A Small Tale of the Annapurna Circuit — II

When we reached the town of Manang, we rested a day, as was suggested to avoid altitude sickness. At 3,540 meters Manang was about where the effects of higher altitude could start to be felt. From here on out it was short days with moderate elevation gain, post arrival acclimatization hikes, and paranoia about possible sickness rumbling gently through the trekker community like the thunder of a far-off storm. Without much understanding of what provokes altitude sickness in some people and not others, each of us was poised for a bad roll of the dice and we tracked fleeting symptoms like a club of hypochondriacs.

Manang sat in a broad river valley and stretched lazily over the neighboring hill. The main drag was a wide dusty strip bordered by dingy trekkers shops. Rugged faced shop keepers would appear to sell Snickers and sunglasses, taking a break from card games played on stoops across the street. Hotels like Yak, Himalaya View and Tilicho Lake competed for business with gas vs. solar heated showers, and Western vs. Asian toilets. No one had wifi because the electricity was out. Crowds of goats trotted through town, spreading in all directions like hyperactive school children. Lines of shaggy horses dutifully plodded one way down the street in the morning, and back the other in the evening, exchanging the odd niblet of brittle grass for the mucky stable. A little boy rode up and down the strip on a plastic tricycle, cheeks the color of cranberries, puffing out like balloons. His clothing was layered so many times that his arms could barely bend under the bulk; a mini Michelin Man parading through the set of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. North of the main strip, stone houses clambered up the hillside, narrow and muddy streets winding through a cluttered arrangement of houses and stables and prayer wheels.

Goats in Manang

We stayed in the Himalaya Singha, a big south facing hotel with a broad dining area centered around a cast iron stove, which was lit at dusk with wood and yak dung. Idle trekkers sat at the long tables, biding their time with eating, Kindles, cards and chat. A little circle of porters laughed over dal bhat and constant cards games. It was the final cement that bonded us, a band embarking on the last stretch to the exalted high pass, Thorong La, a few days away. Here our little crew expanded to its full and final proportion. We were the original four from trekkingparters.com, and Harry of course, plus the German and South African, plus the two 18-year old Australians and a British man who’d been held back a day by a tooth infection. The only girl in a sea of males, dirty and disheveled in my ugly hiking pants and striped touque, I felt like a female incognito, privy to conversations ad nauseum on farts and bowl behavior. But bowel matters aside, as we shrugged on our bags to leave the city, we made a pretty great team.

We left Manang on one of those perfect blue sky sunny days, the kind where the world appears new, cleansed by some ethereal hand and laid out again dancing. Strings of candy floss cloud fluttered out of the mountain peaks, the ponies trotted out to their brittle grass patches, and the little boy on the tricycle giggled with glee. Looking back from the first bluff outside of town, the city shone like something magical—all dust and dirt and dung glossed over. One could almost see throngs of galloping horses, with crying men, spears drawn, charging at some mountain foe. Horns blown in unison, prayer flags turned battle symbols, and stupas monuments to the fallen.

Leaving Manang

That day we walked to Yak Kharka, a tiny conglomeration of shabby guest houses and stone walls shoved in a narrow, shaded valley. By the time we flopped our bags down, I could no longer pretend I felt well. The phantom headache I’d pushed off that morning had blossomed and I was feeling increasingly nauseous and lethargic. Bundled in the lodge around a hopping fire fueled on spindly wood and yak dung, our crew had become a team of amateur pharmacists. Sean had Diamox, and Tylenol. Matt had ibuprofen and activated charcoal. Ben had paracetamol. A little man in the shop in Besisahar who had sold Matt Diamox, the altitude medicine, had said “no sick, no take.” But a man in Kathmandu who’d sold Sean his had told him to take between one and four a day. It was a pill popping party, over by 8pm. I watched in a gloom the energy of the others, playing cards and laughing. Jake was on his second dessert. Sean began telling us again about the burger he would eat when he got to Hawaii.

As we tried to fall asleep that night bundled in every layer we had, including our toques, Jake humored me by comparing pulses and exchanging paranoias, his being that a snow leopard would attack him on the way to the outhouse. The next morning I felt a little better, but that was only temporary.

