Walking in the Annapurna Himalayas ...300km later

This is going to be no small task; without blabbing on to the point of complete boredom, I will try to be concise, but informative in an attempt to give you an idea of our 300km trek though the Himalayas, namely the Annapurna Circuit and Annapurna Base Camp.

In total we were gone for 22 days and covered an altitude range from 800 Meters (about 2600 feet) to almost 5500 Meters (just over 18000 feet). Covering the distance and altitude range that we did meant that we were in a wide range of environments, ranging from low lying jungle environments which were very hot and humid to high altitude areas of glaciers and snow storms. Preparing for this kind of trip was different to anything we had done before because we needed to ready for such a wide range of temperatures and conditions. Before we began our trek, we were in Pokhara wandering around purchasing clothing for -10C whilst sweating in +30C degree temperatures, strange feeling. One of the more luxurious things we arranged for our trip into the hills and mountains was a Porter.

In Nepal, porters are used extensively to carry in the supplies to the remote villages and to carry bags for trekkers. This meant that we were able to enjoy walking with only a day pack while our porter carried the bigger pack. We initially felt a bit uncomfortable about this arrangement, as this whole porter concept was strange and alien to us. But we were highly advised to hire one from those we had spoke to who had completed the trek, especially the people who decided not to use a porter. A good number of Westerners that do the trek do opt to carry their own bag, mostly because they feel that they are perfectly capable of doing this and don't want to feel that they are somehow cheating by getting help. Sometimes people are also uncomfortable with the idea of hiring someone to carry their gear. They find the idea strange, as did we at first, but we then settled into it and considered Raju our first (hyperfocus photography) employee.

Ironically, when you talk to the local Nepalese people, they believe it is strange that a Westerner would decide to carry their own bag. They can't understand why we wouldn't use a porter, we can obviously afford one. One night while staying at a lovely Tibetan-run guest house, we spoke to the owners. I asked the question whether they carried in some supplies themselves, they thought this was funny question; "why would we do this? we hire a porter to carry anything we need." They found the concept of not using a porter for themselves ridiculous, so when they see us 'wealthy' tourists hauling around our big bags, they just don't understand. Understanding their point of view, combined with the fact that what a tourist pays for a porter is, to them, very good money in Nepali terms, makes hiring one a great idea.
What we paid for 22 days was more than an experienced civil engineer would make in a month. Having said that, they do only work a few months of the year doing this job and are often supporting their families, so they are usually quite poor. When we finished the trek we did visit the home of our porter which gave us mixed feelings. Raju, his wife, his mother and baby all live in one small room, which we were a little surprised about. It turns out that their only income was from the his portering work. They did have a small family shop, but it wasn't making any money at all. So, on the one hand we felt badly about their incredibly humble living conditions, yet on the other hand we felt good that we had used our porter so that he could take the money home for his family to live on. Our money was supporting this whole family. We did buy them some extra food and give our porter a substantial tip, which he was very pleased with. We also took some portraits of his family and had them printed for him, which they though was really amazing. Anyhow, I am starting to blab, so lets get back to the trek itself:

Firstly a note on the trek: For anyone reading this who is considering trekking the Annapurna Circuit, you should be aware that there is a lot of work to put in a road which will cover about 80 percent of the circuit, which is currently only accessible by foot. This trek is quickly coming to an end so if you are interested in doing it we would suggest that within 2 years it will be pretty much ruined. They were literally dynamiting the valley apart (for the new road) for the first 2 days into the trek and from day 11 through day 15 there are large chunks of road close to completion, with more dynamiting happening here too. This is incredibly sad to see, especially knowing that this stunningly beautiful area (both visually and culturally) will be completely changed, the trek is reaching the end of its life with this road.
We did speak with some of the rangers in the conservation area who said that they are currently looking to route the trail through other valleys to avoid the road. The problem is that these 'other' valleys are uninhabited which means the trek will become a wilderness trek involving camping and being totally self sufficient, like so many hikes around the world. What currently makes this region so unique is the cultural aspect of trekking through the small Nepali and Tibetan villages and the people that live there. This is what will disappear, very sad. The rangers told us that many people who live in the valleys don't want this road, but they don't take any action to stop it, as confrontation is not in their nature being Buddhists. So if you're interested in this region, get a plane ticket now and go do it in the Autumn of this year, soon it will be changed forever.

