Glorious! I really love long distance trekking. To explain actually how much I love it would probably scare you, I want to do a lot more of this, and will. I'll leave it at that.
We hiked for about 180 miles, from about 2000ft in elevation to over 17,000ft on the Throung La pass. It was spectacular, words are difficult to chose, but the everything was amazing. I'll post some of Matt and Tim's finer shots as soon as possible. What takes most folks a minimum of 16 days, and sometimes up to 21, we did in 14. Gained one day going over the pass, our most difficult day by far.
On pass day, we started from the high mountain village of Ledar at 4200 meters/ 13,780 feet. Woke up at 4am and was on the trail by 4:30am, it was awesome, frigidly cold, snot in the nose was solid ice. But the stars, incredible, just sooo clear, there seemed to be a million. You could see the bright stripe down the middle of the sky, the milky way, with vivid colors through it. It was way better than any planetarium, so cool. Slowly the sky lit up from the east as we made our way up to Thorung Phedi, the highest real village, and our much needed breakfast stop. We were hiking entirely on snow at this point, and it was still frigid. I was wearing my thickest smartwool socks, fleece pants, trekking pants over the fleece. Thermal top, fleece pullover, and shell jacket, fleece gloves, my yak wool hat, and trusty headlamp leading the way through the dark. Once we hit Phedi (14,685ft), we dove into a bowl of hot porridge, toast, and tea. Tasted sooo good! After warming up there for half an hour, we headed up the steepest section of the pass. The trail switched back constantly going straight up through the snow and rock. After a few more breaks, endless switchbacks, false summits, and slippery icy trail, we eventually made it to the top of the pass at 17,870ft around 10 or 11am. The way down the pass, which we thought would be a nice break, turned out to be even harder than the way up! The trail was solid ice in some sections, very steep, and veeery long. Matt and Tim, warm climate Australians, had a hell of a time. I'm used to walking on snow and ice from working at a ski resort in high school, winter backpacking, and just playing in the snow as a kid. I was so glad for that experience. Tim and Matt fell numerous times, luckly not hurting themselves very badly, just sore butts and wrists. I fell once, but into powder on the side, I arrested another fall by grabbing my hiking stick, and snapping in half in the process... Some Israeli guys that were going down the pass at the same time were sliding down a few sections on their butts, Matt and Tim followed suit. My trekking pants have the same coefficient of friction as sandpaper, so no sliding for me. A Mexican guy tried the same maneuver down a REALLY steep section and totally lost it, going so fast, couldn't stop at all, scraping at the snow literally for dear life. He hit a well placed pile of powder which slowed him down enough to eventually stop, but it must have scared the crap out of him. And was absolutely hilarious to watch, he was fine. We eventually got down, exhausted, in the town of Muktinath for a massive feed. Ok, onto the long winded summary... enjoy, then get back to work.
Trip summary: 11/1/2005 (day 1)
We left Kathmandu around 7am for a long bus ride to Dumre, where we caught another ride to the start of the trek in Besi Sahar. In Dumre we hopped in the back of pickup truck/jeep to Besi, on the way we were stopped constantly by singing children celebrating another Festival. Nepal has more festivals than Baltimore has crime, it's a fun country, people will sing and dance at the drop of a hat. But all the kids, surprise surprise, we're asking for money at every stop, so it took us a while to actually get to Besi, but not bad at all.
Warning: disgusting (yet funny) section ahead --> I was still suffering from a little thing the medical world likes to call "Bacterial Diarrhea", or as we like to call "the pumpkin soup." One unfortunate side effect of Bacterial Diarrhea, besides the brown water tap that is your bum, is "sulfuric burps." Pretty much farting via your mouth. I had this wicked bad. So on this jeep ride, while trying to keep myself from crapping my pants, I'm also burping hot garbage tasting nastiness. Matt and Tim found this especailly hilarious, as they had also had the bacterial diarrhea, but not the burps/farts via mouth. They had taken Cipro the night before and were pretty much all better by this time. I however had just gotten it that morning, and had yet to take any medicine. So whatever, I could deal with it and had a delicious lunch of plain rice and Sprite.