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That day we reached Thorong Phedi, the last stop before the pass. At 4,450 meters, Thorong Phedi stood at the end of a long, narrow valley, rammed in the clasp of mountain tops that sealed off the riverbed like a giant wall. It was a barren place with just two guest houses and a frigid wind that whistled lonesomely around the buildings. The first lodge was the bigger one and got the majority of business, it being situated 30 meters lower than the other. Behind the lodge was a vertical incline that stretched up for 400 meters. It was the start of what awaited us the next day and what we were supposed to hike up and down that afternoon to help with acclimatization. “Climb high, sleep low” was the adage. After the morning’s respite, my sickness had seeped back even worse. I was like a high slug, lolling about with air in my head. I hiked up the incline with the others, each step a horrendous weight, and tried to remind myself that this was voluntary.

I went to bed as soon as it was dark and awoke at 10pm with that knowledge that the night was going to be torturously long. I felt more nauseous than I could ever remember, like my body was a giant dam holding back a mountain of sludge. My head ached like a lawnmower. It was some sub-zero temperature, there was no internet and I could think of nothing but the pain, like my brain had been erased and filled with a bucket of gravel that clattered around incessantly. Later, I sat outside under a close starry sky, alternating between a duty-free bag, and the pitch-black squat toilet. Around me wind whistled, and the rustle of some cow or dog or human clinked in the shadow. Eventually I managed to lie down again and sleep in mini fits waiting for morning when I would tell the rest that I wasn’t going any farther. When the last of the group rounded the dark corner of the lodge early the next morning and disappeared, I went back into my room and sobbed. Perhaps a combination of sadness, exhaustion, fear and disappointment, alone on a dark, cold mountain, a bag of pink tinged vomit next to my bed.

A few hours later, a small appetite regained, I ate my cold breakfast bun which I’d ordered the night before and which hadn’t yet been cleared from the table. I spread on peanut butter from some jar someone had left. Three ballsy Australian guys prepped for a later climb, excited about the peanut butter and successful pre-ascent poops. I told them about my pink-tinged vomit and that was the last we saw of each other. We shouldered our bags and headed in opposite directions.

Not a bad view down the valley

As I walked back down what had taken us two days to come up, the clouds bantered with the sun, shadows whipping through the valley like pieces of some high up game. I imagined the guys slogging over the pass, imagined them coming down the other side and sipping their first beers in the long-anticipated celebration, and I felt tears stinging at the sides of my eyes. Everyone I passed wanted to know why I was going the opposite direction. I dreaded running into anyone I knew; and of course, I ran into them all. That night back in Manang, I couldn’t shake the feeling of having given up, and I considered trying again. It was either that or take a jeep down a deathly cliffy road for 10 hours, back to the starting point where I could meet up again with the group. If I returned to the pass it was another week of walking, alone, or with whomever I might meet along the way, and I could still get sick again. After a fitful sleep I awoke early with my mind made up: back up to the pass it was, and this time I was going to make it.

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It was another bluebird day when I left Manang for the second time. I passed the same woman selling bracelets and trinkets, the same boy on the tricycle and ponies ambling up the path. Again, the city looked like the site of a medieval battle and candy floss trailed off the mountain tops. The woman selling trinkets asked about my friends, “did they make it over?” she wanted to know. I was surging with energy, healed and made stronger in just one night lower down. Half an hour out of Manang I met a small group of hikers. One of them was a German girl of 20 something, who extended her hand, beaming: “Hi! I’m Tessa,” she said. I recognized her from trekkingpartners.com—we had been planning to hike together but then our schedules didn’t quite align. And here we were like some funny little twist of fate.

My favourite tea house

In two days we were back at Thorong Phedi. I was surprised that the manager of the guest house recognized me, “you can have your old room back,” he said with a wry smile. He was a tall, Nepali man with a wide face and toughened skin, and he was normally gruff and snappy with a sarcastic wit lurking behind his eyes. I wondered what it must be like for that man, serving so many people, seeing them all at the last stop before they crossed the highest point on the trek. A buildup of energy each day and then they were gone—over and away, and a new group came and it repeated. It must get a little lonely, being always something by the wayside. Along with Tessa, I met three Canadians, one of whom was from close to my home town. We chatted and ate and planned to hike over the pass together the next day. A group of Swiss were trying to fix the struggling fire which was overloaded with wood and yak dung. A girl in wool socks sat splay legged on the floor pulling out pieces of poop and wood and a man came over and dumped kerosene from a little metal bottle on the stubborn contents.

