Kathmandu and the Annapurna Circuit

Now having been in Nepal for almost a month, it’s hard to sum it up in single entry. Blame on three weeks trekking without internet access. Sorry no photos. I’m on another slow connection.

Arrival in Kathmandu

Upon exit from the airport, a fierce pack of taxi drivers descended on us, offering us rides and hotel rooms with an intensity we‘d never seen in S. America. I eventually settled on one of the more demure guys, who, rather than trying to hard sell us, simply asked me what we were planning on doing in his country.

However, as we walked away from the terminal, another taxi driver called out to us, “He not real taxi driver! Bad man!” Vaguely disturbing. But we stuck with him, and, thankfully, he delivered us safely to Mitu, the wife of Asheesh, our Nepali friend we met last fall at Todd and Jacquie’s wedding.

Asheesh, Mitu, and their 1-year old daughter live in Patan, a city just outside Kathmandu. They made us feel extremely welcome, particularly since Asheesh had just gotten home after 6 months in the US. Thanks, guys! You’re welcome anytime you find yourself in El Cerrito, one of America’s great tourist destinations. We have a Macaroni Grill, you know.

Kathmandu Impressions

I now appreciate what people mean when they say, “Total sensory overload.” I’d always chalked that phrase up to hyperbole, but seriously, the city blew my mind. Bikes, smoke belching motorcycles, minibuses, pedestrians, and cars clog the streets. People whose ethnicities span the spectrum from East Asian to South Asian, wear everything from colorful saris to Linkin Park t-shirts. Vendors squeeze into every conceivable corner and alleyway. Ancient brick buildings slowly crumble on themselves, people chop up entire sides of buffalo on the street (blood running into the gutter), beggars slouch on temple steps, dumplings steam pours out of a streetcart, Nepali music blares from every stall, trekkers paw through one knock off North Face jacket after another, bolts of fabric drape from windows above, the guttural hawking and spitting, the smell of roasting peas and curry. We’d dive into alleyways choked with people, then stumble onto a quiet courtyard smelling of incense and pigeons. A yellow haze hangs over the city, blocking the views of the mountains beyond.

Just walking through town felt like an extreme sport. I wanted to stop and stare at everything, but couldn’t for fear of being hit by motorbikes, who push their way through the crowds while blaring their horns.

The place feels really really old, and really really alive. There’s no need for a museum, when history is part of the everyday. In the middle of Patan, people queue up at fresh water springs with tin carafes, just as they have for hundreds of years. Minutes away from the best hospital in the country (where Mitu works) families have never seen a doctor in their lives, treating illnesses with folk remedies. Asheesh showed us through a busy temple, ruled by rats, then brought us to another with throngs of people worshipping in a dozen different ways (paint, smoke, sacrifice, music, money, fire, food, paper, etc.) to a dozen different gods. Just across from the second temple, we stopped by a family friend’s tiny three-room flat in an ancient building. Here, Asheesh dropped off an MP3 player as a gift from the States.

To be honest, all this was unsustainable. The noise, crowds, pollution, and intense foreignness of it all wore us out only after four days, and Jen and I had to escape for the countryside and trekking.

The Annapurna Circuit

Three weeks trekking may sound intense, but the circuit around the Annapurna range is lined with villages and guest houses. It’s less like camping, more of a walk from town to town. You could do the whole thing without a sleeping bag. I’d been expecting to stay in dark bedbug-ridden holes, and was pleasantly surprised to find clean, comfortable mattresses and sunny rooms.

While many trekkers do the circuit with a porter and/or guide, carrying only a daypack, we opted to do the heavy lifting ourselves. We’d been hardened by weeks of trekking in South America, after all, and, frankly, the thought of spending that much time alone with a guide was daunting and potentially oppressive. We’d had our fair share of mediocre guides and couldn’t imagine hanging out with them 24-7 for 3 weeks.

I don’t think we ever regretted this decision, but we definitely suffered more than other trekkers, who moved much more quickly with their light packs. My big toes, about 2 weeks into the trek, were strained, getting increasingly sore every day. Crossing the Thorong Pass at 5400 meters was the hardest thing Jen has ever done. She could barely catch her breath at that altitude and had to hand over some of her weight to me (more on that later). Still, it feels satisfying to have made our own decisions and carried our own weight.

The Standard Discussion on Food

Nepal is not known for its cuisine. The country lives on dal (a thin lentil soup) and baht (steamed white rice). And while many guest houses on the Annapurna Circuit offer noodles, fried rice, and some bastardized forms of Italian and Mexican food, you’re usually pushing your luck if you go beyond the standard dal baht set, which also includes a vegetable curry of some kind. Besides, dal baht is nutritious, easy to cook, and the kitchen is making it for themselves anyway, thereby saving fuel. And it’s all you can eat. The cook would come out, even after we were only half finished, and spoon huge heapings of rice, curry, and lentils onto our plates.

