Well, where to start, it's been so hard to find the time that it's now April and a long time since our October break to Nepal. I'll try to keep it brief, because if I don't get this updated I'll never get round to writing about 'The Great Adventure that is to come'...or is not to come if a certain stupid volcano does not stop spurting ash into the sky.
This holiday in Nepal wasn't the first one for me, I went there about 6 years ago and have wanted to go back ever since. This trip has left me feeling the same way, you can go there for quite a long time and you leave feeling like you've only begun to scratch the surface of what the country has to offer. Not only are the people some of the most honest and open I've ever met, but the land is so diverse and the activities varied that you'll never fit it all in in one go.
The places we went this time were very similar to the route I did on my previous trip. When I came the first time all Nicole and I had planned on doing was sitting by Lake Pokhara, drinking tea, reading books and relaxing after an incredibly hard semester. The relaxing lasted for the time it took us to drink two pots of Nepali tea, then we got bored and went on a walk. We Walked for 6 days, taking little other than a book and a change of underwear. We were very unprepared, had no guide and no fixed plan. Needless to say we got very wet, very cold and very smelly, and didn't make it much higher than 2700 metres. The experience was so good it just left me wanting for more.
The return visit was a lot more planned. Partly because I'm in a relationship with a holiday planning addict, and partly because we had convinced Nick's father to come along. We had all accommodation and tours planned months before.
When flying from Asia to Kathmandu, if it's clear then you can get a view of Everest, which we did, a nice bonus for most, a temporary distraction from flying for me. I'm not sure what was more stressful however; the flight (always scary), or the following drive through the centre of Kathmandu. Bangkok is hair-raising, but at least the roads are wide and the people and animals have the good sense to stay off them. Kathmandu has small winding streets where the buildings tend to lean progressively closer over the street the taller they get. Every mobile thing on 4, 3, or two wheels, or 4 or 2 legs, tries to squeeze themselves together down the narrow streets.
We took another hair-raising flight to Pokhara where I spent the entire 25 minute flight white knuckles showing as I gripped the seat in front and kept my eyes closed. I was really grateful to arrive in Nepal's second biggest city; Pokhara. Pokhara is the complete opposite from Kathmandu. It's airy, calm, peaceful (apart from the terrible rock cover band down the road), and life is just a little slower. We only stayed here for one night before the real adventure began.
After meeting our team (strangely consisting of two guides and one porter...felt really sorry for him, one porter carrying three people's luggage...including random never used items such as Eric's portable chair), we drove 3 hours out of Pokhara to the start point of our walk. We set off from Birathanti. The first day was just an easy introduction, with only a 4 hour walk and a 500 metre climb. We stayed in our first teahouse in Hile at 1400m. It was freezing, damp, dark and had an outside squat toilet. Nick and I decided to start our week long diet of the local staple; dal baht (vegetable curry, lentil curry, rice and chipati). I have fond memories of this cheap set meal served at every teahouse and planned for this to be my daily staple. The one we had that night was ok, but my standards of food have improved, and runny, brown, salty liquid along with rice and a few veg is never going to be that inspiring.
Next day we started at 7.00. By 8.00 we'd climbed about 500 steps, by 9.00 about 700. This was basically the way the day spanned out, interspersed with the odd Nepali tea stop and crazy first sighting of mountains photo taking. We walked until about 4.00, climbing steadily all day. That night we stayed in Gorapani, a large village at 2775m. We stayed in a warm lodge with big indoor dining hall complete with fire barrel in the middle. It was around this that all the porters and guides huddled. We were able to watch the sun set over Mount Dhaulagiri, the world's seventh highest mountain at 8167m.
We had stopped at Gorapani so we could punish ourselves with a 500 metre climb in the dark, in a queue of people, sweating and then freezing our butts off, all before breakfast. We left the guesthouse at 5.00 so we could make it up to the 3120 metre view point above Goraphani called Poon Hill for sunrise. It was cold and tiring but well worth the climb. Watching the orange glow of the sun's rays slide down the peaks across the valley was incredible, even if you are surrounded by hundreds of other camera clicking tourists. After yet another cup of tea we made our way back down for breakfast. What took us about an hour and half on the way up, took us all of 30 minutes to get back down. Like to think it was because we could travel so much quicker when it's light, but reckon it had far more to do with the fact that we weren't very fit and we are plain and simply quite slow when walking uphill.