We left the next morning at 4:45. It was dark still but the approaching sun was already brushing the sky, softly pushing away the half-moon that lingered. We zigzagged slowly up the first steep slope among sleeping mountains, until finally they were clothed one by one in sunlight. At the top of the first climb was the very last tea house, and we stopped to warm up. But it was ineffective. The hut was freezing with thin wooden walls and a brave shopkeeper bundled up in layers that could not have staved off the aggressive cold. The water in our bottles had frozen around the edges, and chunks of it clinked in the middle.

View from High Camp

Outside the tea house we rounded a corner and the world changed. Snow covered the ground and the wind whipped it into our faces, swirling like a living thing, pushing us along or pushing us back. Our feet slipped on the narrow ledge, and the wind wiped over our steps so we could barely make out the footprints of the one in front of us. Reality narrowed now to breathing and stepping, head down, step after step. Each one to himself, in a small interior world. It struck me how vulnerable we were out there—foreign creatures in an inhospitable land, our delicate skin wrapped under layers of protection, our lungs rebelling at the thin air, our legs weak. Every nagging worry was gone, we were our bodies, our blood, our breath, harshly alive.

Finally, we reached an area warmed by the sun and the wind died down and a while longer we were at our destination. A mass of prayer flags strung up like a lonely fair ground and amassed around a small wooden sign: “Thorong-La Pass—Congratulations!” It read. “5,416 meters.” I felt a giant surge of happy sadness. The sun shone blindingly and around us mountain peaks and glaciers creaked in it. There was not the epic view I had been imaging, it was a white place in a bowl of peaks.

Thorong-La Pass

We took a few photos and then we went down, down, down 1,700 meters in a seemingly never-ending slope of brilliant snow, boiling hot, sweating now, layer upon layer stripped off, sliding down the melting hills into the neighboring valley.

The valley on the other side

When we reached Muktinath that evening we showered and refilled our bodies on dal bhat and the sun streamed through the windows and soaked into our skin and we switched on our phones and the world seeped back in a little. And it was funny to see how we meant something again, while we’d meant nothing up there.

The next days, Tessa, Max—the Canadian from near my home town—and I walked down the valley together. A new little band of the necklace. It was a beautiful feeling going back down, life buzzing and creaking and vibrating around us, back to where we belonged. And there, everything seemed possible.

A Small Tale of the Annapurna Circuit — I

Nepal began in the New Delhi airport, where I was transferring on my way to Kathmandu. Deplaning, we were directed to group by onward destination. I moved into a cluster of eager-looking rookie outdoors people, trying to somehow appear less conspicuously like one of them. Despite my efforts, however, I was a perfect match. I’d checked a trekking pack, and my shoes were those unfortunately large hiking boots – brand new  – that one sees on extra serious tourists. I had just quit my job in some bold or naive attempt to reach the grass on the other side. The destination separation seemed a little unnecessary when a petite woman dressed smartly in the beige and red uniform of Air India led us like a troop of large school children down a corridor clearly marked “International Connections.”

That night, I was meeting the guys I’d be hiking with for the next two weeks. We’d found each other online – trekkingpartners.com – and knew only each other’s nationality, age and sex. It felt a bit like a Tinder date with higher stakes. In fact, I knew very little about what I was getting into, in general. A hike for a couple weeks in the Himalayas, varied temperature and I didn’t need a tent. I’d be with a Brit, an American and a Canadian, all male, age range 18 – 42.  We met over Ghorka beers in a dimly lit restaurant in Thamel, the tourist hub of Kathmandu. Thamel buzzed with hikers, potbellied sightseers, and spiritual seekers descending from silent retreats in hilltop monasteries. Narrow alleys crowned with prayer flags and electrical wires wove through cafes, trinket shops, and oodles of trekking stores selling knock-off The North Face, Chinese Nalgenes, and altitude meds. Everyone in Nepal wore The North Face, almost like a national uniform.

Rickshaw drivers in Kathmandu

Sean, the Canadian, was waiting in the restaurant when I arrived. Friendly to Canadian textbook standards, Sean had scouted the shops for the best gear, and the restaurants for the best food. He was nursing his Ghorka like it wasn’t his first. After Nepal he was going to Hawaii and then back to his job in the oil fields. I thought Sean might be the type who would carry you down the mountain if you got hurt, and was relieved. Matt and Jake arrived later, Matt from the US and Jake the youngin’ of just 18 from the UK.

