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Published: March 28th 2007
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The Apple Pie Circuit Chris and I got back yesterday from a 15 day trek around the Annapurna range of mountains - its thought to be one of the worlds classic treks and I can certainly see why!
I've included quite a few photos here, and I took tonnes more - unfortunately (but understandably) this site forces me to reduce the size of the shots so they aren't as good quality as the 'real' pics. Anyway, my pictures don't do the place justice - no-ones could - the views and people and the trekking is absolutely breathtaking - I'd strongly recommend this trip to anyone - particularly as they are building a road up both sides of the valley, so probably best to do the trek soon...
Anyway, I'll not go into everyday of the trek (as it would take forever and even this summary will take a while!), but basically the trek is split into two parts and linked by a pass called the Thorong La. The pass is a saddle (the lowest point) between two mountains which connects two main valley systems. Although its the lowest point it is still at an altitude of 5416m
(about 17000 feet in old money)- this is more than 600m higher than Mont Blanc (the tallest mountain in Europe) - basically its pretty high up. There are a number of ways to do the trek as well - either as part of an organised group with porters and guides, hiring a private guide (who shows you the way and gives you info as you go) or private porter (carries your bags), or just go by yourselves - we went for the latter option as it would give us the most freedom to do what we wanted. We also got a top tip about not bringing a sleeping bag as all the tea lodges we stayed in had blankets - that helped save a fair bit of weight and space compared to most other trekkers we saw.
The villages around the trip were fantastic - they were small settlements of between two and a couple of hundred buildings dotted along the trails every hour or so. Here goats/donkeys/yaks roamed pretty freely and people got on with their daily lives - a fair proportion of some peoples daily lives now revolve around providing accomodation or food and drink in one
of the countless tea houses around the trek, which although basic always provided us with clean rooms and tasty food (including home made apple pie) and drinks wherever we went - apart from one guy who gave me a cup of black tea with about 15 dead ants in it - nice!
Getting to the pass The trek starts in a town called Besisahar, and we spent the first 10 days taking it pretty easy getting up to a lodge at a place called Thorong Phedi just below the pass. This meant we were only walking (not including breaks) for about 4 hours each day as we were taking our time to acclimitise and there had been quite a lot of snowfall on the first couple of days of our trek, so we needed to let the sun melt the snow so it would be possible to cross the pass safely. This half of the trek was really incredible - we were especially lucky that there was more snow than normal for this time of year, so the views were even more incredible for us. The most picturesque part of the route was taking the slightly less frequented
high path from a town called Upper Pisang (which was like an old medieval village) to Manang - the views were absolutely unbelievable the entire day.
Getting over the pass Getting over the pass was then our longest day - it took us just over 6 hours to get over to the other side and to the town of Muktinath. Most people seemed to start at between 3 and 4 AM, but Chris, myself and another guy we met called Devin decided that that was far too early and cold, so set off at the more humane time of 6AM. This worked out perfectly for us, and to be honest, I think the groups set off so early as some members of their teams hadn't really done much walking before, so were really very very slow.
Anyway, it was absolutely freezing at the top with an incredibly icy wind, so the little tea house at the top was extremely well appreciated, and everyone was huddled in there for about 20 minutes. We then ran outside, took one picture and ran down the other side of the hill as it was just far too cold to hang around.
The Russians have landed!
The flag here indicates we have entered 'Maoist' country - the Maoists have been at war with the exisitng government for many years, but are at peace now and are standing in the forthcoming democratic elections here. I then found out that my yak wool mitts were in no way windproof, and so after 15 minutes I had to stop and get Chris to undo my rucksack (I couldn't work my fingers at all as they were so cold) get out my spare layers and gloves and spend a few minutes beating my hands to get some life back into them. I've had some painful experiences in my time and I've been extremely cold before, but the pain in my hands has to be up there as one of the worst pains I've ever had. But, there was no permanent damage so cheers to Chris for keeping the frostnip/bite at bay!
The other side of the mountain, was all that we could see... After the pass the scenary changed completely - we moved from snow covered beautiful mountains to a really dry valley full of rocks - the contrast was pretty incredible. We also saw an awful lot more trekkers (as this side is used for a series of shorter treks, particularly the Jomosom trek), motorised vehicles for the first time in 10 days, and hot showers that really had hot water. As we continued
further down this valley it was extremely windy and more barren than the other side, but as we got to lower altitudes we eventually came to regions with flowers and green crops and beautiful valleys again.
Towards the end, we came to a town called Tatopani (which has natural hot springs, and more importantly fresh orange juice from the orange trees) and we then finished our last two days of the trek by going via a hill called Poon Hill to see sunrise, where you can see a magnificent view of the Annapurna range and Dhaulagiri (another 8000m+ peak) as the sun hits them. When we arrived back yesterday we were pretty knackered, but we still rushed out for some steak and beer in Pokhara - this was the first meat we had since starting the trek, as we'd been avoiding it on health/moral grounds - everything that isn't grown locally has to be carted up to the villages by porters carrying huge loads (with only a strap round their heads even if the back has shoulder straps!) and most people we spoke to who ate meat ended up being ill at some point. And besides, Dhal Bhat (the
main local dish) is really tasty and you always get free seconds which is pretty perfect when you are out trekking everyday!
Rant I'll finish with mentioning one big annoyance we saw on the trek, and it has to do with plastic drinking bottles. There are signs everywhere describing how big a problem this is for the region - over 1 million drinking bottles are left here each year, which is a major problem to clear up. There are lots of options for getting clean drinking water cheaply here: use tablets to sterilise the local water; use a filter to sterilise the local water; or buy your water from a New Zealand set up chain of Safe Drinking Water Stations which are in at least one town you pass through each day. Most independent trekkers we saw used one of these options.
The problem seems to be that the groups - i.e. where 8-20 people pay to go with a company - turned up at the tea houses bought at least one bottle of water each (which a porter will have carried up), pour them into their main bottles and leave the rubbish behind. I don't think
its the trekkers fault - but I think the companies should have a responsibility to inform their clients that what they are doing is environmentally very damaging and completely unnecessary. Anyway, I've written my first ever rant based e-mail to the biggest offending group I saw, Intrepid - particularly frustrating is the fact that they claim to be an enviornmentally friendly company and even won a UK National award last year for being so environmentally responsible... It'll be interesting to see what they say, if they bother to reply.
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Ryan
non-member comment
Hmm
Take it they didnt have any shaving foam there ;-) Awesome pictures though, am very jealous sitting here at my desk!