Miyazaki Moment

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There were many titles we could have gone with for this week's blog entry. "Joom joom Jagat", "Good Power, 24 hour!", and "Holy Cow Those Are REALLY Big Mountains" just to name a few. We decided on this one because we think it hits the heart of our experience in the Annapurna Sanctuary. Explanation below.

First though, a warning: this will be long. If you're at work and this is your coffee break, tilt your screen away from your colleagues and bosses so that it looks like you're still working. Otherwise, settle in, grab a drink, and be patient with the hideous amounts of detail you're about to get.

An quick introduction is in order. Meet Jagat. He'll figure prominently in a few of our group photos. He's the 24 year old Nepali guide-cum-porter* that we hired on in Pokhara. He's unmarried, runs a 3 hour marathon, is unaffected by 5400m altitudes, has been in the business for 6 years, and is a brown belt in kyokushin karate.

(*Note: The words "cum" and "poon" will show up from time to time in this entry. Control yourselves. I'm looking at you, Paul, Dave, Clif, Charles ....)

Right, so, who is Miyazaki? He's a Japanese film director that Lynn and I both love. He does these amazingly beautiful epic animated feature films that almost always involve flying, incredible landscapes, and over the top adventure. We named this blog entry after him because we think the easiest way for anyone to get a sense of what the Himalayas are like in Nepal is to watch one of his films and wonder at his masterful play of color, light, and shape. Anyway, it's mostly a personal thing for us. Thought we'd explain it just in case anyone was interested. We had a few Miyazaki moments along the way.

Day One - a near death experience

To get to the start of the trek, you need to get transport from Pokhara to Nayapul. Being frugal and such, we opted out of the 1500 rupee (25 bucks) private taxi ride in favor the 190 rupee (3 bucks) public bus ride. Jagat, whom we barely knew at this point, was happy to oblige but was probably thinking, "Oh boy, I got a couple of penny pinching cheap asses ...".

Thing about public transport in Nepal is that it's horrific. Our trip from Sonauli was testament enough of that. Jagat suggested that instead of standing inside the bus where it'd be bumpy, crowded, hot, and uncomfortable, that perhaps we'd prefer it ON TOP of the bus. Better views and such. So, bleary eyed and tired, we agreed and crawled on top of the public bus where we tried to find a comfortable and reasonably safe spot on the cold metal luggage rack.

It was cold and brutally uncomfortable, but would have been fine if not for two things. One, it started to rain which started to freeze us to the bone. But more importantly, Nepali electrical works have this nasty habit of being strung a bit too low for bus-top transport. In other words, I was nearly decapitated about 5 minutes into our trip.

It must be said that a power line thwacking you across the back of the head at high speeds while sitting atop a bumpy old bus is a sobering experience.

The rest of the day went rather wonderfully after that with a brief and un-challenging four hour slightly uphill hike and the discovery that oatmeal porridge is just about the greatest trekking breakfast food ever created. We had it for breakfast every day of the trek after the first.

Day Two - 3000 steps

Hot. We were on the sun side of a hill climbing some 3000 steps (2000m gain) to a place called Ghorepani (2850m). We became grateful of Jagat's carrying capacity immediately and his savvy choice of guesthouse. At night it becomes unbearably cold outside so the Nepali build ingenious heating systems that vary from area to area. In this case, a metal drum with burning fire wood is placed in the middle of the common room with wet laundry and cold tourists spread liberally about.

Oh ya, and we love terraced farm lands of which the lower regions of the mountain range has in abundance. See pics.

Day Three - Machu Picchu all over again

Some of you might remember that when Dez went up to Machu Picchu, Peru, for sunrise views he got sorely denied by rain clouds and cold. Well, two-for-two. We got up at 4 am to climb a Grouse Grind style hill to catch the "amazing sunrise views of the Annapurna range" from Poon Hill (3250m). Uhm ... not so much. Despite being TOTALLY clear at 4am with lovely stars above, by the time we made it to the top some nice thick rain clouds had settled on top of anything above 3500m. Basically the view looked strikingly like British Colombia and not at all like we needed to fly 12000 miles to come and check out.

The rest of the day, again, was actually quite lovely as we climbed up and down the Annapurna foothills through cloud encrusted mountaintops. We ended up in a guesthouse* in Tadapani which introduced us to the under-table-burning-coal heating method. To explain, it's basically either burning coals or a kerosene heater placed under a large common room table with blankets on hanging down from all sides. The idea is to heat the underside of the table and trap that heat in there for the tourists to warm themselves and their wet clothes to.

