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In New Zealand, I met two 65 year old Canadians who told me their story of climbing up to about 18,000 ft while completing the Annapurna trek in Nepal. Since then I have been determined to do it. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I thought if these two old dudes could do it I would have no problem. I met another American guy, Michael, on the flight to Kathmandu who also wanted to do the trek so we hired a guide and set out for the Annapurna trek. The bus ride from Kathmandu to the start of the trek was seven painful hours due to the rock hard seat and the five inches of leg room I had. The first couple days were exhausting especially since I caught a cold and it took a few days of walking before I got into a bit of a rhythm. As we walked we were constantly crossing paths with teams of mules carrying heavy loads that we had to maneuver around, being careful not to let them push us off any cliffs. I felt sorry for these working mules until I saw some of the loads that the Nepali's carried
up these mountains. I saw one guy carrying a load that was almost bigger than he was with the majority of the weight hanging from a strap that was wrapped around his head. Also, some hikers hired porters to haul up their unusually large amounts of luggage and in one instance, even a guitar.
We noticed that in the few villages with television, WWF was quite popular. Of all the things the Nepali's could absorb from American culture they take wrestling. We saw a countless number of kids with WWF and even Britney Spears shirts. And I was definitely not the only one with a cold. Just about every child had a runny nose and usually a snot bubble in one of their two nostrils.
Since I have been traveling in mostly warm climate areas I had to rent a down jacket, sleeping bag and some gloves which were cheap but I didn't rent pants. I only have been traveling with two pairs of pants and one of them was a pair of jeans that I wore working in New Zealand, which now have many holes in them. I caught many Nepalis during the trek staring at my
ripped jeans and on three different occasions they came up to smiling and said, "ohhh you are hip hop." I explained to them that I wasn't hip hop and that the jeans were just old.
We stayed in villages each night at little hotels that were equipped with a restaurant and just about every place we ate at during the trek had the exact same menu. To play it safe I alternated between egg and vegetable fried rice and egg and vegetable fried noodle. It will be a while before I order anything even remotely similar to those two dishes again. Knowing that the food would be bad and that I would need a lot of energy I bought so many snickers, twix and mars bars that my bag looked as if I just went trick or treating.
On the seventh day we arrived in Manang which was about 11,000 ft where we were to spend an extra day acclimatizing. The following day we walked up to about 14,000 ft and were feeling good. For lunch, Michael got a bit daring and ordered an enchilada, which gave him nasty food poisoning for the following 12 hours. It gave
me a day of rest so I really didn't mind staying in Manang another day. We made it up to our highest camp at 14,500 ft the next day where sleeping was difficult and just rolling over left me out of breath. We had to wake up at 3am the next morning to head to Thorung La Pass, the highest point of the trek, to beat the midday wind. When we woke up, Michael had a splitting headache and was feeling like his mind wasn't all there which are key signs of altitude sickness. We than realized our guide, Dhruba, was quite unexperienced. By the look on his face we could tell he didn't have a clue what to do. He was a great guy and we had a lot of fun with him, but he was not much of a guide. We knew that heading back down just 1000 ft usually cures it so that is what we decided to do. The walk back down was totally demoralizing but once we were there we knew it was the right move. He felt better quickly and we walked back up the following morning.
We left at 4:30am for the
pass which would be a climb up to an altitude of 17,800 ft. When we started climbing it was snowing and due to the early morning hour and the altitude I was feeling awful. After the first hour, the steep incline decreased a bit and the snow stopped. Then the clouds broke revealing the mountains that surrounded us and the sunrise behind them enhanced the already beautiful sight. At that moment climbing became easier since I was in awe of my surroundings. When I saw the first sights of the prayer flags signaling the high point of our trek, I was so relieved that we had made it and on such a high from the experience. We only spent about 20 minutes at the top since it was so cold, but we had time to take a few pictures, eat a few snickers bars and take a sip of some ice cold Everest Beer that someone brought to the top.
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