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Published: October 11th 2008
Warning folks, this is going to be a long one!
We've just returned from the two and a half week trek in the Annapurna Himalayan range and can finally get on the net.
Day 1
Met our guide and porter, two Nepalese guys we'd be spending the next two and a half weeks with. A guide is responsible for looking after us around the trek, booking our accommodation, telling us interesting stuff along the way, telling us which way to go etc. Our porter was had the difficult job of carrying our bags. The poor bloke would be lugging around almost 25kg for the entire trek. We were both looking forward to getting to know some locals. Both of them seemed very nice. Our porter, Prakas, didn't speak much English and was very shy. Our guide, Nabin, also didn't speak great English, which was surprising as he was supposed to be fluent.
We all made our way to the manic Katmandu bus station. Our guide was already earning his money sorting out a bus for us amongst all the chaos. We boarding a micro bus (a Toyota Hiace) destined for Besi Sahar - the start of the
Shaka Laka BOOM
great name for noodlestrek. The bus ride was a long, hot and uncomfortable 6 hour journey, although I’m sure it was a crap in a western toilet compared to the monster journeys we'll be undertaking in India.
Battled through some small talk with our guide. He didn't always understand what I was saying and sometimes answered completely different questions. It was fine though, got to know him a bit. He's a politics student, who was very knowledgeable and genuinely interested in global politics. He'd been a guide for 5 years and was saving up to study over in Oz. He'd also been a porter once, where on one occasion he carried 60kg's, which is now illegal, as porters shouldn’t carry more than 25kg (our bags were right on the cusp). He also told us our interesting fact about their marriage systems, of which they have many. One 'system' called the Kidnap system, allows a man to literally kidnap a woman and hold her hostage for 3 days. If she falls in love with him in those 3 days then they get married, if not, then she's released - crazy!
The bus journey was very bumpy; I don't know how the suspension
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Bamboo bridge coped with the serial abuse from pot holes and rocks. The bus was quiet to start with but by the end we had about 25 passengers in a van that's probably only supposed to carry 15. Locals were hanging off the roof (which looked like fun) and were sitting in the corridors between the seats.
Besi Sahar was quite and big town and still quite manic. There were a large number of old people who had walked down from the mountain villages to collect their pension. The hotel was pretty basic but clean.
We had a beer with our guide and porter and hit the sack at a pathetic 7.30 ready for our first day of walking, which would be a grueling 6 hours.
Day 2
First day of the trek. Woke up full of beans and ready to get trekking.
The walk was mainly along rocky trails following a roaring river, through a number of small villages, with huge mountains (not snow capped yet) in the background. We crossed a number precarious bamboo bridges, which was good fun.
Everyone we met along the way was very friendly, always greeting us with 'Namaste', which
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Us with our guide and porter means 'I bow to you', a local word used to greet people. We also encountered a number of donkey caravans along the way, one of which pinned Arwen against the side of a ropey suspension bridge, which was v. funny.
Had lunch in a small village nestled next the river. Tried the local specialty 'dal bhat' (which is all the guide and porter ate the whole trip), which consists of plain rice, lentil soup, potato curry and some spiced radish - carbtastic! It was actually very good and great for giving you POWER for the trek (which our guide demonstrated by flexing his guns). Plus, they keep bringing you more until your fuel - my kind of meal :-)
Made it to our first lodge after about 6 hours, the last hour of which was a very steep hill. The lodge was very basic but in an amazing location with 270 degree views of the mountains. The rooms were very meager and only consisted of two beds and separated with the next room by a sheet of ply. We checked out the 'facilities' and found the horror we'd been dreading - squat bloody toilets! I won't go into
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People do this all the time detail but it was certainly part of this experience I could have done without. We didn't see another western toilet until day 11 of the trek!
The restaurant at the hotel was brilliant and had far reaching views across the valley with the roaring river at its base. We tried 'Momos', another local delicacy, which are most akin to dumplings - really tasty and a great name.
Our guide and porter acted like our personal waiters all night (which is what we treated to the whole trip). It sounds awful but it felt like we had servants. They wanted to do everything for us.
Day 2 & 3
The scenery just got better and better as the trek continued. At one point there were 15-20 waterfalls careening down green covered mountains into the roaring river below. It was amazing. At one point along the trail we stopped next to a donkey and tried local wide dripping from the packs on its back. However, the next day we were treated to a donkey fart in the face, which wasn't quite as nice as the wine.
Day 4 & 5
Arwen was suffering quite badly from
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Another bamboo bridge sunburn, as the last few days were sweltering hot with not a cloud in the sky. She also started to feel a bit sick, which at first we thought was because of the heat.
We walked through some more really interesting villages, all of which are really unique. One village called Tal looked like an old Wild West town.
Met an Irish and Scottish couple at lunch that were also traveling for 6 months. They'd just finished a trip on the trans-Siberian railway, which sounded awesome. They highly recommended the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.
