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Published: February 20th 2013
My predicition at the end of my last blog post was spot on. Our trek, unsurprisingly, did not go quite as planned. Not that we had planned it atall, but our loose aim to at least summit Poon Hill for the famous panorama of the Annapurna mountain range was not quite met. Luckily, the failure of our trek was not a devastating blow; it merely opened the door to an entirely different journey.
First, though, the trek! We took three long and painful buses in one day to reach the start of our trek. One from Kathmandu to Pokhara, one from Pokhara to a stretch of dusty road that led us to our third bus, the worst of the three, that juddered us to Beni. The roads and buses out here are utterly awful, even on the main routes, and on many occassions the bus slowed to walking pace to negotiate some seriously dodgy ruts and crevices. We slept in a very cheap guesthouse in Beni and managed to realign our battered spines in time to don our packs in the morning and set off on our quest to Poon Hill, with packs full of a range of nutritional snacks: biscuits, muffins, more biscuits, and two bottles of whiskey.
The trek start point was 4km our of Beni. We covered the distance in no time atall, bouyed by the iminent climb into the wilderness, and soon arrived at a bridge over the river that seperated the road to Jomsom in the north, and the Annapurna national park, home to probably the most stunningly scenic mountains of the Himalaya. We took a ceremonial photo and marched cheerfully onwards. The contors on our small map narrowed worryingly at this point and, sure enough, we began a grusome climb from 800 to 2100 metres above sea level. We wound our way through little settlements, over terraced fields and round huge ominous boulders that littered our route upwards. The climb was hard and we quickly devoured our muffins and finished our water supply. We were sweating buckets in the midday sun and were soon shedding our layers to cool off, leaving me wondering what all the "it's freezing up there" fuss was about.
After an uneventful 3 hours, during which the river and bridge we'd crossed became specs in the distance, then disappeared altogether as we wound round the collossal ridge that would grant us access to the deeper foothills of the Himalaya, we rose out of a small forest and the path finally and beautifully leveled out infront of us. Shattered, we plunged into our biscuit supplies and checked the map; we were appraoching a small village where we could grab some lunch. On the way we had to jump up the hillside to avoid a charging bull that was clearly not in the mood to share the narrow pathway, and just as we were drawing up to the village, we felt the first spots of icy rain on our bare skin. As well as the rain from overhead, down in the valley to our left a fluffy cloud was rising ominously up to meet us and in a flash we were surrounded by cool, dense air that deposited its moisture on our clothes and bags. We couldn't see 15 metres ahead of us but luckily we had stumbled upon the restaurant of the village. Inside was a group of elderly Swedish trekkers (impressive) and so we were beckoned into the kitchen where we enjoyed the hospitality of the little community of Nepalis, who issued us a welcome flower and quickly set about feeding us.
The rain was only getting heavier as a wrinkled eldar sat next to me and nodded, impressed, when I told him we'd started the day in Beni. "You walk fast" he said, miming furiosly with his arms. This boded well. The group of Swedes were preparing to set off into the rain (they had 5 porters and 2 guides so we didn't feel too pathetic not joining them) and so we went into the dining room and put on every layer we had bought in an effort to warm up. We also added a generous amount of whiskey to our chais, but none of the measures we took could stop the shivering that seemed to be emanating from our cores. I diagnosed that the problem was caused by the previous hours of sweat that was cooling us within all our layers. We were not about to take all our layers off at 2100m though, so instead we bit the bullet and rushed out into the rain to walk up via the medium of exercise. This worked a charm and we dashed our way to the next village, Nangi, in 50 minutes of scrambling and running over the slippy rock surfaces.
The Swedes filled up the lodge in Nangi so we were forced to ask the villagers if they had room to take us. This transpired to be a very good turn of luck; we met a happy little man named Pooni who was eager to house and feed us, and welcomed us into his home with great hospitality. We were drowned with chai infront of his small traditional fire and, as the heat turned the water in our clothes to steam, he set about assembling a huge feast for us. A brilliant feature of Nepali culture that we have not yet experienced in India is that they provide unlimited refills on their meals. At Pooni's, the portions were so massive that we didn't need any, but he shovelled tham on anyway. He also plied us with "Nangi wine" which tasted like gin and had me nearly gagging at every sip, but I felt I had to finish it anyway.
Happily warmed by the combination of wine, food and Pooni and his wife's happy smiles, we were shown into our bedroom and were both happy to see very thick sheets folded on the beds. We hit the hay with gusto and fell straight to sleep, only to be woken by the wailing of Pooni's cockrel as the sun rose behind the clouds that, annoyingly, had not dissipated. Pooni had prophesised snow the night before but there was none on the ground as we splashed our way to our next destination - the town of Mohare Dande. He had insisted sternly that we not pay him so instead we left him a bottle of whiskey which he was very happy with, and he led us up the "local route" to rejoin the trail, also gifting us two old, bent umbrellas (mine was pink but I couldn't complain) for our onward journey.
