Trekking the Annapurna Circuit
Trip Start
May 01, 2006
1
16
28
Trip End
Feb 08, 2007
Annapurnas, Nepal
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Pokhara is Nepal's second largest city next to Kathmandu. It is lovely, Luke had been here before, but I haven't. The bus ride here was interesting.. once again riding on the top of the bus! The journey took about five hours. We ended up staying in the guesthouse that Luke had stayed in before. Two hours after arriving, the dreaded happened! It rained! and it didn't stop. It was meant to be the end of monsoon!!!! We tried not to let this bother us too much, and so went on to plan our trek.
DAY 1
Weather: rain in the morning then fine! :)
Pokhara to Besishahar: 4 hrs bus ride
Besishahar to Ngadi: 5 hrs trek
Pretty ok day for the first day, we were tired, but the trek wasn't steep so it was fine. We got into an argument with some guy on the way who wanted a "donation" for some work he apparently did on a minor landslide that led to his guesthouse. We had already paid for our trekking fee which includes maintenance of the roads so no money for him! These guys will try anything to make a buck!
DAY 2
Weather: Fine with a few drizzles
Besishahar to Jagat: 10 hrs trek
Eek! Probably one of the hardest days for me. Had to spend most of it on my own too! Joe and Luke (both with packs on their backs too mind you) couldn't quite go at my pace (slower of course) and went ahead, only to end up waiting for me at the next village to make sure I was ok. There was a lot of up, infact, I'm sure we climbed up at least two mountains that day.
DAY 3
Weather: Quite a bit of rain
Jagat to Tal: 7 hrs trek
Elevation at Tal: 1600 m
This was the day we encountered the Maoists. At the end of Jagat village, a bunch of them placed themselves in a guesthouse on the path that led everyone on the trek out of the village. They asked for a donation of 100 rupees per day for everyday of the trek. For us, it would've been at least 1400 rupees which is about $26 AUD!!! Might not be alot to you guys, but we're on a tight budget and had a daily budget to stick to! Anyway, we ended up arguing for about an hour about why they thought they had the right to extort money from us, and ended up paying 500 rupees per head! We really didn't want to pay, but they did threaten to "attack" us if we were to pass without paying. Not sure if they would've, but still, not worth finding out.
The mountains in this area were still quite lush and tropical. It was warm during the days, but was starting to get quite cool at night, indicating that we were getting higher and higher everyday. There had been a massive landslide on the way to Tal, our next destination, and the main path had been closed off for the past month. Lucky for us, the path re-opened that day. Otherwise, we would have had a 4 hr detour. The path however, was a difficult climb; one foot wrong, and we could've easily fallen hundreds of feet! It was fun though!
DAY 4
Weather: Sunshine and clear!
Tal to Chame: 12 hrs trek
Elevation at Chame: 2670 m
We started our day getting our first peek at the peaks! Snow covered and beautiful!!! Hoorah! we had really thought the with the yucky weather, we might not see anything.
As you can imagine. This was a pretty tough day. We climbed over a thousand metres in one day, and at the end, I was feeling pretty ill and had to spend a few hours in bed after to recouperate. Even the "tough" boys felt this one! Most trekkers actually do this leg in two days, not quite sure what we were thinking. Still, if we hadn't, we wouldn't have met our new friends, Yuval and Adi from Israel.
Forgot to mention that a common sight also on the trek are the porters. These guys are incredible! Most of the paths in this area is not suitable for vehicles, and even some are difficult for mules, donkeys and horses, so these men, most of them no bigger than me, carry goods, chickens, building materials, food...etc etc on their backs (see photos) up and down these mountains for days. These goods can be really heavy! For example, we saw a bunch of porters carrying at least 5 big sheets of corrugated iron... apparently weighing at least 80kg!!! I was struggling with my one little backpack with water and a little food and swore not to utter a word on complain after seeing these guys. (Also becasue Luke was carrying my stuff too! heh heh)
DAY 5
Weather: fantastic
Chame to Pisang: 6 hrs trek
Much easier day considering the day we'd had before! The highlight here was that we met the Israeli couple, Adi and Yuval. We all hit it off and I couldn't be happier because finally, i didn't have to walk on my own anymore! Adi walks at my pace! Hoorah!
DAY 6 and 7
Weather: Beautiful and glorious
Pisang to Manang: 4 hrs trek
Elevation at Manang: 3540 m
Time to acclimatise! for those of you who don't know, altitude sickness can strike at altitudes above 3000 m, and if you don't acclimatise (get used to the heights slowly) you can get pretty sick and the only way then is down! Manang is a gorgeous village where pretty much all the trekkers stop to acclimatise and spend a couple of days before attempting the pass.
