Annapurna IV

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31 August - 7 September

The day I finally left Braga I caught up with a group of Westerners who had coalesced along the trail and passed me during my time in Braga. They included a young German couple, a young British couple, a Spanish man and his guide. We all stayed together for the next three days and went over the pass together.

Going over the pass was fantastic. The weather over the previous week had been pretty bad and we were all expecting a long, cold, wet day, but when we woke up at 4:00 in the morning there were some stars in the sky and there was blue sky with some clouds for the entire day. It was a pretty long day; we left at about 5:00 in the morning and stopped at the village of Muktinath at about 2:00 in the afternoon. Nobody except the guide had been as high as the elevation of the pass (5416 m; 17768 ft) before and there was much nervous laughter the night before. Two people had headaches the night before and the British man had a headache that day, but otherwise everybody felt rather good.

We stopped that day in Muktinath (3760m; 12336 ft) and the guest house had spicy bean and cheese burritos that actually were kind of similar to real burritos - I ate with a smile on my face. I stayed on at Muktinath while the rest of the group continued on the following day. This side of the pass was much more developed and Muktinath was a bit of a rude surprise with motorcycles and telephones and shopping stalls. I spent the next five days between Muktinath and Jomsom and then took a 20-minute plane flight back to Pokhara and a long bus ride back to Kathmandu, where I got all my paperwork in line for a trip to Tibet.

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