(disgusting section mostly over, children may continue to read)We walked through Besi on a road towards the start of the trail. On the way there was a bus in the middle of the road, completely packed, but people (as they all do in Nepal) were climbing onto the roof for a ride. So for 20 ruppies each the three of us climbed up and got to skip another boring hour of walking down a dirt road. Riding on the top of buses, which may sound dangerous, is a fact of life in Nepal, we were up there with about 30 others bouncing down the path. Just watch out for low powerlines and tree branches, then you'll be A-OK. On top of the bus were 3 American girls starting the circuit trek too :), I talked to them for a while, while Matt and Tim were behind us, cracking up waiting for another one of my farts via mouth (some friends...) Luckily I kept the hot garbage stench inside, although my breath couldn't have smelled remotely good. Really cool girls, and we saw them a bunch on the trail until we eventually went a day ahead over the pass.
It was sooo good to be back on the trail. With just my pack on my back, cool-clean air, roaring river next to us, and a beautiful sunset on the snow capped peaks in front of us... so nice. We walked into the dark until eventually getting to the little village named Nadi Bazar, on the banks of the Marsyangdi river. I took the one dose of magic powder (Azithromithin, an antibiotic) that I had with me (THANKS JEN! (Tobin's soon to be wife)), and by the next morning I was feeling way better, and soon the pumpkin soup was gone, and I was back to 100%.
Good thing too, because we had some serious elevation to gain and not much time to waste. The next few days we gained and gained altitude going from lush tropical forests to arid high mountains and eventually to a winter wonderland. It's like walking from hot summer to icy winter in 4 days, pretty wild. Each day is an entirely different environment and you can literally see the changes ahead of you as the forest thins out into increasing rugged terrain. I recommend this trek to everyone, it's sweet.
We met the friendly Maoist rebals in the village of Jagat on our second night. They wanted us to pay 100 rs for each day we'd be in 'their' territory. We listened to the dudes speal about how Communism could fix all of Nepals problems (yeah, that'll work..) and how they were against "American Imperialism," I said G'day mate, and kept generally quiet, pretending to be Australian as usual. So we straight faced lied to this guy and told him we were only going as far as Jomosom (10 days) and then flying out. So we only had to pay 1000rs each. Not too bad, but running the risk of meeting them AFTER Jomosom, and having some explaining to do... (which we did).
On the trail we met up with a really cool couple, Joost and Ashley, a Dutch guy and American girl who live in Holland. Just on a long 3 month holiday, doing the same trek. They taught us how to play dutch Uno, which is full contact, and tons of fun. A great way to chill out over dinner after a long days walk. We stayed in the same lodges for a few nights, and had a great time. We also met some other great folks, Brian and Barbara (Irish, traveling for 2.5 years), Justin and Lisa, and the 3 American girls from before.
Our first real goal was to get to the town of Manang, high in mountains and a good size. It even boasts a movie theater and fresh bakeries! Everyone stays in Manang for 2 days to Acclimatize, and we did too. Had a fun time, really enjoying the bakery, fresh apple pie, cinnamon rolls, apple strudles, mmmmm. Watched the movie "Ray" and hiked up to an awesome glacier lake with spectacular views of the valley and mountains. We were in snow by now, and it was pretty chilly at night, but sunny and nice during the days. Also got to see some locals slaughtering a yak, which was gursome, yet interesting...
You've already read about going over the pass, so I won't repeat... After Manang we head up and over on that one huge day. Once over we stayed in Muktinath, at the "Bob Marely Hotel." The proprieter was a transvestite/shim/shemale/boygirl/ladyman, whatever you'd like to call it. I'd like the record to show that Matt and Tim picked this hotel, as I was keen to stay down the street. But, as accepting of everyone's preferences as we are, we didn't let the man-lady detract us from the very nice and comfortable Bob Marely hotel. As it turns out, we should have, the place had crapass food, slooooooow service (means it takes an hour or more), and cold showers. So, in the future we will avoid hotels run by shim's.