Right, the trek (i do realize i am starting to become guilty of the blabbing i promised not to do, oh well; if you're tired of reading just look at the photos! :-)
The first day of our trek started out with the worst bus ever! Between my feet where holes in the bus floor, and the bus driver kept leaning out his window to check that the front wheel of the bus was still there!! Not a good feeling. Needless to say, we broke down 20min from our destination, but at least we were safe! The adventure had certainly begun! Then it was yet another short bus ride, but this one was thankfully built like a tank and was decorated with a lovely shrine, plastic flowers and window tassels. This road was like the worst Canadian logging road, but even had massive boulders for the bus to bounce off and sway, including a significant river the drive through! More adventure in the Himalaya, and we hadn't even started walking yet!!. We just had to trust that the bus didn't topple off the cliffs and play ignorant to the dangers of this bus ride, as our sanity depended on it. We did remain calm, nervously laugh it off and we eventually started into our first fews days of trekking in very hot and humid weather. We walked along a wonderfully clear river and among green terraced hills of corn and rice. The villages are only accessible on foot, so we started seeing many porters and also saw what some of the porters were carrying up the mountain. Among the most noteworthy of goods being carried on these porters backs were, entire kitchens, including all the dishes, steel satellite dishes, building materials of sheet metal and coiled wire and live chickens!
During the first few days of the trek we didn't gain much elevation, due to the fact that we would climb up and over one ridge, only to come back down on the other side to meet the river and then climb back up again. It was hard work, especially in the heat, but the beautiful landscape of dramatic hillsides, pink rhododendron forests and stunning valleys and massive waterfalls all made it all worth it. Then getting into our 4th day and at 2,670m at the village of Chame, we had our first stunning views of the massive snow covered Annapurna II (7939m) and we were now walking in sub-alpine rocky landscapes. It truly is amazing how huge these peaks are. We kept thinking certain areas reminded of places in Canada, but then when you see one of the Himalayan giants towering behind the foreground landscape, we were absolutely in awe and there is nothing like it!


On Day 6, which happened to be our 3rd Wedding Anniversary, we started the day off with a little luxury and had morning tea in bed! Extra nice as there was frost outside! As we started our walk Annapurna II (7939m) came more clearly into view, yet at a totally different angle to the days before and we were again in awe. The landscape became increasingly more arid as we walked into the day and we came across a very unique situation. On one side of the valley we were walking through the hillsides were extremely arid and had piller-like formations, lots of sand and very little vegitation apart from a few small shrubs. The other side of the valley was completely different; thick lush forests extended up to a high alpine area of snow rock and glaciers, this contrast was further exagerated by the appearance of a heavy winter like storm that was dumping snow up one of the valleys that extended out from the one we were in.
That night we were in Manang (3540m), a village famous for its successful businesses. Once we arrived there we could understand how Manangis had managed to secure their reputation for success in business. The guest houses here were more like small hotels, the menus were superb and listed many popular western dishes, which as we found out were made very well. It seemed as though they payed close attention to what the western trekers wanted and then made it happen. Manang itself is in a stunning setting, a dry arid valley with some of the Annapurna giants sitting accross the valley, virtually a wall of giant sized mountains. It was here that we really began our acclimatization regime, we would spend 2 nights in Manang before starting to gain some more elevation. We also did an acclimatization walk to gain some altitude here. We climbed up to a Gompa where a 91 year old tibetan monk lives with woman of the same age, they blessed us and said prayers that we would cross the pass safely, pretty amazing! After the ceremony they made us some tea and we gave them a Mars bar which they were really excited about that (nice to see that a good appreciation of chocolate survives well into the later years of our lives. :-)

On days 8 and 9 we would climb higher in altitude each night only about 400m higher than the last night, important to acclimatize correctly. When we arrive at the guesthouse we would stay at we would then climb another 300-400m in altitude, hang out for an hour or so and then decend to where we would sleep. By our 9th night we were sleeping at 4450m (14600Feet), day 10 would be our day to go over the high mountain pass. The air was noticably drier up here and sleeping wasn't as sound as it usually is. There was a bit of a feeling that you were just hanging out here to get over the pass, you really wouldn't want to spend a lot of time there.

Day 10 was the day we had been working up to, the Throng-La pass; 11 hours of walking, gaining 1000m in elevation (no small feat at that altitude) and then dropping down a whopping 1600m to the next village. Our day began at 4:30am we started climbing in the dark and just kept moving. The landscape up there was very beautiful, you could tell we were pretty high up. We crossed some snow fields and climbed and climbed. We were appropriately told a little mountaineers mantra; Keep your eyes open (as in make sure you remember to check out the scenery), walk slow, drink lots, pee lots (urinating much more than usual is a important function of the bodies acclimatization to altitude). So we did all the above, and boy did it seem like we were moving slow, you just kept reminding yourself to put one foot in front of the other, move forward. The oxygen in the air up there was only about 50% of what you would find at sea level, so you can't really push yourself too much, you so quickly run out of breath. So we did it, we crossed the pass that day, survived a pretty heavy snow storm on the decent and were rewarded with fantastic views of the beginning of the arid Mustang valley region as we emerged from the snow. It was nice to know we had done it and that we wouldn't be one of those people we had run into over the previous 9 days, walking down the trail because their bodies could not handle the altitude. After our 11 hours of straight up and straight down we arrived in Muktinath, ohhh, did that hot shower and bed feel good.

The next day we kept it short and walked to our favorite village on the whole trek, the village of Kagbeni at the entrance to the restricted Upper Mustang Valley. Kagbeni was like an oasis in the desert, a beautiful village surrounded by lush, green fields of farmland and set in a arid sandy river valley. It is a medieval Tibetan town of narrow cobblestoned passageways and old buildings with a red-painted Tibetan monastery at its core, it is such a beautiful village, our only mistake was not spending a couple of nights there. We stayed at a lovely Tibetan guest house, our hosts were absolutely wonderfully warm and friendly, not to mention very skilled in the art of apple pie making (this area is famous for its apple growing).

