You’ll Learn More Trekking than by Being in Kindergarten

11/21/09: Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

It’s only been two days since leaving the Annapurna region, and already the number one thought on my mind has turned to who won the Big Game. (For those of you living under a rock, the Big Game refers to when Ohio State thumps Michigan in American college football each year before Thanksgiving.) I suppose that means this is a good time to reflect on the days that were. Besides, all we have to show for our trek now are a couple thousand pictures, dirty pants and a 16-day beard. And you can hardly see the beard.

So what did we learn while trekking?

It’s not a walk in the park. Zhou and I are very lucky to have completed the circuit without any real injury. She got a pretty bad blister on one toe and I wound up with a sore wrist after a fall, but that’s about it. We covered so much tricky terrain and icy trails that it would have been incredibly easy to sprain an ankle or much worse.

Shortness isn’t a disadvantage. We measured once and Zhou takes about six steps for every five of mine. Over 140 miles, the extra steps would definitely add up, and based on how tired I was, Zhou would have been dead. But since even the flat parts of the trail are often quite rocky, I wasn’t able to put my height to good use by taking big steps. That’s the only reason why Zhou was faster than me at times.

I’ll eat anything when I’m hungry. The new food count didn’t increase by as much as it could have, but it seemed like every day I ate something I hadn’t had before the trek. It even got to the point where I was eating tomato slices whole and ordering the previously-dreaded curry over the previously-delicious fried rice. To top it all off, I learned that you don’t actually have to eat meat every day, let alone every meal. I smashed my “I’ll be a vegetarian for one day” record by going over eight days without swallowing any animals. Mom and Dad, I know I’ve changed, but I hope you still love me.

Smartwool is better than Thorlo. I put on my good Thorlo socks for one day of hiking and they smelled worse than Jerry’s car in the B.O. episode. But the two pairs of Smartwools were the gifts that kept on giving. It’s not often that one needs to wear the same socks for ten days in a row, but if you do, “don’t be a fool, get the ‘Wool.”

You can do anything if you set your mind to it. Except fly. Or grow to ten feet tall. Or outrun Usain Bolt. Actually there’s a lot of things you can’t do, and many things you shouldn’t try. I’m reminded of the famous Homer Simpson quote: “Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try.” But when it comes to trekking a popular circuit in Nepal, there will probably be days where you feel like you aren’t going to make it, but if you try hard enough and the weather conditions allow, you can do it. Zhou and I did.
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Picture of the Day: There’s nothing quite like sunset over a small river surrounding Chitwan National Park in Nepal.

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You’ve Finished! Now Get ON the Bus

11/18/09 – 11/19/09: Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

Day 15: Ghara to Ghorepani (4.75 hours)

Most mountains I can think of go uphill for a while and then head back down, meaning once you reach the top, it’s all downhill from there. Not this one. This one goes up to the top, then down, down, down, up! Rather than an anticlimactic descent, as soon as we thought we reached the bottom, we were forced to head back up another 2,000 meters. Today we climbed about 1,300 of those meters all before lunchtime. All I can say is that Zhou is one tough hiker. I bet you wish you could be more like her.

I told the chicken to go nuts for the picture

[Note: For those of you planning on doing the Annapurna Circuit anytime soon, we have one piece of advice. Skip the west side. Take the bus from Muktinath (after you complete the Pass) to Tatopani, then spend your time hiking the Sanctuary trek instead. Sure, you'll miss out on most of the downhill, but our hike between those cities was a windy, dusty, cold waste of three days. We spent nearly all of our time on the roads, and the few times we could have taken a trail instead, we didn't realize is until it was too late (this is one time that a guide would have been helpful). Now that we're back on the trails, everything seems so much nicer: the views, the hike, the weather, even the chickens that we pass.]

Day 16: Ghorepani to Nayapul (8 hours)

Welcome to the circus: today we found out how the other half hikes. There are many shorter treks that surround Ghorepani and the locally famous Poon Hill (from which there are great views of both the Annapurna and Dhaulgiri mountain ranges), so everyone and their overweight brother comes here to test their luck. This is a politically correct blog however, so I won’t list the types of people that we saw climbing today, but let’s just say I thought I was at a Marilyn Manson meets Carrot Top concert (and no, I don’t mean there was no one there). To the credit of these hikers, however, they were doing quite a climb. After a 45 minute ascent to Poon Hill for sunrise, it took Zhou and me a relentless 7 hours and 15 minutes to descend the 2,200 meters to the bus stop. At one point, I’d say we did 500 meters downhill while only covering 300 meters horizontally – it was that steep.