As we left the restaurant, Jake voiced what we’d all been thinking “Well, at least everyone is cool; I was worried someone might be a total shit or something!” Jake had a knack, it turned out, for saying what everyone was thinking but had decided not to. I liked them all and felt that jubilation at having landed in an excellent situation.

The next day we schlepped off at 5am to the nebulous bus station to begin the 9-hour journey from Kathmandu to Besisahar, the kick-off point for the Annapurna Circuit. After finding a ticket for the “tourist bus”, a man led us through a crisscross of narrow streets to a tilting row of dusty buses that looked like prehistoric relics. He pried open the door of one and began wiping the windshield which was coated in a brown film as though it had not been driven in years. “Deluxe” was plastered across the front. After about 100 stops to pick up passengers as we left the city, we settled into a giant traffic jam extending around the hills and into the distant valley, like a supernatural cobra panting exhaust.

I was squished in next to Sean who was 6 foot 3, at least. He’d taken a Dramamine preemptively before the trip, and I soon learned that he was a walking pharmacy. Behind us sat Matt, the American, and aforementioned Jake. Tall and handsome, Matt had stylish sunglasses and swished back hair, which he washed every two weeks or so to keep in a good amount of oil for bong and hold. He was reading Siddhartha for the third time and, like me, had recently quit his job in pursuit of something more fulfilling. I heard him and Jake cracking jokes and setting a meditation schedule for the trek, which we kept for a day. Jake had a small pack crammed full, a ready smile and the adventurous spirit of a young traveler setting out to see the world. He was mid-way through a gap year before starting university, where he was signed up for chemistry but really wanted to be doing art.

The bus twisted and bumped for seeming eternity as Nepali and Hindi top hits blared from the tinny speakers. The high voices and piercing flutes of the music blending with horns and thuds from the bus. At some point we reached Besisahar and were dropped off at the end of a little road jostling with shops. We saw a couple of other hikers stroll by in likely equal, but boldly masked, confusion. We decided to hire a porter between us to share some of our things, and within half an hour, Harry emerged, packed and ready to set off for the next two weeks. He was a quiet (also because he spoke very little English), and bright-eyed man and he soon became the shepherd of the flock. He wore a thin, bright purple jacket no matter how hot out it was (although he once zipped it half way down, revealing startlingly defined pecs) and plodded unyieldingly along at a tortoise pace, eventually becoming living proof of “slow and steady wins the race”.

That first night we slept in the village of Ngadi, about an hour’s walk from the trailhead. In the morning we caught our very first glimpse of a snowy mountain, a humble harbinger of what was to come. As we set out, our packs settling onto our backs, we were practically bouncing. Sean got some Barenaked Ladies going (the first of many times) on a speaker and we marched on into the hills.

Waking up in Ngadi

 

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We spent those first days winding deeper into the valley along the path of a gushing turquoise river. Broad and twisting, the riverbed was like a giant’s abandoned playroom, boulders the size of five story buildings strewn casually on the nursery floor, gashes in their sides where the water had etched its dominance.

Marshyangdi River

We passed through villages and terraced plots of land, draping down the hillsides like the backs of scaled dragons. Mules lumbered past now and then, carrying bags of rice, gas canisters, or household items, begrudgingly following the whistles and calls of teenagers with swished back hair. One day rounding a bend, we saw a tiny old woman, skin shriveled like a dried date, wisps of grey hair escaping a loosely tied shawl. She was croaking and purring like someone gone mad, speaking to the spirits in her head, I assumed. But then four white goats trotted out from a little creek bed behind her, apparently understanding her language. She croaked and cooed them across the path and up the hill, half goat half woman.

On day one we took a tea break under a giant arching tree. It was decked out in strings of prayer flags extending from its branches to the local shop, police station and hotel like a great carousel. There we made our first friends of the journey—the two hikers we’d seen the evening before looking as lost as we were in Besisahar. They were from Germany and South Africa and were studying engineering. We chit-chatted and drank our masala and then they were off down the trail, moving at a faster pace than we were.