Onto Jomosom, and out of the snow, following down the Kali Ghandaki river valley, things warmed up as we went down and got better and better. We stayed a great place in Jomosom, with super food and friendly service (no lady-boys either). Wanting to push the envelope of hiking distances, we made it all the way to Ghasa the next day, which was hella far. We all had sore feet and a blister or two, but nothing a little duct tape couldn't fix. We saw an amazing road building project on the side of the river we were following. A hundred or so men working with only hand tools to chip away rock on the side of a mountain, not a machine in sight. Amazing people here. We hiked in the middle of the river as it was just a trickle, the river bed was super wide in parts and very windy, but a really cool landscape. It'd be rad to see it full and pumping during the monsoon season, probably half a mile across in parts. We hiked through the "steepest valley in the world" between the 8000+ meter (26,000+ ft) peaks of Annapurna and Dhawalagiri. Awesome.
The next day we made it to Tatopani (Nepali for 'hotwater') known for its river side hot springs... :) That day we also met three cool guys, Dave, Nic, and Tony (NZ, US, UK) on the trail. We all rocked down to the hot springs, cracked some cold beers and let our sore sore sore legs get some relief. It was awesome, the hot springs were just next to the river and like giant jacuzzi's. Lots of trekkers were in there, all enjoying. We are young and dumb and decided to jump into the glacial fed river beside the springs for a bit of a contrast. And contrast it was, FREEZING! but still tons of fun, once you jumped back into the hot springs.
So, as were basting in the springs thinking things just couldn't get better, our mate Charlie, from the Everest base camp trek walks up. We all yell at him and have a big reunion. Charile's the 40 something brit who's been traveling for 8.5 years on his earnings as a geologist for the big oil companies. We played some games of 500 with him, just like old times, it was great fun. Had a massive feed that night, and were feeling quite relieved. The next day we had a huge uphill push to Ghorepani and to Poon Hill, a high hill with great views of the Annapurna range. We met the Maoist rebals again, and got off with paying just 400 rs more b/c I was upstairs at the time and they thought just Matt and Tim had payed 3000rs (1500 each), they didn't notice that our reciept said 3 persons on it. Silly communists!
The last day was painful, we decended 1000's of feet down, i'm not kidding, more than 4000 stone stairs on the trail. Our knees were dying, but we made it just fine. After a truly scary taxi ride, (no brakes at all, just down shifting) we got back to Pokhara. Pokhara is the second largest city in Nepal and is on the banks of Phewa lake and surrounded by lush mountains. It's also listed in one of my guide books as "one of the top 10 hangouts in the world." It's like a little travellers heaven. We, I, absoultely love it. We're staying in the nice 'Hotel Nirvana,' apptly named. Tomorrow, let's see here, what's on the agenda? Oh, 10am Paragliding flight off a nearby mountain top! Super stoked, have wanted to go for a while now, since Doug and I saw one go off of the top of a mountain while skiing out in Jackson Hole. The day after, the 18th, Matt and I leave for a 3 day rafting trip down the wild Kali Ghandiki river, should be the grand finale to a fantastic time in Nepal! Yesterday we took out some kayaks on the lake an had a nice paddle, Matt had a bit of trouble, spinning the whole time, but took it really well, didn't get frustrated at all...
We fly out to Delhi, India on the 23rd. I bought a new camera today, so you'll be happy to see more pics on here soon! Hated spending the money on it, but I couldn't be without a camera any longer. I really wanted to take some photos while soaring through the air with hawks as we paraglide tomorrow morning... wooo! we're going with these guys:
http://www.nepal-paragliding.com check it.
Anyone want to quit their job and join up?