So for the first week we dutifully ate dal baht twice a day. At first, I was game, hungry after hours of walking. But after only a couple of days, I ate with little pleasure, only to refuel. To be fair, the dal baht set did change slightly from guesthouse to guesthouse. Yellow or brown dal; occasionally a papadam; sometimes potato curry, sometimes vegetable curry; hey look, a little pickle on the side! Our morning oatmeal offered blessed relief. We varied our choice of tea in a desperate attempt for diversity.

When we finally met and started hanging out with other trekkers, we were amazed to see them order off the other, more exotic sections of the menu. Enchiladas, macaroni, tomato soup! It’s amazing the things you can do with ketchup! One place (Bob Marley Guest House in Muktinath, one of the more remote spots on the circuit) actually served pesto gnocchi (possibly made with parsley). We quickly fell off the dal baht wagon, cutting back to once a day. This was a good move, or I would have lost even more weight on the trip.

Kumar, one of the guides we met, gushed passionately about a “very good dal baht” in Khathmandu. I thought, “Sure, buddy. I’ve had dal baht every day for the last two weeks and not once have I thought, ‘This is dramatically different than the stuff I had yesterday.’ You expect me to believe there’s some super special dal baht in Kathmandu that will blow my mind?”

Then one day we had lunch at a guesthouse with a noticeably tastier dal baht set. The pickle was more vibrant, the dal more rich, and the curry currier. So that’s what this stuff is supposed to taste like! Kumar later explained that he considers that the best dal baht on the circuit. It’s like I’d been eating Spaghettio’s my whole life, and never tasted fresh pasta. I resolved to track down Kumar’s mythical dal baht.

The Scenery

The Annapurna Circuit is the most popular trek in Nepal, partly because of the diverse scenery which changes as the trail ascends to the Thorong Pass at the northern end of the circuit, then descends once more into more populated areas.

I’d break it down this way:

The first third of the circuit is unimpressive, hot, and littered with donkey shit and candy bar wrappers. The hills are scarred by deforestation and the villages are uninteresting and crummy. Garbage fires burn constantly.

The second third of the circuit blew me away. Snow capped peaks, clear skies, crazy blizzards, empty deserts, prayer flags fluttering over remote monasteries. Twice we walked on fresh snow, with blue skies and towering mountains in every direction. The Himalayas make Argentina’s Fitzroy look quaint. These days made the trek worthwhile for me.

The last third is more mellow, but certainly beautiful in a subtle way. Quiet rice terraces, blooming rhododendron forests, colorful rocks along the riverbeds, ancient well-preserved villages. A nice way to round out the trek.

The Annapurna region is not a wild place. At the top of the Thorong Pass, for example, the most inaccessible point on the trail, people sell tea out of a stone hut during peak trekking season. But the human element, the culture which shifts with the scenery, also adds to the trek’s appeal. I’ve heard, for example, that this area has become more like Tibet than Tibet, ever since the Han Chinese have driven hordes of Tibetans across the border.

Thorong Pass

The Thorong Pass represents the high point, literally, of the circuit, at over 5400 meters. At that altitude, acute mountain sickness (AMS) becomes a serious threat. Trekkers must creep up to the pass slowly, taking rest days at slightly lower elevations. As you ascend, your breath becomes shorter and sleep becomes more difficult. Moving at anything beyond a snail’s pace immediately causes your heart to start racing and your breath to become panicky. Other trekkers we met suffered vertigo, headaches, and nausea. Some had to turn around and walk all the way back past the crappy first third of the circuit. For days before the Thorong Pass, trekkers obsess over it, considering AMS, acclimatization strategies, the weather, clothing, estimated time to get up and down, departure hour.

So it was a huge relief when Jen and I finally set off at 5AM in below freezing temps, ascending the pass to the light of our headlamps. This was magical. Stars overhead, a handful of blinking flashlights on the trail below, no sound but my steady breathing and the slow crunching of my boots. I’d just finished The Snow Leopard, a great book about the Himalayas and Buddhism, and appreciated how the altitude forced me to slow down, calm my breath, and think only about the next step. A funny Zen gift.

As dawn broke, the mountains emerged around us. Other trekkers appeared, smiles on their red faces. We climbed slowly but steadily to the pass across a gray lunar landscape.

Towards the summit, though, the sun, which had failed to break through all morning, disappeared behind a dark cloud. The wind picked up, snow started to fall in steady wet flakes, and the temperature dropped. The snow obscured the path, forcing us to move hesitantly, and I could barely make out the trail markers, ghostly poles every 200 meters. By then, after almost five hours of sustained climbing, Jen was spent, stopping to catch her breath every four steps. Dressed lightly for the climb and waiting for Jen to catch up, I began to feel the panicky edge of hypothermia. Finding our way up the pass would be, at best, a struggle under these conditions. A Swedish-Scottish couple in front of us appeared equally tired, the guy constantly stopping to sit in the snow. Images of getting lost in the storm began creeping into my head.

