Trekking the Annapurna

Hey there boys and girls, long time no blog. Sorry about that. The boonies of Nepal are not the most conducive area for blogging, or the internet in general for that matter. But, after seventeen days of trekking and three days hanging out in the jungle, I am finally back in the world's most electrically challenged capital city, Kathmandu. I am going to do two separate blogs, one on trekking and then one on Chitwan National Park (the jungle). So, with out further ado, here is my blog on the past twenty days of my life. Trekking the Annapurna was the trip of a lifetime. One of the world's most famous trekking routes, surrounded by the tallest mountain range in the world, in an area in which the only thing that matches the beauty that surrounds you is the remoteness of the place itself, the Annapurna far exceeded my expectations. Although, I did have a blast on the trail, there were some things that bothered me, some things made me mad, and I saw some things that were not anything what I expected prior to my departure. Even so, I would not change this experience for anything in the world. I am going to break my trek into three parts, the first six days (the start), the middle four days (the days that lead up to the summit), and the last seven days (the end). This will make it easier for me to write , as well as easier for you all to follow. Upon leaving Kathmandu we took a eight hour bus ride that rivaled any bus trip I have taken yet so far in terms of comfort level. It was a local bus with people getting on and off every few minutes. The roads of Nepal are extremely bumpy and steep, and they pack the bus beyond capacity, with people sitting in the aisle and on the roof. At different points I had people resting their asses on my shoulders and kids with dirty feet in my lap. Once we finally were off the bus and on the trail I was much happier. My day as a trekker went as follows: at 6:30 AM I would wake up and begin to get ready for the day by packing and "freshening up". Breakfast at 7 (I will get into the food later on in the blog), followed by around four hours of trekking, lunch at 11:30 AM until around 12:30 PM, another two to three hours of trekking, then arrival at our daily destination, followed by some down time (nap time), dinner at 6:30 PM and then usually in bed sometime around 9 PM depending on if that place had electricity or not. Rinse and repeat. Sounds exciting right? So, the first day on the trail I was amazed to find that, despite not training at all and being in less than perfect shape, I was able to still hike around fifteen kilometers a day with ease. I attribute this to the fact that we did have a porter. At first I was a little bit ashamed of the fact that we had a Nepalese guy with us that carried our two twenty kilometer backpacks, but for reasons I will get in to later on, he was very handy for different situations. Besides, I definitely do not think Dave could have done certain parts of the trek carrying his own bag, so he would have been there regardless, whether I needed him or not. He also added a nice dimension to our group. Dave was much slower than I, and our guide (his name was Jaya and he was extremely nice and funny) stayed at Dave's pace and kept him company, while I ran forward with this little Nepalese porter named Sanka. The guy was absolutely hilarious. He spoke no English, walked every day except for the summit day (it was all snow) in flip flops, and carried the entire weight of our two bags and his own bag by a strap on his forehead. I tried using this technique for a few steps, and lets just say it is not easy. If I was to do it over again, I would not have had a guide or porter, but I was not complaining during the trek and it was nice to have a translator and someone who knew all the large mountains and animals we were looking at on the trail. I guess you could say that throughout the entire trip I had an easy time with the trail and, for the most part, did not find any part difficult. The two exceptions were the food and altitude. I found out the hard way the truth about food on the Annapurna the very first day. I had told myself that I would eat nothing but the traditional Nepalese dish, eaten by Sherpas in the mountains at every meal, called Dal Baht. I described it in the last blog, but now I am an expert on the dish. It consists of rice, lentils, some form of vegetable curry, and curry. No meat. The Nepalese also eat with their hands, so I decided that I would be doing that for the next month as well. This lasted a total of three days before the trek, and one on the trek. The very first night, I got so sick from the food that I had to spend the night in the dirt outside in my sleeping bag because I could not make it to the outhouses located downstairs and outside. A quick side note, the lodgings were very different from what I had imagined. Every small town that we walked through (there were a lot of them along the route) had at least one, sometimes as many as ten to twenty small "hotels" that were set up for trekkers. Some had more amenities than others, but all were very barren in terms of comforts. All had two single beds, some had electricity, only a few had bathrooms in the rooms, even fewer had western toilets, and most had solar hot showers that hardly ever worked. But, back to my first night. Even though I had not slept and was incredibly ill the next morning still, I had to go on and do a full day of trekking. I managed to stumble my way around the trails for the next couple hours on no food, stopping to vomit frequently and just overall a terrible mess. That was the end of my foray into the world of Nepalese food. From there on out I ate various western options that were available at the hotel restaurants we stayed at. The menus located on the trail were all very interesting. The government over the last decade or so has regulated the prices and menu options available in hopes that by offering more western options, more westerners will trek there. A good idea on paper, all it created was a bunch of disgusting creations where Nepalese made dishes that they thought were "Western". Examples include pizza made with ketchup and yak cheese, whole garlic cloves with a side of macaroni, and various other abominations I had the unfortunate privileged of consuming. The trick with the food was to eat things that were hard to screw up and had the least chance of making you sick, a tall order. Dave and I were essentially continually ill for the first nine days straight. Oh and one other thing on food before I go on, all ingredients aside from those grown had to be brought up the same trail we were hiking every day. This meant that the higher that we went, the more expensive things got. For example, bottled water was around fifty cents when we started, and at the summit had risen to almost four dollars. Same goes for things like snickers, cokes, chips, and any other comfort you could want after a long day of hiking. But back to the trekking. So the first two or three days were less than enjoyable for me. There is nothing like being sick in a foreign country, especially sick when you have to still hike all day and have no real food options that sit well with your stomach. Eventually though, I got over the bug and was running around the mountains of Nepal in no time. The major theme of the first six days of trekking was development and construction. Every town we went to seemed as though men were working to