At the end of day 5 Arwen started to feel a lot worse - we only made it a week before one of us was reaching for the Imodium. She decided to rest for the night so I went down to 'hang' with our guide and porter and the guide and porter for the Irish couple. They all found this very entertaining. One of the guides was telling me about his wife and 5 girlfriends, which he thought was perfectly reasonable. In fact, he was surprised that Arwen was my 'only' girlfriend. I told him that one was quite enough for me :-)
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Donkey Caravan Our guide inputted by saying he would definately be getting himself some girlfriends when he's married and would be happy for his wife to have affairs - as long as he didn't have to watch. Stand up guys these Nepalese. He then decided to make things even more uncomfortable by telling me about his sexual prowess and 8 times a night marathons - lightweight!
At one point when we were discussing politics, a regular feature of our evenings now, our guide told me how Bush was a bastard, the Indian president was a bastard, but Bill Clinton - handsome and sexy.... :-)
Interesting if not slightly disturbing evening.
Day 6
Bad day today as Arwen felt really bad and could barely walk. At one point our porter had to carry her to the lunch place. It took us an extra 2 hours to get to our destination. Arwen was suffering all the way and couldn't enjoy the walk, which was a real shame as the scenery was amazing. We saw our first glimpse of White Mountains and walked through huge alpine forests. I purchased myself a 'mangle', an extremely masculine bangle that real men can pull
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View from the restaurant at our first lodge off ;-).
We stayed at a village called lower Pisang, which was our favorite so far. The houses were all made out of stone with sticks for roofs. It's what you'd imagine a real Himalayan village to look like. In the evening I trekked up to upper pisang (Arwen was still feeling pap), which was about 200m above lower Pisang, to visit a monastery and get some amazing views of the white mountains. The monastery housed 3 golden Buddha’s and had really elaborate murals on all of the walls. The views were awesome and I went a little nuts with the camera.
We were now getting to an altitude where altitude sickness can take hold- above 2500m. You could definitely notice the difference as just walking up a flight of stairs made you out of breath.
Day 7
We stopped for lunch at a place called Braga, where we met a very sweet Nepalese girl, about 2 years old. She insisted on giving us all hugs and kisses and wanted to do a little local dance for us. Arwen was cooing for the next few hours.
Arrived at Manang (3500m), which is one of the
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The trail areas district capitals. The residents are said to be some of the richest in Nepal, although you wouldn't think it from their houses, which are still small stone dwellings with sticks for roofs. Their wealth primarily comes from tourism as Manang is a village which is pretty much surrounded by white peaks. This is where we would be spending a rest day to acclimatize our bodies to the high altitude. Whilst we were there a lady had to be rescued by helicopter as she had severe altitude sickness symptoms. Because of the lack of Oxygen at this height, your body tries to get as much of it as it can, which can lead to hyper ventilating, which in turn leads to fluid on the brain or lungs. Symptoms include severe headaches, shortness of breath, fatigue and vomiting. We were a little nervous about the whole thing to say the least, as we still have another 2000m to go to the Thorung La pass. On the first night in Manang I had quite a bad headache, which was quite a worry; luckily it had gone by the morning though.
Day 8 & 9
On our first acclimatization day we
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Marijuana plant - these were everywhere went straight to the doctors. They were all from America & Canada and volunteers. They gave us antibiotics (Glenn had an 'incident' the night before). For the rest of the day we just chilled out - read books, did some washing, sent a very quick and expensive email home to say we were alive. Glenn somehow managed to cut his finger with his leatherman. Muppet.
The next day we both felt much better and decided to trek to a glacier (3800m) to help us to acclimatize. We went with Prakas - I think he was made to as practice for being a guide. Glenn & Prakas trekked further up the hill to 4000m, but I stayed at a nice little tea lodge for a bit. It turned out it wasn't really a trek to a glacier, rather a hill next to it. It was an OK glacier, but it was no Franz Josef.
On a recommendation from some aussie guys (one was called Bruce 😊) we had a slice of apple pie at a local bakery. Apparently the crumble was better, but they had run out. They told us they were baking a fresh one, so of course
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Nepalese village we went and sat on the roof of our hotel, with our binoculars and waited. I reckon about 2 hours. It was a very nice crumble & worth the wait.
Day 10
The next day we did a short 3 hour trek to Yak Kakhura. We were very out of breath due to altitude. It turned into a bit of a cheese fest in the evening, when one American girl got out her guitar & people were singing along. Pretty much everyone stayed in the same lodge. We had out very own shed . Just a bed in a shed.
We had dinner and played cards with a guy called Ian from S. Africa. It was all very cozy as there were so many people in one tiny room. It was good fun though. We met the aussies again, and spoke to some German women too.
