Annapurna Trek

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I summited annapurna, fakey, using co2 and I still have all my fingers and toes. take that Maurice Herzog.

That’s funny. I’m funny (voice of stan smith).

Anyway, our trek along the annapurna circuit was fantastic. Although it is a completely different kind of experience, and it is hard to draw real comparisons between kathmandu life and life on a trek, this past week was perhaps the greatest part of my time in nepal so far. Maybe it has to do with having grown up hiking and enjoying the outdoors or getting lots of fresh air and exercise, but somehow I found staring at 20,000+ ft. mountains preferable to the smell of garbage fires and insane cab rides. But, kathmandu certainly has its own unique charm and I mean that sincerely.

We spent the first day or so in pokhara, nepal's second largest city, which serves as a gateway to many popular trekking routes. There was some freak weather going on, whereby trade winds were pushing desert sands from one of India's northern states up towards the Himalaya. This caused the atmosphere to be orangish-grey, dusty, and impossible to see through. The weather had been persistent for a few days and there was genuine concern that we were not going to be able to see the Himalaya even from a close distance if the dust didn't settle. I was ready to go ape (or yeti) if I didn't see big mountains. But fortunately, soon after departing pokhara and beginning our trek, afternoon rain/snow helped clear the atmosphere and the Himal became abundantly clear before our eyes.

It is completely unfathomable to understand how tall the peaks are. We started our trek at an elevation of about 3000ft. We hiked to an elevation of 6000ft the first day, where we got our first peek at Annapurna South. Annapurna South is about 7200 meters which is over 23,000 ft. when you stare at this after having spent 5-6 hours climbing steadily up, it doesn't even make sense what you are looking at. as the crow flies, it is maybe only 8-10 miles away, but it is still 18,000 ft in altitude above where you are standing...and it is not even one of the big ones.

I could prattle on and on about some sort of combination of beauty and disbelief, but like my pictures, it won't even come close to capturing the essence of the experience. So again, I will roll the highlight reel.

1. Watching sunrise from Poon Hill (10,500ft). From there you see the sun rise over machhapuchare (nepali people's favorite himal), annapurna 1, annapurna south, and dhaulagiri. There are 14 mountains in the world that lie at an altitude of 8000m. From this hill you see two of them, annapurna 1 (8091m, the world's 10th tallest mountain) and dhaulagiri (8167m, the world's 8th tallest mountain).
2. Walking through thick rhododendron forest, where both rhododendron and magnolias were in bloom (with himalaya backdrop).
3. Seeing monkeys in the wild and watching a friendly dog that followed us chase them all about. Monkeys are to nepali dogs as squirrels are to american dogs it seems.
4. Eating “snicker roll” or as it is sometimes referred to “snicker spring roll”; which is a breaded deep fried snickers bar. I thought that only people in the south would have been clever enough to concoct something so delicious and heart attack inducing. Good job nepal.
5. Climbing a fake mt. Everest replica at the international mountaineering museum in pokhara.
6. Watching pack mules and ponies cart tons of goods from place to place. Apparently though, pack animals can only go up and straight, thus defying the principal of 'what goes up, must come down'. ???
7. did I mention no garbage fires?
8. Nepali people calling me “bahadur” (brave) because I carried my backpack.

Anyway, here are some pictures, like I said they don't really do it justice. Plus, in many of the photos my camera was having difficulty contrasting snowy mountain peaks and sky. Or alternatively, I suck at photography...probably the latter.

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Comments

[George]

what mts
i wish we had people over here that would carry our gear. love the picutres. miss you guys