Luke and Joe decided to spend the next day on a trek to Ice Lake to acclimatise. Nuts! The elevation at Ice Lake is about 4600 m which means they climbed over a thousand metres in one day at high altitude! It took them about six and a half hours in total and came back exhausted. They felt a tinge of altitude sickness, but nothing serious. In fact, this climb of theirs really helped them when we tackled the pass.
Adi, Yuval and I, not feeling half as energetic (thank goodness), decided to climb a nearby mountain to acclimatise, which only took us a couple of hours. It was so lovely and the views were amazing. We had bought a couple of huge chocolate croissants and ate them by a lake. I think we only climbed up to about 4000 m but apprently that was sufficient.
DAY 8
Manang to Yak Kharka: 6 hrs trek
Not much to report here, just a whole lot of up and more up!
DAY 9
Yak Kharka to High Camp: A killer 7 hrs
Elevation at High Camp: ~4800 m
If it was any day that I thought my lungs and body were going to give up on me, it was this day! Everyone else made it up to High camp in a decent time, Luke would've too, but decided to endure each step with me. I seriously felt like I was a hundred years old! I could only take a maximum of five mini steps then had to rest for 5 mins! It went on like this for what seemed like hours! I had also been experiencing a few symptoms of altitude sickness! Slight headaches, breathless and a little insomnia but nothing serious enough to keep me from goin up! There was no way I was going to go back!
It was well worth it though, the views from High camp were amazing! And it was freezing! check out the photo of me in bed! I had my thermals, Tshirt and pants, fleece, and goretex jacket, beanie, my sub zero sleeping bag and a heat pack, and a blanket from the guesthouse!!! Actually, that was also the other hard thing, trying to maintain my temperature... eventhough it was cold, i was sweating from the walking, but as soon as i would stop walking, I would freeze!
DAY 10
High Camp to Mukinath via Thorong La Pass: 9 hrs trek
Elevation at Thorong La Pass (The highest we've ever been!!!): 5416 m
Elevation at Mukinath: 3800 m
The start of the day was tough... we had to climb up to the pass, and I knew from there, It would then be easy. It would be down!
Joe did the climb to the pass in 1 hour 20, Yuval and Adi in 2 hrs 20, and Luke and I in 3 hrs 20!!! You can imagine how estatic I was when we were finally at the top! We made it! Whoo hoo!!! I can say that to date so far, his has been the most difficult thing i've ever done! Luke seemed to find it so much easier than me though... hmm... I'll just put it down to our age difference! check out the panoramic shot Luke took when we got up there.
So after hanging around taking photos (well, Luke did, I sat on my bum and ate an energy bar), we started descending... and descend we did... we went down over 1600 m that day, which took us 4 days to climb! I loved going down!!! I was even at the lead of our group for a while!!! Whoo hoo! But the rest didn't quite enjoy going down half as much, most of them really feeling it in their knees. I didn't care, my lungs were now not threatening to fall out!
Mukinath was beautiful, and I really wish we had spent a couple of days there. It was predominantly Tibetan and it had so much character. It was also unfortunately, our last day of good weather. Apparently the groups that climbed the pass the day before and the day after us got clouds, so we were really lucky to see what we saw!
DAY 11
Mukinath to Marpha: 11 hr trek
Another really long day, hard too, we went through really strange terrain, the mountains were brown, there was hardly any growth, and lots of stones, sand and rocks. And it was incredibly dry and windy! Like a sandstorm in the desert. All we got to see that day was the ground. When we did look up, we just got hit with sand.
DAY 12
Marpha to Kalopani
After the sand storm, the rain started. so all we got to see was the ground again! Trying to avoiding puddles of mud... it was a dirty day!
DAY 13
Kalopani to Tatopani
And it didn't stop, rain rain rain! This is where we had all had enough. The weather didn't seem like it was going to let up, so we decided to cut our trek short and go to another village where we could catch a jeep, a bus and another bus back to pokhara in one day rather than endure another two days of looking at the ground.
Tatopani means "hot water" in Nepali and has these lovely hot springs. Adi and I were pretty tired, and stayed in the guesthouse while the boys had their baths in the hot spring. Apparently, it was pretty nice.
DAY 14
Tatopani to Beni and to Pokhara: 3 hrs trek, 1/2 hour in a jeep, and 6 hrs in buses
Of course it was still raining, so it was a good decision that we had made to cut the trek short. Grueling day though, jumping from one mode of transport to another.
We celebrated that night with a beautiful dinner at a steakhouse... amazing!
We spent the next few days in Pokhara relaxing, hired a boat on the lake which was nice. We've now been back in Kathmandu for the last two days... this blog is pretty much all we have been doing! So we fly out tomorrow on Birman Bangladesh Airlines.. really hope we make it to Burma! Our luggage too! So this is goodbye to Nepal. Finally. We are very ready. You won't be hearing from us for another month as internet not accesible from what we have heard??? We hope you are all well, til next time, Love from Wye and Luke