You’d think after finishing a 16 day trek covering almost 140 miles in just under 87 hours of trekking time, you’d be rewarded with a plush bus ride complete with delicious dinner on your way to the nearest city. You’d be wrong. Such a hike wouldn’t be complete without an extra three meter climb to the roof of a bus. Yes, we squeezed eight of us and our gear (including two kayaks and a chicken coop) onto the top of a bus for the two hour ride through the winding mountains to Pokhara.

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Picture of the Day: One of those faux inspirational posters? “Escape. Sometimes life is better on the inside.”

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When You’re Here, You’re Family

11/17/09: Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

Day 14: Kalopani to Ghara (8.25 hours)

There have been two times on this hike where I’ve felt like crying (but didn’t, obviously, because I’m too manly for that). One was minutes before we reached the Thorong La Pass – that was out of happiness that we were about to accomplish something that we’ll probably never come close to doing again in our lives. The other happened today while we were hiking in the pitch black Nepali night.

After not getting as far as we wanted yesterday, we decided to push ourselves today to make up for lost time. The problem with pushing ourselves though is that at some point hiking gets tiring. This occurred in the middle of our 500 meter climb to end the day, and it prompted Zhou to proclaim that we were staying at the next lodge we saw. Soon thereafter, off in the distance was the Santosh Top Hill Lodge, sitting invitingly on the edge of a cliff with gorgeous scenery all around. It was the place for us.

To spare you the boring details, after a horrible meal that was over one hour late and several creepy glares and awkward questions later (some about drugs), I decided that we could no longer stay there. I’m sure it would have been safe in our cramped, hard, dark little room, but something inside me said get out. So we paid for dinner and left.

This is where I should mention that by this point, it was 6:30pm and pitch black outside. Fortunately, while being questioned by the drug addict cousin of the Santosh owner, I had smartly discovered that the main town of Ghara was only 15 minutes away (we could even see the lights). With our trusty headlamps, the walk would be no problem.

20 minutes later, not only were we not there, but all the town lights had disappeared and we were tripping over jagged rocks in our path. At one point, a flashlight was turned on in the distance, and a voice behind it shouted at us, “where are you going?!” It was only then that we figured out Ghara was the opposite direction of where we were heading.

Another 20 minutes passed, and there was still no sign of a city. If I were by myself or with some large person taking care of me (think John Coffey in the Green Mile), it is here that I might have been in tears. By this point my mind had already raced through every possible scenario of what would happen to us, including:

• Walking through to sunrise only to find out we stumbled into a military zone in the middle of nowhere.
• Sleeping on the hillside and getting eaten by vicious snow leopards.
• Getting attacked by man-eating spiders kind of like the ones we saw in Tal last week.
• Falling off the cliff (then being eaten by spiders and/or snow leopards).

Not one scenario ended in a happily ever after. Oh, how I should never doubt Nepal. Just as I was finished profusely apologizing to Zhou for the tenth time for making the mistake of leaving the dodgy lodgy (a rhyme our new-found British friends might appreciate), we came upon a sign… Ghara! A headlamp flashed in our direction, and the young man it belonged to walked us to his guest house. He said there was a room available, and we waited outside as he and his family prepared it.

Five minutes later, we were welcomed in. At this point it was clear that this was not the type of lodge we were used to staying at. This family had prepared one of their own rooms for us, so obviously it was going to be expensive.

“How much for tonight?”

“Oh, no charge.”

We had shown up in the dark, clearly willing to pay whatever needed to be paid for a place to sleep. We had no leverage – we couldn’t see if there were any other lodges nearby and we needed to stay somewhere. Yet this family of seven had prepared one of their own rooms for us and didn’t want any money. To top it all off, the father repeatedly made sure we had our own sleeping bags before sheepishly asking if he could use his own blanket to keep him warm.

There was a fire burning in the next room, and we were invited to join the family while they talked and ate. We accepted, and then found out that another American couple (yes, you read that right – there are more Americans out here!) was being treated the same way. They had shown up as night was falling, and the family had offered them one of their own rooms to stay for the night. They had ordered Dal Bhat off the restaurant menu, and when we met them they were being offered more of it than they could possibly eat.

The four of us from thousands of miles away for one night felt like we were at home. We ordered some popcorn, then the nine of us in the room at the time shared it while doing our best FDR – chatting by the fire. We didn’t fully understand each other, but it didn’t matter. At one point, two of the kids brought out their homework assignments for Zhou and me to look at. One was learning English prepositions while the other was working on trigonometry. Yes, high in the mountains of Nepal, they teach trigonometry at school to those who wish to learn it (it is an optional class). 99% of the population might never even travel as far as Kathmandu in their lifetime – they’ll most likely become farmers or yak drivers or restaurant chefs in the town they grew up in – yet they have the opportunity to learn trigonometry. It boggles my mind.

Anyway, eventually it was well past our bedtime so we said goodnight. A rock-hard mattress with bugs crawling around it never felt so comfortable.