(*Note: It should be mentioned that the Annapurna Base Camp trek is in NO way "hardcore". The entire length of the trek is dotted with lodges and guesthouses that provide warmth, shelter, food (albeit expensive at high altitudes), and people. This and many other treks are referred to as "Coca Cola Treks" due to their abundant availability of the sugary soft drink. They are run by friendly Nepali families but are regulated by the government tourism industry. You don't technically need a guide for this kind of trek as it's all fairly hard to lose your way ... We didn't care, however, as we wanted a) a porter for our gear (yes, I'm a wimp), and b) not to have to worry (even for a moment) that we might be lost.)

Day Four - Fire in the Hole! (Near death experience ... the second?)

Tadapani was stupid cold. The guesthouses are built out of brick (uninsulated) and then divided up into rooms with plywood. There is NO sound proofing (snores and early morning conversations are the bane of a good night's rest) and next to no heat storage. Tadapani was the worst as it sat at the top of a wind swept ledge that was buffeted by rain storms the entire night.

Which reminds us, Mar/April is not supposed to be monsoon season in Nepal, but due to climate change the seasons have become unpredictable. Apparently there had been a six month drought just prior to our arrival that was so bad it was affecting local hydro-electric power. When WE arrived, however, the rains decided to start up a wee bit early and chase us into our lodges by four o'clock nearly every single day. It basically means that we were freezing cold by 6pm every night regardless of altitude. It also meant, by contrast, that we had nearly universally clear mornings ... with the notable exception of the damnable Poon Hill.

The day's trekking went by fast. Unnervingly so, in fact, as we completed a supposed 6 hour day in 3.5. We were expecting to be slightly faster than the "average", but this shocked even Jagat. He would set the pace and we would dutifully follow at that pace unless one of us needed to pee, take a picture, or eat. We didn't have the heart to ask for tiredness breaks when he was carrying 14kg of our gear without complaint.

That night, in Chomrung (2050m), we got our first taste of the kerosene under-table burner ... and nearly burned down the guesthouse. Honestly, when they put the six inch blue-hot flame under the table we were reasonably worried to begin with despite the constant assurances that this was normal. An hour later when the metal under the table was red hot and the wood was smoking us out of the room, we realized that Nepalis and safety are distant cousins ... very very very distant (re: Day One - a near death experience).

One last thing, Nepalis make ridiculously good pizzas. We don't know how or why this came about, but damn ... good eats.

Day Five - Ominous Omens

Up to this point we'd only met a few trekkers actually heading up as far as ABC. It was actually making us a little bit nervous that so few people were heading that way. Spring is meant to be a sort of semi-high-season. Pokhara was empty and the guesthouses along the trek were rarely even half full. When we arrived in Dovan (2700m), our stop for the fifth day, we finally met our first down-trekkers from the sanctuary in the form of a father-son combo from England and a nice kiwi couple who were resettling in England soon (just coincidence).

Their story was of beautiful morning views (good) but brutally cold evenings (bad), snow storms (yikes!), and altitude sickness (bleh!). They, in fact, never even got to see THE Annapurna (the 8091m peak itself) and had to content themselves with consolation stories of "Oh, we thought Machapuchhre was nicer anyway." While, yes, some of the other peaks are more picturesque than Annapurna I, we really REALLY didn't want to have to make those kinds of excuses. Damn early monsoon snows! We started to think that maybe coming in November and battling the thousands of high season tourists might actually have been worth it (not that we had a choice this trip). High season in Nepal is basically guaranteed crystal clear views, no rains, and guesthouses so packed you sometimes have to sleep on common room tables.

Needless to say we were shaken up a bit. Oh, and did we mention the avalanche talk? We'll get to it.

Day Six - Stupid tourists

Day six involved us climbing to our penultimate altitude just prior to ABC itself. Deurali sits at 3200m (about the same as Poon Hill) and was about four hours from ABC (4130m). It's the last stop before the knee high snow, potential snow storms, and the avalanche zone between Deurali and Machapuchhre Base Camp.

It was here that we met a throw back from India. A 19 year old hippie-wannabe from South Africa was lodging with us and pulling one of the most offensive "I'm 19 and new-wave and know better than you about just about everything" routines we'd ever encountered. She was reading "The Secret Life of Plants", poo-pooing our choice of reading material, condemning all forms of malaria medicine (remind you of anyone, Paul?), and telling us with absolute 19-year-old certainty that the water here was totally safe to drink without purification despite the fact that she's had diarrhea for a month (and despite the fact that every guide book out there says that the water is most likely culprit for stomach bugs).

She didn't even have sunglasses. I was almost secretly wishing she'd go snow blind. I am shamed.

Day Seven - Stairway to Heaven

Not going to lie to you. Even with Jagat carrying all our gear and even though it was less than four hours, the ascent from Deurali to ABC was difficult.