Following along the massive river valley where the Kali Gandaki River flows, we spent a most of the afternoon in a slow meander as we search the river bed of fossils of ammonites. In the end, our porter, Raju found a stunning, museum quality ammonite fossil highlighted with fools gold and we proudly found two decent specimens ourselves. We continued on through the large town of Jomosom, which had an airport to the town of Marpha, known as the "Delicious Apple Capital of Nepal", hence all the lovely apple pie we kept sampling in this area, plus a bit of apple brandy as well!

The next few days were long days of walking with constantly changing scenery. On this section of the trek we came across one of the most disappointing parts for us, due to the near completion of the large sections of the new road. No vehicles will be there yet for some time, but even the very evidence of a basic road was saddening to us, especially after trekking on such lovely footpaths up until this point. In the town of Tatopani, we took advantage of the hot-springs located there and had a lovely soothing dip before we started the next day on a lengthy and difficult climb up to Ghorepani. We were pretty knackered when we arrived here and since the views were absolutely stunning, we took an additional rest day, which was great! We basically just sat and starred at the Annapurnas all day. And the next morning, since we hadn't had enough of the views, we woke up at 4:30am and continued on a hike up to Poon Hill, which has some of the best views of the Himalayas in Nepal!It was at this point on the trek when many people walk out to Naya Pul and their adventure on the Annapurna Circuit comes to an end. We decided to make a visit to the Annapurna Sanctuary, an incredible high alpine amphitheater of mountains. All of the mountains that we had seen from the Annapurna Circuit form a closed ring of mountains, so by hiking into the Sanctuary and getting up to the Annapurna Base Camp you can be right in the middle of this ring of giants. This trip is normally 10 or so days on its own, but our bodies were already acclimatized to higher altitudes which meant we could push on without the necessary acclimatization stops. We were able to complete this trip in 5-6 days, including spending 2 nights at Base Camp.

The next few days up to Base Camp consisted of long days of climbing and descending, climbing and descending until you reach a point that is mostly just climbing. Our Porter, Raju would say, "Today is walking Up, Up, Up and Down, Down, Down". All the time the sheer walls of the narrow access valley seem to close in on you as you move up. We experienced a real mix of temperatures, weather and types of forest, including Bamboo and Rhododendron forests and monkeys. With the elevation changes it was like having season changes too, from summer at the lower altitudes to winter at the top. Near to the top it was really cold, requiring all the usual winter clothing. We crossed snow fields and delicate snow bridges over rivers. This area has earned its fame for rather unfortunate incidents involving the deaths of trekkers, porters and mountaineers. Incidents are unusually common and often involve collapsing ice bridges and avalanches, knowing this information made trekking through the tricky bits a little more worrisome, our porters personal stories of people dying didn't help much either. Areas of snow covered rivers that we walked on to get up to Base Camp had completely collapsed by the time we descended just a few days later(!). Anyhow, we made it up without incident, the views were spectacularly clear for the last couple of hours, we were pretty blown away by the fantastic views.We spent a couple of days at Annapurna Base camp (4130m) with some beautifully clear weather. We really enjoyed spending a day relaxing in the high alpine. We went on some small walks, sat by a huge glacier and listened to the sounds of it moving.

The second evening was really fun with the arrival of several people we had spent time with on various parts of the trek up all arriving, it made for a great night which would be our last at high altitude.

The following morning we began our epic decent, we decided we were going to try and get back to Pokhara in 2 days. We were off to a slow start since there had been a snow storm during the night which had dumped a bunch of fresh snow. We did manage to speed things up a little by 'boot skiing' down some of the sloped snow fields (this was great fun but we found out that we screwed up the footing pattern on some sections and caused the people behind is to slide out unintentionally, oops!! Sorry! but kinda funny). So, we had a truly ridiculous day of walking, which finished off with a 2000m odd step accent (remember on the way up to Base camp it was 'up down up down', well now we are doing this in reverse...Urgh!) into the village of Chomrong. We arrived around 7pm, just as it was getting dark. We had a really lovely last night on the trail as there were no other trekkers at our guest house, just us. We had a lovely candle lit dinner, turned out all the lights in guest house and stared up at the clear starry sky, just perfect.

The following day was just hot sweaty walking, by 10 or 11am we had dropped a lot of altitude and the humidity and heat were getting very uncomfortable. Most of the walking this day was through terraced farming areas which were very lovely, but it was hard to enjoy it with the high humidity and assortment of bugs, some of which just love to try and get into you eye sockets, little bastards!!!Anyhow, we did reach the town of Naya Pul in the afternoon, a bit of a shanty town and kind of a sad little place to finish off such an incredible adventure. We got a taxi back to Pokhara and were back before nightfall, our 22 days of Himalayan trekking had finished and we had walked almost 300km. What an incredible trip it had been, really a world class adventure.

To view our photos, click on the Nepal link above-right. :-)

Altitude: If you are interested in reading a little more information about altitude and its effects on the body click here.