Day 11
The next day we trekked to Thorung Phedi (4500m). Phedi means bottom of the peak. It was only a 3 hour trek & wasn't too steep, but was incredibly tiring due to the altitude. The hardest part was after climbing we had to descend back to the
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Huge mountains - spot the arwen river and then straight back up again. Killer.
Once we arrived at the lodge we climbed a further 200m to help to acclimatize. I got a really bad headache, so we couldn't go much further. When we got back down, Glenn started to get a headache and lost his appetite - not good signs! By morning we were fine.
Day 12
The longest and hardest walk of the trek. 8-9 hours. 1km up and 1.6km down. We woke up at 4am, looking ridiculous in our huge down jackets and mittens - we started trekking at 5am in the pitch black. The first hour was savage - a really steep incline at high altitude, it was impossible to catch your breath. We had to take it really slow. At around 6.30 the sun rose over the White Mountains, which was absolutely amazing. We dug deep and after another grueling 2.5 hours we made it to Thorung La pass at 5416m. The trek up was covered in snow.
We had a real sense of achievement. We had a well deserved break at the tea shop and took loads of pictures and started the monster 1.6km trek down. All
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The trail that work going up only to go straight back down again!
The descent was very step and our knees took a real battering. We started off walking down snow dunes, which eventually turned into loose rubble. Arwen 'bambi' Rodgers took it very slow from fear of falling over. We could see our destination the whole way down and at the start it look so far away and after a few hours, it didn't seem to be getting any closer.
It took us about 4 more hours to get to the bottom. Our legs were screaming for mercy. This side of the pass was very different - it was baron and dusty. When we got to Muktinah our porter took us to the temple, which is a very important place, as it is where Hindus and Buddhists live and pray together. Thousands of pilgrims from both Nepal & India travel here every year to pray. At the temple there were 108 taps (Hindu lucky number) which poured holy water. I had a pop at splashing some on me - much needed after the walk! Further along there was a small building which housed the eternal flame, which has been
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Tal - the wild west town burning for many years, believed to be from natural gasses under the ground. Monks were chanting as we went in too.
We got to the hotel, had a much needed beer and hot shower and to our delight, we had a western toilet! woo hoo. Also tried a Yaky steak (Yak steak) which was ok, but no beef, that's for sure.
Day 13
The next day we had to trek to Jomsom. It was savage. After the monster day yesterday we just had no energy. This part of the trek is called the apple pie trail (which boosted spirits a little). It was very windy & we had to walk into the wind - it was also very dusty. Not a great combination. Jomson was very big & nice. The kids there had just broken up from school and were all holding their school reports. In the hotel we met some dutch guy who had been to India and Royal Chitwan park - on his recommendation we decided to see if we could book a trip there - as you get to play in the water with the elephants.
Day 14
Another savage day (no
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The awesome scenery time to recover) - again it was very windy & very dusty. We trekked through Marpa at about 9am. This is THE place to get apple pie, so obviously we stopped. Glenn had a bit of apple pie & I had some crumble. The crumble was better, so Glenn has a bit of that too. The walk seemed nicer than yesterday - less dry. Some sweet man in a village was making wool with his family & stopped us walking past. Bless.
Day 15
Another savage day as we trekked to Tatopani. It was very hot & then there was a massive storm and we got soaked. At lunch we met this little girl & she loved Glenn because he kept pulling faces at her. She was crazy but very sweet. A welcome feature of Tatopani was a hot spring. We paid 30 Rp & spent about 2 hours in there. It helped our muscles loads. This little boy, about 6, tried to sell us weed too, so it was an interesting walk.
Day 16
One word to describe the trek to Gharopani.
Savage.
Uphill. 7 hours. Rain.
Day 17 - Glenn's Birthday.
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Our first view of the white mountains OLD.
Last day of the trek - back to Pokhara. We woke up at 5am to trek up to Poon Hill. You can see all the annapurna range and watch the sun rise over it. Unfortunately when we got there it was so cloudy. Nice clouds, but no mountains.
We went back & had brekkie then trekked down for HOURS. My knees have never suffered so much.
On the way we saw a buffalo that had just been cut open, so ALL its insides were everywhere. We eventually reached the main road & got a taxi back to Pokhara.
We had decided to go to the steak house as recommended in the lonely planet book for Glenn's birthday. We wanted to give the guide & porter their tips before, so we had a beer with them & then got told off for not celebrating with them! The steak house was awesome. The recommendation was spot on!
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Blubs
non-member comment
Apple based incentives!?
Hey Guys thoroughly enjoyed reading through the accounts of your trek, sounds amazing!! I love the fact you had apple based desert products awaiting you at different legs of the journey, surely must of been the only thing that kept glenn going! Glad your safe and obviously having the time of your lives!!! Cant wait to catch up with u guys in Asia! Take care of yourselves!!! Arwen, give glenn a kiss for me!