As he waved us off, we noticed small patches of frost and snow on the hill above us. We excitedly trudged onwards, quickly entering a forest of rhodedendrons(sp.) which limited our already dire visability. The light rain that we'd become accostemed to was pattering on our umbrellas as we entered the forest. As we exited the dense foliage, the hammering of heavy hail rattled the brolly in my hand and deafened me to anything Aneirin might have been saying behind me. The hail was settling on the ground around us and was soon 2 inches deep. We were just rushing to another clump of bushes when we noticed the outline of a group of people ahead. It was the Swedes; they had admitted defeat and were solemnly trudging down the mountian, their porters and guides in tow. As they filed past us, they nodded gravely at us with a look you'd expect if you were about to enter a war-zone. The guides stopped to warn us about the risk of snow ahead and told us not to stray off the marked route. We nodded dutifully, secretly thinking that these old fogies had given up a bit too early. How wrong we were.
We soon passed the point where the Swedes had given up and from then on there was not a single footprint to guide us through the fog and clouds, up the hill to the pass which sat at around 2900m. The heavy growl of thunder overhead did not cause our strides to falter as we surged through the thickening layer of ice and snow. The pelting hail was soon replaced by heavy, horizontally flowing snow that clung to every crease and niche of our bags and clothes. The depth of snow and thickness of the fog around us was increasing at an alarming rate, but we surged on regardless.
4 inches, 6 inches, 8 inches, soon we were measuring the depth of snow with various parts of our anatomy. With the snow over knee-deep and after 3 hours of pushing uphill through the snow, each step more difficult due to the air thinning around us, we surfaced on the pass that the map had foretold. A little hut - no more than a roof with 4 wooden sides and some benches inside - stood out of the snow and we waded towards it thankfully. Inside this santuary, we consulted out map. The open ground now all around us was featureless. We did not have a compass, and the clouds around us were now so think that we had no picture of our surrounding topography. The map was essentially useless. There being absolutely no chance that they could be nicked, we left our bags to be slowly buried in the hut while we scouted around the snowy void for clues to our whereabouts or any markers for the route onwards. Worryingly, when we emerged the snow was up to our waistbands, and still it fell, cliniging to every part of our frozen bodies like a parasitic coat of ice. We waded 500 metres in 2 directions with no success. Utterly dejected and knackered from 3 hours of cluimbing through snow with our 10kg packs on, we slumped back into the hut and contemplated our next move.
As we stared blankly at the map, the terrific rumble of avalanches around us did nothing to brighten the mood. In sporadic demonstrations of nature's power, the surreal sound of hundreds of tonnes of snow flowing down the surrounding mountainsides was enough to slap us back into the real world and allow us to seriously and pragmatically plan our next move. The insecurities and looming dangers congealed in my mind to form some very worrying facts:
Our gear was entirely inappropriate (we had no wet weather clothing, let alone snow gear), we had no food or emergency supplies, our map was poor, we had no guide, no footprints to guide us and we were at nearly 3000m, where the air is thick with snow but thin for the lungs. The snow was piling above our waists and showing no signs of stopping, and around us the clouds masked our precarious presance and disorientated our weary minds. We were also 3 hours march from help in every direction, and the sounds of avalanches and falling trees echoed from the intangible void. The cold was creeping into the cores of our bodies and numbing our extremities, and Aneirin was becoming more and more anxious about his toes, which he could now not move or feel.
At this point, we locked gazes and surveyed the mutual expressions of exhausted resignation on eachothers' faces. Not to be beaten that easily, we decided to go for a last-ditch effort to find the route. We climbed one of the adjoining ridges that we had discovered up to a height of around 3200m, depending on which one on the map we actually summitted. The short climb took us over an hour and pretty much decided our failure. We managed to shuffle, crawl, roll, slide and grab our way up the mountainside, but at the top we both knew we couldn't go on. I scouted out for a route anyway while Aneirin removed his boot to see if his toes were still there. No luck for me, but at least Aneirin still had toes. It was decided then. Here, on the top of a blustery ridge at 3200m, with snow and cloud swirling in a Biblical gloom around us and with avalanches still penetrating the whistling breeze, we made up our minds for good, to return to Nangi and Pooni's warm, seductive fireside.
Most people come to this violent, hostile place, where mother nature takes her last stand against the tyrinnical claws of humanity, to assualt the tectonic monsters of the earth and declare that they have conquered nature, that they have taken on the elements head-to-head and come out victorious. On the 17th of February 2013, Alex King and Aneirin Flynn were comprehensively beaten by mother nature. But bearing the above in mind, it is humbling and perhaps a little just that, somewhere in the world, there remains the last vestiges of impenetrable wilderness, of freakish nature and paradise all wrapped into one. The fearsome power of the climate that we seeked to explore showed us up as the frauds that we are and, though we were bitterly disappointed to cut our trek so short, we were at least gifted another of those unexpectedly brilliant and mesmerising experiences that we had not planned on sampling, nor hoped to. I have never felt so alive.
That's all for now, folks! The trek pretty much rewound from this point. We had 2 more happy days with Pooni and have enjoyed ourselves by the idyllic lake of Pokhara. Off to Kathmandu again tomorrow to do some jobs before returning to India to see the Taj - probably my next post's location!
Best wishes to all x
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Taymour
non-member comment
:)
Its quite sad how after having read all that and having taken in the enourmous feat you attempted to accomplish, the thing that sticks in my head most prominently is Pooni