Cooking popcorn the old-fashioned way

Laxmi, Ram and I at breakfast the next morning

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Picture of the Day: My softer, gentler side took this picture.

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Jomsom Shmomsom

11/15/09 – 11/16/09: Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

Day 12: Muktinath to Marpha (6.25 hours)

Our first day on the west side of the circuit – is it too late to go back to the east? So far 90% of our hike has been on these things called roads. You may have heard of then – jeeps and buses and motorcycles drive on them to get from place to place. It’s a bit disheartening to trek for hours, only to get passed by buses whose drivers constantly honk their customized horns set to the tune of a bad commercial jingle.

On top of that, it’s windier here than in a class 5 hurricane. Like something out of the movie Twister, I’d swear I saw a cow fly by Zhou’s head when she was clinging to a tree to keep from falling over. As a sick joke to trekkers who just crossed the Pass, the wind is always in our faces, while at the backs of those trekkers doing the easy Jomsom route (as elitist Zhou likes to call them, “trekkers-lite”).

The good news? There are signs here that tell you how far to the next city. I guess we’ll take what we can get.

Day 13: Marpha to Kalopani (5.25 hours)

If you’re ever in Marpha, Nepal, please spend a night at Hotel Chez Nisa, a hole-in-the-wall lodge in the middle of the city. It’s old, the ceilings are low, the toilet is about a mile from the three rooms and the walls are paper thin, but we loved it. Why?

• Right before they served us our dinner, a guy put a bucket of burning coals under our table to keep our legs warm.
• After Zhou had poured most of her bowl of curry on her rice, the same guy came out and refilled her bowl with the leftovers from the cooking.
• The lady who runs the place offered us warm blankets for the night without me having to ask.
• When she saw us heading outside to brush our teeth, she ran from the kitchen and turned on the outdoor lights for us and then poured us a bucket of hot water so we could wash our faces.
• At breakfast she saw Zhou’s hiking stick (the six-foot tall behemoth that I had found for her a week ago) and rather than laugh at it like most of the other locals, she decided the stick was too big for Zhou and replaced it with two appropriately sized hiking sticks that they usually sell to trekkers.

On top of all that, the food was delicious, the portions were huge and the price was unbeatable. Our bill for dinner (two entrees and a shared plate of French fries), the room (three beds and a table) and breakfast (two bowls of porridge and a Tibetan bread) came out to just 715 rupees total, or just less than $10, easily the best price of the trek thus far.

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Picture of the Day: This would never fly in the United States, but the symbol with the four dots has been widely-used in Indian culture for thousands of years (but not just for soybean oil).

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Moral Dilemma

11/14/09: Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

Here are the facts:

1. We met a guy last night – let’s call him Sam because that’s what I keep calling him in my head even though that’s not his name. Sam is trekking the circuit on his own.
2. It is highly discouraged that you trek the circuit on your own.
3. Sam asked us if we would do the Pass with him, since the single he met and trekked with for the first week left him the day before.
4. We said yes. We agreed to eat breakfast at 5am then leave.
5. We finished our breakfast, and still no sign of Sam. As we were putting on our packs to leave at 5:15 (and after leaving him a note on his hotel bill), he walked through the door. His alarm didn’t work.
6. There was another group going to eat breakfast at 6am, but all others in the hotel had already left.
7. Given the dark, the ice and the potential for snow, it is dangerous to trek the Pass on your own.

Without reading on any further, would you wait for him?

Now that you have made your own opinion, you can judge us based on what we did. (Isn’t it fun to judge people?) Sam’s breakfast arrived promptly and he began eating, only it appeared he was in no particular hurry. He said he felt bad for making us wait for him though. After eating, he went back to his room and began packing his things. At this point Zhou and I discussed what to do. I am the mean one, and I said we should just go. We hardly even know the guy and since he made the decision to do the trek by himself, he should be able to handle it. Zhou said ok, but only if I went to his room and told him we were leaving. I did just that, telling him we were going to get a head start since we were a bit slow up the hills. At 5:45 we left.

Sam caught up with us after 45 minutes or so, about the time where it started snowing very hard. We hiked together for a while, but it was clear that he had drained his energy trying to catch us. Rather than slow down and keep together as a group, we kept our pace as we liked it, and he slowly trailed off. We didn’t see him again until our 2pm lunch on the other side of the mountain.

I’m not sure if there is a trekker’s code, but if there is I’m sure we broke it. On the other hand, there turned out to be quite a few people behind us, and we saw that as we pulled away from Sam. If he really needed, he could trek with any of those people.

Still, I’m not sure we did the right thing… Are we bad people?
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Picture of the Day: I like looking at and taking pictures of myself, especially with my 12 day old facial hair growth. Can you see it yet?

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