Trekking Time

  Pokhara, Nepal
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

So I booked trekking to the Annapurna base camp, 4000m high and a 10 day trek to get there. For this feat I hired a guide, a wee little Sherpa man. Our trek began in Pokhara, a delightful little lakeside town to the north of Kathmandu. Upon entry here the bus driver had to give money to the Maoists who are active in this area in particular, also their leader was coming to give a speech in the coming days. Heres a statue of the king (the king was recently over thrown as head of the country, hence the defacing) in full Maoist regalia, and covered in Maoist posters, a potent symbol of the changing times here in Nepal.


The roads or not developed here, obviously it isn't the easiest country to build a road system but it mainly little windy roads, at the bottom of on valley you could see the remains of one bus that never made it to Pokhara, apparently 14 people died and it was a recent accident. joy.

WE got to our hotel, where me and my guide were apparently going to share a room, how quaint. The hostel owner came up and said "Welcome to our hotel! Can I take your TV?!" and thus the TV was taken.

Walked around Pokhara with me guide, it's more than a little weird suddenly spending every waking (and sleeping it seems) hour with this little foreign guy that you've never met, conversations didn't quite flow.

We began walking through some great rhododendron forests, not quite in bloom yet. We arrived at our next hostel in about 2 hours I think I walked a little too fast for the little Nepali guy. The next day I woke up to stunning mountain views, really really nice walking with the panorama ahead.


Soon we began walking through the terraced fields and villages dotted around the valley. Wheat had been planted and was swaying in the breeze to the sound of kids playing with their home made catapults, as their parents plough the fallow fields and sow maize for the next season.




We stayed in a little village perched on the side of the valley, cobble paths and dry stone walls running between the houses and farms remind me of an old English village. It's seems like a lovely place to live now, but come back in winter or summer and you'll see that this terrain can be a killer. In winter the conditions are freezing, and when you have no electricity this can be difficult to get though, the summer in Nepal is monsoon season, mud slides and rivers dissolving pathways can halt the major routes to the village and further on.


The next morning I got up early to see the sun rise over the mountains, and I wasn't disappointed. The clouds had unveiled the magnificent white monoliths, as the sun chases away the cloak of shadow.




This day we walked down to some natural hot water springs, which, as you can see, were superb. It was so nice after a day of walking and lugging a heavy bag to strip down to me George undies and lie in the natural bath by the river deep in the jungle. Memories of my time in the Malaysian jungle flooding back.


I relaxed their for a while until this Japanese guy turned up and wanted to take a few photos of me. I let him, although it was a little weird, he said he'd email me the photos at some point.

Unfortunately my time relaxing was short lived as the walk up to Chomrong, where we were to stay that night was basically a vertical path up a few hundred meters, this is me half way up.


The next day, again superb views, we walked deeper towards the mountains, the first signs of snow appeared on the ground and eventually it began to snow. At this point I was walking through bamboo forests which were amazing, the snow and bamboo mixed to great effect.
We crossed a few avalanches which were quite dangerous really, basically it was just a path through ice, and if you slipped or fell over that was basically it until you reached the freezing river at the bottom of the valley.


The snow increased in ferocity and forced us to stop at a place called Himalaya, the winds had picked up and we were just hoping that by tomorrow the snow would stop so we could continue.


Luckily once night had descended it stopped snowing and the most amazing display of stars came out to greet us. It was like a crack of a million pin picks, as the mountains silhouetted either side of the sky.

We got up early the next day, because we were about to travel through an area of high avalanche risk. You need to get through it before the sun appears over the mountains and starts to melt the snow (causing avalanche).


We trekked for hours and eventually got into the basin of the mountains, an area that is completely surrounded by mountains (Annapurna 1 being the 10th largest in the world at 8000m). At this point there was no vegetation, only snow and rocks, I saw one bird the whole time trekking in this area, and then I had no idea what it was doing there. We followed the track through the snow up to Base camp (4130m) at this point i was completely exhausted, due to high altitude and carrying my bag basically up for 5 hours. All I thought about between MBC at 3700 and ABC at 4130 was taking each step at a time, because the path of compressed snow was only about 1 foot wide, if you stray either side of it you fell into the snow up to your waist, and it was a struggle to get out. I thought of the ice cold beer waiting for me, and the fact that I was probably getting very sun burnt from the snow and sun.

But I'd made it, I collapsed into a heap and had a beer posthaste with this American guy who liked European beer, actually Boddingtons was his favorite and when I told him I was basically from where they made it, he thought I was amazing.

For the majority of this day I felt like I was drunk due to the altitude, but everyone did, so it was OK. The views were spectacular, basically you're in an amphitheater of mountains.

Unfortunately into the afternoon it began to snow heavily, and all you could see was white. Just pure white, everywhere, as much white as there is silence.


In the hostel you are greeted by garish posters of flowers and puppies playing with slogans such as: "Heart for the taste of art is a garden of flowers" and " be happy today and always remain so".

Everyone converges at night to the dinning area where there's usually a massive table, and you all eat together, the hostel owners usually put a kerosene heater under the table to heat everyone up, and another is hung from the ceiling for light. Nice but very dangerous.


This night at 4000m was difficult to sleep, I had to wear basically everything I had to keep warm, at the same time i had my very first experience ever of being allergic to the bed I was sleeping in, my nosed closed up instantly and my eyes started to sting. Not the best nights sleep I've ever had.


The next day I got a few photos of the sun coming over the mountains, but it began to snow shortly after that.

It was very difficult getting back down from the base camp, the new snow had covered up the path so we were basically making another one, here on each and every step you fell into the snow up to your waist, it was more like wading than walking.

It was hilarious when my guide with his little legs got stuck, made me laugh anyway,
After that the path became clearer, but very very slippy, I did allot of stood up feet sliding, generally ending up in me flying off head first into the snow, but it was great, we bum sled most of the way back down through the beautiful snowy mounds (looked allot like sand dunes but made of snow) the bamboo and icy mountain rivers.


We had to go quickly through the avalanche area due to the new snow hanging precariously on the mountains. We stopped off for the night, and I was awoken by a thunderclap, the rain had arrived. After getting up a thick fog descended onto the path, one where you could only see a meter around you. But rather than hiding the beautiful surroundings, the fog only proved to enhance the experience.

The bamboo and rhododendron trees silhouetting against the white magnificently, sometimes you only appreciate the closer things when you can't see into the distance. I'm sure there's a proverb in there.



The mist slowly enveloped and revealed the terraces and spurs of the hills, the heavy rain had really brought out all the colours of the valley, vibrant greens and browns. The few blossoms on the rhododendrons showed up like some Japanese paintings against the backdrop of the flowing valley.

The atmosphere walking down the path at this time was almost mailable, the fog, the rain and inspirational views.
Eventually it brightened up, we got to our next place of rest and I finally had a hot shower after a fair few days.


Going down is so much nicer than going up, you can really appreciate your surroundings.

 The last few days were largely uneventful, but still great to walk in. On my last night my guide sang the blues with a couple of girls, basically the girl asks the guy a question and the guy has to answer, either romantically or comically, but it went on for a few hours, occasionally everyone in the room would crack up laughing. The light from the candles and the clay stove (on which everyone food it cooked) lighting up everyones faces.


We finally walked out of the valley and caught a bus back to pokhara, it was full so we had to ride on the roof, which was an experience! I lay down which I was glad of later as I saw power cables flying about a foot over my head.


We got back to Pokhara and I, quite relieved, said bye to my guide.