The first section, Deurali to MBC, needed to be done early in the morning due to avalanche dangers in the amazing canyon leading into the sanctuary. The walls of the canyon are as much as 4km high, encrusted with new precarious snow, and just waiting to be heated by the mid morning sun just to come crashing down on unwary trekkers. (We chose NOT to inform our parents of this danger prior to embarking on this trek.) Fact of the matter is, we heard stories of people dieing the year before, people being caught in avalanches this year, and then ... even saw one not 150m ahead of us (that I caught on film ... will upload that sucker back in Canada). Lynn was nervous but stoic. I was nervous and excited. We compliment each other that way. =)

We survived the gauntlet to arrive in perhaps one of the single most stunning physical landscapes in the world. The sanctuary is essentially a 4100m high plateau ringed by 6500-8091m high peaks so close you could walk from one peak to the other in a few hours. Our day? Despite all the weather warnings, daily rains, and bad mojo? Perfect. We're talking cloudless, hot, sunny, crystal clear, and unspeakably beautiful. The sky was the deepest blue we've ever seen and the feeling of elation after reaching ABC ... priceless.

Pictures abound. We took a few movies too. You get a sense of what it was like, but honestly, come. Please. All of you. If you like mountains at all. If you like hiking. Come. It's worth it.

We spent the rest of the day sun bathing in the snow. Ironically, our highest day was one of our hottest. We were so high the clouds rolled UP the valley to our plateau rather than down as they had been all week. Also, the Annapurna sanctuary has to be one of the most incredibly active mountain ranges in existence. While sitting up at the base camp we heard on average a rock-slide or avalanche once every twenty minutes. There's also this massive glacier that's visibly receding every year and the whole place just feels ... alive. In constant flux.

Dez had a little problem with altitude sickness in the form of a slight headache and some breathing difficulties, but only when the sun went down and the temperature plummeted. We both did sleep, but Lynn had the foresight to need to pee at 3am and thus wake up to a night sky so clear and full of stars the constellations themselves were obscured by their infinite neighbors. Lynn woke me up as well so we could stand, briefly, in the frigid cold and share that singular vision together.

Day Eight-Ten - The Descent

After ABC all we had to really look forward to was the long hard descent from 4130m to 1100m. I became fascinated with this nameless hill on the way (see pics) and we both were reminded of the age-old truism of hiking: down sucks more than up. The knees, the ankles, the back, the neck, the ... everything begins to take it's toll. Thankfully the views were still spectacular and the prospect of real showers, thick steaks, and an industrial strength laundromat were excellent motivators.

Oh, and the hot springs at Jhinu. Quality: nice.

Two things bear mentioning on our decent. The first is that we got to meet a lively Nepali family in Jhinu on our ninth day with no less than six kids. Along with the semi-resident German sexually transmitted disease professor we passed a lovely evening listening to Indian bollywood music, messing around with bindis, and watching them cook traditional Nepali food.

The last thing is that Jagat was a real gem. Not a big talker. Just a constant reassuring presence who helped us fend off scams, avalanches, and missteps. His "joom joom?" ("good to go?") and "Dal Bhat: Good Power, 24 hour!" were of great comfort to us by the end. He also just smiled alot. He seemed happy. Nepalis, in fact, seemed happy (happier than Chinese or Indians for instance) and it's a wonderful thing.

We did take the public bus back from Nayapul yesterday. We did sit on top. It was extremely uncomfortable, but no one lost their head (literally or figuratively).

It's all over. It's hard to come to terms with being back in civilization (Pokhara seems crowded to us now). It's completely made our trip.

Annapurna. The Himalayas. Nepal.

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A few extras:
- When you trek, you wake up at dawn and sleep at 8pm. You also eat like a horse and never feel guilty.
- Lady bugs and butterflies are abundant in the Himalayas and are just about the dumbest most blind creatures you ever met, often flying right into your arm and falling down.
- Nepali porters are human beasts of burden of incredible fortitude. Usually in flip flops, they strap as much as 100kg (or more?) of whatever across their heads and haul stuff like Fantas and oatmeal up to ABC just for our lazy tourist butts to enjoy.
- Bring a book when trekking. We didn't. We regretted it. You only go for about 4-6 hours leaving much of the day empty.
- Nepalis love cards and other games of the sort. "Killer" was most popular (rules unknown).
- The smell of donkey crap in the Nepali hills is only slightly less appalling than the smell of sheep crap in the Lake District of England.

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Photos

The Trek
Machapuchhre. Oh my lord ..

The bus ...
... of near decapitation. Introducting, Jagat!

First glimpse
Is there any better motivation than knowing you're going to this?

Poon Hill
Nice sign. Crap views.

Lowland jungles
This s#^% makes Cambodia look like Kansas.

Tadapani
First good view!

Avalanche
Not a theoretical danger ...

The last leg
MBC to ABC

Comments

[Clif Prowse]

Spectacular
The photos are spectacular and the trek sounds awesome. Enjoy the showers and laundromat!