After a breakfast of greasy eggs, cheese and fried onions, we set off on in the direction of Tadapani. It was supposed to be a reasonably easy day as a lot of it was down hill, perfect when we'd already been hiking for 2 hours. What the guides or books don't tell you, is that going down can be more awkward and slow than going up, especially when you're having to pick your way down through unstable mud slides in dark dank forests. I have a great fear of falling when I walk downhill, and absolutely no fear of falling when I walk uphill. Basically if you have a choice of tripping up and landing on your hands and knees when going up, or tripping down and falling over an edge or slipping down through mud on your ass, I'm always going to opt for the former. Needless to say it was a really exhausting day, probably the hardest day of the trip for me. We rolled in cold and tired, to a freezing stone room, with freezing and hard beds, and cracked windows showing mountain views. Dinner was fried pasta with eggs, cheese and fried onions, before going to bed for a night so cold it was second only to sleeping in a snow hole. Fully clothed with thermals, hood of sleeping bag wrong way round and over our heads instead of under it, down jacket over the the top of everything else. Nice.
Woke in the morning with icy breath and windows frosted on the inside, to the most incredible sunrise. Needn't have made all that extra effort and gotten out of bed the day before as the sunrise at Tadapani far beat the one from Poon Hill. Well ok, maybe it wasn't quite so spectacular, but not having to sweat and shove your way uphill in the dark for an hour an half has to give it the edge. Breakfast was greasy eggs, cheese and tomatoes, gotta mix things up, digestion was starting to protest.
The walk from Thadapani to Chomrong was reasonably uneventful. That is apart from from finding the dream teahouse with a flat and sunny grassy garden on a precipice overlooking Mount Fishtale (Machhapuchhure). Machhapuchhure isn't one of the tallest mountains in the world, reaching a hardly mentionable 6993 metres, but it is to me the perfect image of a mountain. Sharp, pointy and even on both sides, just like the kids draw. It is also sacred to the people of Nepal, and although a single attempt was made in 1957 by a British team, the climbers climbed to within 50m of the summit via the north ridge but didn't go any further as promised. The mountain has since remained closed to all expeditions.
It was a sunny and reasonably easy day. There was a slight negative tinge to it though. While we were at the dream teahouse we met a guide who had had to double back on himself as his group, who had continued on their way to Chomrong, had left a camera behind during their tea stop. They could not find the camera and left in a hurry. We found out later that they had caught up with our porter who had gone on ahead, and given him a hard time and demanded that they could search him and all our bags. Poor guy, not only was it his first trek and he was carrying three bags, he also got accused of stealing and then thought he'd be in trouble with us for letting someone go through our stuff. Stupid people found their camera at the next tea stop in a bag they said they'd checked.
Chomrong is a really beautiful mountain village that is the gateway to the base camp trek. You can reach Chomrong from a number of directions, but from there on it's just one path to the base camps. It is kind of the last truly civilized stop. A village stretching far down the hillside made of numerous teahouses and small shops. It is the last place to buy anything essential. Chomrong was the point Nicole and I turned back on my previous trip and I was really pleased to be back there. The views are great, the showers hot, the toilet western, and our room was above the kitchen so we had Nepali style central heating. We were told not to bother taking things that really weren't essential from this point...spare shoes, extra clothes, Eric's collapsible chair, even our wash bags. Apparently there were no hot water showers from that point on,. Now as much as I hate being smelly, glacial water when it's freezing outside is just not doable. Dinner was an adventurous chicken curry. Was terrible; seriously lacking grease, cheese and egg.
From Chomrong we had to descend 2195 steps to the valley bottom to cross a river. I know it's that many steps, because for the return journey when Nick was suffering heat stroke and climbing them in blazing midday sun, he thought it would be helpful to count them. Didn't matter how close to collapsing he was, he wouldn't give up on counting the steps. Sure this only made it harder. The picture of the baby water buffalo is taken halfway up the steps when we were on our way down. We all felt like this on the way back up.