Thankfully, at that point, a guided trekking group who had been trailing us all morning appeared, and I told Jen, “We need to keep up with these guys!” She transferred a bunch of gear into my pack, and with a lightened load managed to hang with the group. I scrambled after them. Twenty minutes later we reached the summit and people began high-fiving all around. Jen’s huge smile and hug showed her relief.

While the group celebrated, I ducked into the tea hut, a tiny stone building, closed for the season, to put on more clothes and cram in some biscuits. I knew we weren’t out of the woods yet, with a five hour descent still facing us and the storm showing no sign of letting up. Pitch black inside, I stumbled, and looked up to see a haggard bearded face with intense blue eyes staring back at me. The guy, a little dazed, explained in thick Russian accent that he had come up the pass from the other side and would wait out the storm before descending. I looked doubtfully over his ratty backpack, which I had tripped over, and hoped he was prepared to spend a cold cold night. It would be well below freezing even in the hut.

One of the trekking group stumbled inside, struggling to put on his rain gear. Early hypothermia had set in, and he fumbled with his shoe laces and grew combative as his guide tried to assist. “Bloody boots,” he kept saying over and over again. “Well they’re just going to have to wait!”

Things had clearly gotten a little out of hand. It was still dumping. We had to get off this mountain.

The descent went on forever. We slid down icy trails, peered through the mist for trail markers, and traversed steep snow fields, stopping only to eat biscuits and chocolate. Roberto, another trekker we’d met the day before, eventually caught up to us. He’d started late and got a little lost on the pass, suffering some hallucinations in the snow. Fortunately, he’d managed to follow our footsteps down the mountain. When the three of us stopped at a tea hut at the base of the pass to suck down a thermos of hot lemon, we were all soaked, cold, and exhausted.

Finally, ten hours after we started that morning, we walked into the Bob Marley Guesthouse to a hot shower, tomato soup, warm chapattis, and a wood burning stove. The rest of the trekkers had arrived hours ago, and confessed to being seriously worried about us, as we were the last ones over the pass that day (with the exception of one other couple who moved even more slowly than we did).

The snow continued through the next day, shutting down the pass. Everyone spent the next day in the guesthouse, playing cards and drinking tea. (Jen and I found the one poker player in the group. We taught the game to a guide and two other trekkers and proceeded to play seven straight no limit Hold ‘Em tournaments that afternoon. Jen one won, I won two. We would play many more games over the next few days. Poker + Mountains + Thermos of Hot Tea = Heaven.)

The next morning we woke early, looked out of frosted windows to find blue skies, an amphitheater of enormous peaks, and fields of pristine snow everywhere.

The Strike

I won’t bore you with the details of Nepal’s political situation, but Maoist insurgents are currently engaged in an ongoing conflict with the royal government. Every so often, they call a “strike,” preventing all vehicles from traveling on intercity roads. The country grinds to a halt during these strikes.

Sadly, the Maoists announced a strike while we were on the trek, muddying our transport situation from the trailhead back to Pokhara.

Over the last few days of the circuit, we’d heard varying accounts of the situation, but all we could do was walk out to the trailhead and hope for the best. I steadfastly refused to walk another two days on a road into town.

So yesterday morning, we plopped our backpacks down on the road, prepared to wait. Locals came by, trying to convince us that walking two days to Pokhara was our only option. But we knew several other trekkers had managed to scam rides. A burnt frame of a government bus, set aflame by Maoists just three days before, sat by the side of the road, an ominous sign. (We were reassured that the Maoists had let everyone get off the bus before torching it.) A soldier said we’d just missed our chance to hop on an ambulance fifteen minutes ago. One guy offered to bring us on the back of his motorcycle in two trips. Two and a half hours crawled by. We had a cup of milk tea, read our books, and watched the steady parade of walkers to Pokhara.

Suddenly, without warning, a local bus roared around the corner, the conductor yelling at us to hurry and grabbing our bags. Seeing as how this was the only viable transport we’d seen all morning, we shrugged and hopped on. The guy was clearly taking a chance that he wouldn’t run into any Maoists, since the army had appeared in force after the bus torching incident. Everyone aboard, all locals, seemed a little edgy but were glad to pay a premium for the ride to town. Every time the bus would slow to pick up passengers, people would crane their necks to see what was happening. Folks by the side of the road would look up and point at us, apparently surprised to see a bus coming by.

We finally arrived two hours later in Pokhara, and promptly checked into a lux hotel with cable TV, a private bath, and a great view of the lake. Nepal’s political situation has killed tourism, so we were able to negotiate a great $25/night rate in what would normally be a $45 room. Consider that we’d been living on $10/day for the past three weeks, and never paid more that $2 for a room. Hot showers on the circuit were few and far between, electricity spotty at best. So this was a big deal.

Today, all we’ve done is have a big breakfast, laze around, and watch TV. Jen is looking into a yoga retreat, I may go rafting. Life is good.