Trek-king
Trip Start
Aug 29, 2009
1
34
46
Trip End
Ongoing
Jomosom, Himalayan Region, Nepal
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Well, when I went bungy jumping, I met a group of young British guys. They were cool, we laughed, smoke cigarettes and jumped off bridges together. I figured I'd never see them again. Well, when I was in Pokhara about to leave for my trek, I was kind of freaking out about being alone so I hired a guide. 10 minutes after doing so, I run into Josh and Emilio, those British guys I met while bungy jumping. A wise woman always tells me that I have a lucky cloud following me; maybe she is right. Josh and Emilio were planning on doing a different trek, one called the Annapurna Sanctuary trek. This trek goes all the way up to Machapucchre base camp, and then up to Annapurna base camp. I figured I had plenty of time to do this trek and then head north.
So on the 1st of December, my new friends and I set off from Nayapul and trek all day and uphil to Ghandruk. We had no guide, no porter, just a map and a basic guidebook. We all felt that we'd feel a stronger sense of accomplishment by getting to the top on our own. In that first dat, we gained over 1 km in altitude. Needless to say, we were exhausted. We stayed in guest houses along the way, some more basic than others. I will not bore you with a day to day detail of where I have been, as nobody would understand where those places were. It took us 4 days to get to ABC. In lodge along the way (which was recommended by our guidebook), we found rats and spiders all over the place. it was rather embarrassing because we had to break up with the family after dinner (which was awesome dal baht). As I was the one most pissed about the fiends in the room, I had to break up with them.
Me: "Um, namaste...um...yea...well, we're gonna have to leave because we found spiders and rats and such in the room...um..sorry"
Sad Nepali: "Ohh, no, it's okay, we keel, we keel, it's okay"
Me:" No keel, we leeve now, okay? We pay for dinner and we leeve. Sorry"
SN: "Well, you find same creatures everywhere"
The Gang: "Pffrrtt, yea, right"
And so we go across the street to a lodge that seemed a little less crusty. What do we find in our room? 2 spiders having sex or fighting or maybe both. We lose. We can't leave. We keel the creatures and go to bed.
Across 4 days, we hiked and hiked up, with every step a more beautiful view of the mountains. We'd stop along the way for lunch or dinner, usually getting a carb explosion for energy. We had either rice or noodles everyday, and sometimes a fried Snickers bar for desert. As goods were hard to bring up the trail, we found ourselves paying a lot more for food than lodging. A room would only cost us 50-75 Rps (0.75 cents). As we hiked and ate our way up the mountain, we seemed to offend everyone we'd meet. Josh would smoke a cigarette and some aging hippie liberal douche would say "Ughh, could please smoke that somewhere else...that's like worse than kerosene for me". So we made kerosene jokes left and right for about 2 days after that. We played a game called the "laying down game" where we'd have to lay down in strange situations taking photos; people were confused. We had a dog follow us for 10 km and we called him Kool Aide. When people would ask us about our dog, we'd say his name was Kool Aide and he is our dog. We are a gang of rough adventurers living in Pokhara and when we are not taking groups of people down class 4+ rapids, we trek with our dog. Our names were Jeb, Posh, and Emile. Overall, we were the worst. But we had a great time skylarking and goofing our way up and down mountains.
Ok. So at the top of ABC. It was amazing. There were mountains everywhere. There was Annapurna I, Annapurna South, and Machapucchre right in front of us. The climb was hard because the air was so thin. We had to stop every few minutes to catch our breath but immediately after that, we'd be out of breath again. Once we got to the top, I cried. I was so happy to have made it up there, on my own. Never in my life did I ever feel more proud. never in my life did I ever think I could climb up to over 4000 meters and be a the base camp of an 8000 meter mountain. While other people feel so small in comparison to such mountains, I felt big. I felt good and confident and happy. This has just given me the thirst to climb more mountains, to trek more trails. From that moment, I fell in love with mountains and I want to climb as many as I can. We started getting a head ache from the altitude, so we had to sleep at MBC which was only at 3700 meters. Of course there were rats in the room, but at that point, I did not care.
We hiked back down to Ghorepani in 2 days. from there, we could see all of the Annapurna region. We took our 2nd hot shower in 8 days, which was glorious. We smelled horrible, our faces looked yeti-like, our feet were sore and blistered, but we were the happiest guys on Earth. We had made it and back. All we needed to do was to climb a few more hundred meters at 5 am in the pitch black to make it for the sunrise at Poon hill. It was EPIC. We could see over 70 mountains with the sun illuminating every single one of them. So of course we fooled around and acted like asses up there, playing hackey sack, laying down in weird places, and jumped in the air to take cool photos. We climbed back down and I had to say good bye to my new friends. We had gotten very close over the trek and I was sad to leave them.
The 2nd part of the trek was different and more humbling. I was alone for the entire way from Ghorepani to Jomosom. The trails were deserted, the lodges were empty and the landscape was austere and strange. It was beautiful nonetheless. I stopped at very hot srpings in Tatopani which was very nice for the sore feet and muscles. At that point in the trek, it was mostly flat and at a low altitude, so I found that I could walk over 20 km a day, for about 8-10 hrs. With that pace, I made it to Jomsom in 3 days and decided to change my flight to the 11th rather than the 14th. I flew from Jomsom to Pokhara and from Pokhara to Kathmandu. I sold most of my trekking gear and I am now getting ready for Thailand, which will be another adventure in itself.
For anybody who cares, here was the itinerary of my trek:
Nayapul-Ghandruk
Ghandruk-Chomrong
Chomrong-Himalaya
Himalaya-MBC
MBC-Chomrong
Chomrong-Tadapani
Tadapani-Ghorepani
Ghorepani-Tatopani
Tatopani-Kalopani
Kalopani-Jomosom
Next post will be from warm and sunny Southeast Asia.