build a new hotel, restaurant, or some other thing that would bring in tourist dollars (Nepal's only money maker). Many of the towns we went to, we were told, had just gotten electricity over the last five years. We even saw an internet cafe that looked brand new. We used the brand new Dell computers for twenty minutes, promptly racked up a seven US dollar charge, and left. Before leaving though we asked the owner how long the cafe had been there. His response: "six days". Everywhere around us seemed like it was coming out of the stone age right before our eyes. From a trekkers point of view, that was sad to see. The classic trek in perhaps all of the world was turning into a giant commercial mess. On the other hand, it means that people are going to benefit from increased tourism and money coming in to the region. The most interesting part was the construction of a road during the first six days. The first six days consisted of us hiking on a trail that ran along side a river, constantly criss crossing over bridges and going up and down multiple times a day. While we would be on one side, men would be using tools to cut through sheer rock faces to make way for a ride to reach some of the towns higher up that are cut off from the rest of Nepal except by walking. We would constantly hear explosives going off that rocked the valley and made for an interesting background music to our hiking. The first six days were mostly about getting our bearings and getting used to the trail. Some of my fondest memories from those days are children, upon seeing us walk into their small town of three or four farming families, running out to meet us and asking for chocolates or sweets. The funniest thing to me was that throughout the first few days I was wearing my Barcelona jersey. Kids would constantly yell from their windows and front stoops the name "Barcelona" and "Messi, Messi, Messi". I got a kick out of that. But, after the first six days, we got into the serious trekking at high altitudes which was a totally different animal. On the seventh day we arrived at the town of Manang, something of a major city of the region (probably around 500 inhabitants). Many people wait around in this town for a few days because its elevation clocks in around 11,500 feet. When you begin to arrive at elevations over 10,000 feet some people start to show signs of elevation sickness (dizziness, nausea, headache, vomiting, etc.) From what I have heard from Dave who is more experienced than I with higher altitudes, it is not pleasant. When we arrived though, neither of us was feeling too bad and Dave even got his blood oxygen saturation tested, and he was well over the average for that area, so the next day we continued on without resting. Anything over a 90 is considered good, and Dave registered a 97, while the guy in front of him in line got something around a 70. The next three days leading up to the summit day the weather got progressively more cold and the areas more remote. Large towns gave way to tiny villages set up solely for the purpose of serving the needs of trekkers going to the Thorlong Pass (the summit). While the first week we were trekking in shorts and short sleeves, suddenly we were forced to wear more layers. The scenery also changed from farms and greenery to a barren mountainous area. We were surrounded by snow capped mountains and snow on the ground at all times. The trails became much smaller because of less traffic and steeper. On the ninth day we finally arrived at high camp, a jumping off point for the next morning where we would be summiting the Thorlong Pass (altitude 5,614 meters, around 17,000 feet). High camp was quite the bitch to get to and very cold with little amenities to be had. The worst part for me was the second coming of my stomach problems and because of the temperature, somewhere in the 15-20 degree range, the bathroom floor became frozen making it extremely difficult to navigate the toilets that were merely holes in the ground. Be that as it may, everyone seemed to be in high spirits for the summit. After a cold, sleepless night, we awoke at 4:30 AM and began our ascent of a few thousand feet up to the summit of our journey. This was my first taste of what altitude sickness was like. Immediately when we started hiking with the sun just cresting the mountains over our shoulders, I began to feel lightheaded and had trouble breathing. My feet felt like lead and traversing the vast snow banks was quite difficult. After just two hours of slowly making my way up this steep, ice cover slopes, I felt as though I could not go on. Miraculously though, Dave saw me struggling and let me in on his little secret. Ibuprofen. Dave claims that Ibuprofen thins out the blood and makes it easier to acclimatize. I popped two of those little babies and within minutes was back to my old self. I breezed through the next few hours and we summited the pass sometime around 10:30 AM. 17,000 feet is much higher than anything I had ever been to, and you will be hard pressed to find many higher areas in the world to get to without mountaineering or climbing skills. It was definitely a cool achievement until we heard that a twelve year old kid had done the same thing a few minutes prior. Granted, he was extremely sick and puking on the summit, but still, we were shown up by some little British kid. Wanker. The last six or seven days of trekking where much different from all the other days we had been on the trail. Now, we began to spend most of our days going downhill. This was a nice change because of the different muscles used, but became quite the pain for us after a while. Also, the trail changed and became a fully functioning road, where buses constantly passed kicking up dirt and making the journey less than spectacular. We found this out the hard way, and were envious of the people that we talked to that did the summit and then proceeded to hop on a small plane back to Kathmandu from an airport in the town of Jomsom. We wished we were doing that. Our moods also changed after the summit. It seemed as though Dave and I became less about the trek, and more about getting to the end of the trek. I attribute this to the undesirable hiking conditions, as well as our being tired of the food and various other aspects of the trekking lifestyle. I still greatly enjoyed the last few days, we got to see Annapurna I which I described in my last post, and had some of the best views yet, but I was ready to get off the trail. It would be one thing if I was just doing the trek and then going home to the States, but I still have to go on traveling for another month. Whatever the case was, we soldiered on and after a few short days we were back on the bus again going to Chitwan National Park in the southern part of Nepal. Overall, I greatly enjoyed my trek. It was great to do it at the time we did because I am guessing a few years from now, with the advent of the road and even more construction, it will be changed forever. I wish that I had been privileged to do the trek twenty years ago, as many on the trail had done and were doing a second time. They were constantly remarking about how different the trail was and how the remote feel and bare bones trekking lifestyle had been lost. After some of the troubles I had on the trail, I cannot even imagine having any less comforts than I did, so on that note I guess I was a little bit glad I did it when I did. Whatever. The trek of a lifetime was definitely worth it.