers of what appeared to be basalt flows, though I could not manage to break open a sample to be able to tell. My operating hypothesis was that we had moved up section through the ancient magma chambers of the volcanoes formed by the subduction of the oceanic plate between the Indian subcontinent and Asia plate into the volcanic deposits of those volcanoes. The rocks around here are all folded and jumbled so interpretations are not so simple and I will be interested to see if I can find some published information on the geology to verify my interpretations. As we continued along, we also began to see rocks on the path that appeared to be limestone, though none was evident in the cliffs above. It must have been transported from higher up by the Marsyangdi River and/or the glacier that had once occupied the river valley.
We took a tea break on the roof of a tea house a couple of hours from Lower Pisang where we caught up with the Eldad and Gal, the Israeli couple. We then pushed on past Humde where an airport was located. We had seen a couple of very old, single engine prop planes fly up and down the valley as we had been hiking, so I was curious to see what the airport was like. The building itself was tan and non-descript and the runway was a short dirt and gravel affair.
After a bit more hiking, lunched in Mungi only an hour from Manang, our final destination. I had a very good mushroom curry with chapati. I did not recognize the mushrooms, but they tasted very good and I am still alive today writing this journal entry, so I guess they were edible. Continuing on to Manang, we passed more and more prayer walls with either prayer wheels or flat stones inscribed with the manatra. Chorten and gompa were very common. We began to see men riding horses which we had not seen at lower elevations, as well as a couple of mountain bikes.
Before too
long, we arrived in Manang. Up to this point, my only symptoms of altitude sickness had been mild dizziness and light headedness. But there was a short, steep incline coming into Manang and as I hiked up it, I felt the barest beginnings of a headache. As soon as the ground leveled out it went away. We checked into the Yak Hotel, and then I set out to explore the town and find the internet café.
The main street of the town was lined with hotels and shops catering to trekkers. After looking about in some of the shops, I continued further north into the part of town where people's homes and the school were located. Buildings here are constructed much like other places along the trek, mostly of stone, mud and mortar. The roofs are either of stone or corrugated metal sheeting. I really hope that an earthquake never hits this town as the destruction and loss of life will be horrendous. I then went back into the tourist part of town where I went to a bakery and had coffee and chocolate cookies. After reviewing my blog entries, I went across the street to the only internet
café into town. The café consisted of four laptops. Prices were steep; 25 rupees per minute (80 rupees is 1 dollar US) with a ten minute minimum. I wouldn't have minded the price so much except that the broadband connection was very slow and it took two or three tries to get webpages to load properly. I connected my compact flash card from my PDA with all of my journal entries as well as the XD card with of my photos using a USB card reader I had packed along with intention of loading both to my blog. The process turned out to be a bit arduous. I got all the blog entries loaded, but I had trouble loading the photos. Just as I was giving up and trying to safely stop the cards, the laptop, whose power cord was not connected properly, shutdown as the battery ran out. It was quickly restarted, but I was afraid that my cards, not having been properly disconnected would be corrupted. While having some strange folders in it, the CF card appeared to be okay. But my XD card was somehow put into lock mode. The pictures could still be viewed with my
camera, but no new pictures could be written to the card. I returned to the café to try to fix the XD card, but their computers would not connect to the XD card correctly. In fact, these computers were exhibiting all sorts of strange behavior which I chalk up the fact that they all appeared to be running pirated copies of XP, no antivirus software, and no firewalls. Who knows what kind of malware is running on those machines. Fortunately, I packed two extra XD cards and can wait till Kathmandu to fix the locked card, I hope.
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