The giant arching tree

We slipped into a rhythm. Eat, walk, eat, walk, eat, sleep. Eat, walk, eat, walk, eat, sleep. Eating for our movement and moving to eat. Life became simple. Each meal was a glorious pig out of carby comforts selected from a towering menu, standard throughout the Annapurna Conservation Area. It consisted of options of rice, pasta, bread, pizza, soup, noodles, curries, potatoes, and desserts including deep fried snickers and mars bars, doughy apple fritters and rice pudding. Dal Bhat Set was the local staple. A mound of white rice, with a bowl of dal (soupy lentils), a plop of curried potatoes and cauliflower, and a papadam, a crispy Indian-style cracker. It was served on a big silver tray and included endless refills. “Dal Bhat power 24 hour” was the favorite saying of chirping Nepali guides and German traditionalists committed to the local cuisine.

On day three it started to rain as we approached the town of Dharapani, globes of cold sloshing on our hands and the backs of our bent heads. We hustled into little huts as the clouds submerged the village and then darkness submerged it all. That night we huddled in the dining room, warming ourselves with curries and spaghetti and Ghorka beers. Next to us, a posse of brightly clad Koreans pecked at kimchi and rice. They consisted of a middle-aged man and three middle-aged women, and their chipper guide who bustled to and from the kitchen with boiled chicken and special coffee from Korea complete with its own brewing apparatus. Their two small porters giggled over tea at the table next to them. During the day they lugged about bags the size of small beds, like ants carrying twigs that were much too big for them. Loosened by the beers, we chatted about regrets. Three big men and me; more in common than initially met the eye.

The next morning, the clouds had vanished, leaving in their wake mountain peaks freshly clad in snow, glimmering in a brilliantly blue sky. A world transformed. Mount Manaslu, at over 8,000 meters, filled the vee of the valley before us, wisps of blowing snow or cloud streaming off its jagged peak and disappearing into the blue.

Manaslu

We walked up into the mountains, leaving the river that day, pursuing peaks, surrounding us in taunting brilliance.  Us in a bowl of mountains. In the afternoon, we rounded a corner to see Annapurna II. Its tall pointed peak claiming the valley, majestic, terrifying and stunning—it was the most beautiful mountain I could remember seeing, like one painted in a fairy tale. It glistened in the sun, snow blowing off the top, treacherous giant slabs of rockface stretching up its sides.

In the evening we sat around a pot-bellied stove, the first of the trek as the temperatures fell—us and the brightly clad Koreans, and their mighty little porters.

Annapurna II

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It was a day later, when we were leaving Chame, that the German and South African unofficially joined our trekking crew. Friends from university, they cracked jokes at each other like an old married couple. Emil had a wry German humor and an appetite like no other and at meal times he would sit waiting for his food like a bear out of hibernation. Felix, the South African, was relaxed and funny with a penchant for fantasy ebooks, and was diligently studying Japanese along the trail. That day, we stopped for lunch at a little guest house under the arc of an epically sloping bowl, fresh snow clinging to its steep expanse. We sat on a rooftop on little wooden chairs, doused in sun.

Harry

Along the trail one runs into the same people over and over. Ping ponging our way through the mountains like a loosely strung necklace, crossing and recrossing until it finally breaks apart and scatters. That day, our whole little section was there. There were two duos of Spaniards: a sweet couple, and two male friends. One of the friends wore a brightly colored hat which he’d picked up in Lake Titicaca ten years before, and his skin was brown and grooved from a life spent loving the sun. The other had a quiet eccentricity which seemed to pop out in spurts as Friend One would abandon him from time to time out of exasperation. When they found out Jake had brought along a little weed, their eyes lit up like 5-year-olds at a candy store and they instantly became our best friends. There was an Australian girl trekking alone, warming up for later climbs of 6,800 meters. We were all in awe. She hiked briskly, with never a stay hair escaping her ponytail, nor a droplet of sweat running down her freckle dusted face. She had no sunburn, dirty nails, or sweaty shirt, and she was polite and contained as though attending a high tea.

Clattering up the stairs soon after us, two 18-year-old Australian boys cozied themselves up to our table. A tall one and a short one, I knew them from their snide jokes along the trailside. “Do I have to carry more of your stuff today?” said the tall one to the other, as we listened on. “I’m carrying like half his stuff,” he tossed over our way with a laugh. Across the table, his friend rolled his eyes. After lunch, we didn’t wait long before being on our way.

Later that evening in Upper Pisang