One of the things most people fail to take into account when hiking in the mountains, is that while on the map a day's hike may look easy, with an altitude gain of only 300-400 metres, what you often don't realize is that to get this amount of gain you may have to go up and down a thousand metres a number of times. It would be a lot easier if it was all just up and then down, but sadly it's never that simple. Our walk that day took us up and down a number of times, and we also had the added worry of our guides seeming to have little confidence in the fact that we would have rooms waiting for us when we arrived in Dovan. Thankfully they it sorted and we had a dry place to put of stuff when the freezing mist came down. Dinner was fried potatoes, egg and cheese. Appetite is starting to play tricks on me. Seem to be constantly nauseous.
The hike from Dovan to Durali the next day took us further along the spectacular valley leading up to the base camps. From here the view is limited to the walls of the valley and you only get quick glimpses of Mt Fishtail to your right and most of the Annapurna peaks in front of you. Deep in the valley it stayed really cold until late when the sun finally made it over the mountains, then it would become roasting and the walking tougher. We were all very jaded by this point and if it wasn't for the views we'd probably all have been questioning what we were doing there. We didn't seem to be gaining the much altitude and we knew we had a really hard next few days. Dinner was a subdued plate of chips. Cheese and eggs is a no go, grease and potatoes is the only thing my stomach can handle for lunch and dinner.
Next day, Deurali to Machapuchare Base Camp, 3700 metres. This was a day of hard climbing. Winding our way up narrow paths that serpentine their way up the valley by the side of the roaring Modi Khola river. You become very aware of your feet on days like these and I always seem to slip and trip more. Every so often you are passed by guides and guests literally running down the mountain in the opposite direction. Seems that once you've been up to the base camps everyone is in a hurry to get down. Unlike me, most people find going down is the easy part. As well as the climb, the day threw a few other challenges my way. There were a number of fast flowing tributaries that had to be crossed, some by jumping boulders, and others by balancing precariously on logs perched high on boulders. Now I’ve never been known for my poise or grace, and I have a tendency to shake and wobble and fall off things that others stroll across. This part of the day was more exhausting for me than the hill climbing. Our rest stop that night was in what smelt like a disused livestock shed underneath the teahouse dining room. It was the only room in the village we could get and the three of us had to stay in there, listening to the tramping of people's boot overhead.
At 4.30 the next morning we set of with light packs and headed up into the mist towards the amphitheatre of the Annapurna Sanctuary. There had been fresh snow the day before, and it was bitterly cold. You need to wear thick down jackets because the minute you stop you freeze, but when you are moving you get so hot in the jacket that you sweat. This means that you are going from hot to cold and back getting damper and damper and colder and colder. We were walking surrounded by the dark outline of the smaller peaks, moving slowly closer to the snow line that marked out Annapurna South. In the moonlight the snow reflected the dark blue of the sky, but as the time wore on it was caught by the rays of the sun, turning yellow then amber, the reflection small at first but then spreading and brightening the area all around us. We reached our highest point for this. Climbing up Annapurna Base Camp steps and turning to see the sun coming over the ring of peaks behind.
The Annapurna Sanctuary trip is in no way the most challenging trek you can do, in fact it is one of the easiest. It is however, considered by many to be the most rewarding. Annapurna Base Camp sits in a glacial basin at 4137m, surrounded on all sides by mountains, most of which are over 7000 metres. It was such a buzz being up there, the feeling of achievement is great, as is the knowledge that it's all downhill from there, well kind of, in theory. We enjoyed a quick breakfast before setting off, we had a challenging 1600 metre descent that day, past our previous 3 nights stop points and further down the valley. It was a fast paced day down, I understand now why people were running, but with my balance and downhill confidence I was never going to travel that fast and struggled to keep up. We had downpours and rude French walkers to contend with, but we made it there in time for our first hot shower for days and a big plate of French fries. This was all I had managed to stomach each meal of the last 3 days.
What took us 7 days to get up, took us 2 and a half days to get down. It should have been longer, but we overruled our guides and went for the quick option. Nick had gotten heat stroke and didn't quite recover from his battle with 2195 steps, I was losing the will to face another French fry, and we were all ready for an en-suite bathroom with hot water. Eric, the only one of us who doubted their chances of getting to the top, had survived the trip the best out of the three of us.
Right, next plans... Annapurna Circuit, 21 days, 5500 metre passes, and a whole lot more challenging. Any takers?
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