Finally back from trekking and glad to say that I survived my walk in the woods with minimal diarrhea, only three leeches (one of which I had to remove with an open flame), and only a few blisters. It was an amazing experience that was totally different from anything else I had done thus far in Nepal.
Pokhara is a beautiful city that is about an 8 hour bus ride (although only 200km, maybe) northwest of Kathmandu. It is in the mountains on a lake and jutting above the green hillsides at a vertical height much higher than expected, strut the majestic Himalayan peaks. I can’t describe them any other way, besides the fact that they were absolutely MASSIVE. And I’ve grown up around mountains, so these must be impressive.
We spent a few nights in Pokhara, meeting with our guides, packing, and buying things for the trek. I hiked up a small mountain as a “warm-up” the day before we left to a big, white, Peace Pagota/statue that overlooked all of Pokhara, the lake, and the surrounding hills and mountains. Some little boys tried to guide us up to the top and then demanded money. They got very angry when we only gave them water and sunscreen. Little kids can be scary in groups.
Our planned trek was to do the left half of the famous Anapurna Circuit. This would take us up into the Lower Mustang area, with terrain and culture very similar to that of Tibet. Coming back, I was planning on going off for two extra days of trekking with one of the guides to go into the mountains more (instead of around them) and see the view of the Anapurna range from the famous Poon Hill.
DAY 1: We were planning on bussing to our starting point and getting in about 4-5 hours of trekking this day, but our bus broke down. We were stranded in a hot, dusty town called Kusma for over 3 hours. This was really trying on our Nepali patience. We ended having to bus all the way into the town we were originally planning to hike into due to the delay and the fading daylight (for this half of the circuit, there are really bumpy dirt roads connecting most of the towns. The Anapurna circuit is not a very secluded place. There is even a little airport in one town along the way). The ride into Ghasa that night was pretty terrifying. The old bus bounced precariously close to the steep, eroding cliff sides that dropped about one hundred plus feet into a milky, churning river below. Even as the darkness settled in, the bus driver kept the pedal to the metal and only used his headlights sparingly to save on electricity. We were laughing, we were so nervous. Alex made a comment, “My butt is still sweaty and it’s not even hot out anymore!”
DAY 2-3: We made our way up north from Ghasa towards Muktinath, our final destination in the Lower Mustang area. The surroundings changed dramatically from lush green valley to the dry, treeless, sculpted mountains of the Lower Mustang. We saw peaks called Machhapuchhre (meaning Fishtail), Dhaulageri (only a couple hundred meters shorter than Everest) and Niligiri. Our usual routine consisted of rising at 6am for some Tibetian bread and then trekking until 11 for a dhal baat lunch on the trail. We would usually arrive at the next tea house by 3pm and spend the remaining hours of the day reading, writing and playing cards. Not a bad life.
DAY 4-5: We arrived in Muktinath in the middle of the fourth day of trekking. That morning, we gained about 1,000 meters in elevation, so for the second half of the hike, we were instructed to go slowly to avoid headaches. We were now at 3,800 meters. I did feel myself loose my breath a little faster, and my legs burned much more easily. We spent the second half of the day acclimatizing.
Muktinath is famous for it’s temple on the hillside above the town. It is a green oasis of trees surrounded by a white, stonewall on the brown hillside. There are Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples within the grounds. Buddha’s parents were Hindu, so this “combining” of the two religions is not uncommon. In fact, the monks of this temple promote the “coming together” of the two religions. That afternoon, we witnessed a procession of monks and pilgrims carrying fire and chanting as they marched down from the temple through the town of Muktinath. A local told us they did this once every couple of months and it was to honor all religions and the procession would go from town to town and bless people wishing to be blessed.
We stayed for the fifth day in Muktinath. We hiked up to the temple and bought cheap strings and trinkets to take into the Hindu temples and bless. Our guides did this for us, as we didn’t feel comfortable going into the temple while people were praying, and we didn’t know the proper praying rules and techniques. When they emerged from the temple, they gave us the blessed bracelets and necklaces for good luck.
While we wandered around the grounds, we came across 108 showers on three walls forming a nearly complete rectangle. The water from each shower was spouting out of stone dragonheads and it was ice cold. 108 is a significant number in Buddhism. When you walk around Buddhist stupas and pray, you carry a necklace of 108 prayer beads and move one for each lap you complete. 108 pops up all the time in Buddhism. We took water from each shower with our right hand and touched it to our foreheads for purify or cleanse our soul of any sins. The water was so cold; I had a genuine brain freeze by the time we got to number 108.
After we left the temple/monasteries, we hiked up towards the Thorong-La pass. This is the pass people have to come over when they are doing the whole Anapurna Circuit. It gets up to an elevation of about 5,300 meters. We hiked to a little above 4,000 meters for the day and then turned around and spent the rest of the day doing little hikes around Muktinath.
DAY 6-7: We headed back the route we had come up via jeep and bus. We spent the whole 6th day getting back to Ghasa this way (the village we started in). On day 7 we hiked down to Tatopani (“tato” means “hot” and “pani” means “water,” so you can guess that there were some natural hot springs here). The hot springs were ridiculously hot, but it was nice until a bunch of local Nepali’s came and were just staring (about half of Nepali men have a terrible habit of staring at white women shamelessly. This is why we rarely wear shorts, and this situation was particularly uncomfortable because we were in swimsuits).
DAY 8: Kaji, one of our guides, and I hit the trial by 6:30am and spent a grueling 6 hours hiking up about 1,600 meters to the village of Ghorepani. “Ghore” means “horse,” so this town literally meant “horse water.” Kaji explained this was because back in the days when there were no roads from Tibet to Nepal, traders traveled on horses to and from the countries and always stopped in Ghorepani. We stayed in a nice teahouse with a beautiful view of the valley we had just hiked up. We saw some peaks like Anapurna 1 for the first time.
Unfortunately, that night it rained pretty hard. When we woke at 3:50am to hike the 45 minutes up to Poon Hill to see the sun rise over the Anapurna range, there were ominous clouds in the sky. Sure enough, we were disappointed with about 10 or so other tourists who had chosen that particular morning to make the ascent to see the range. I did however, have reception up on top, and I was able to call my Dad and wish him a Happy Father’s Day from 3,200 meters with no view of the Anapurna Range. He still thought it was pretty cool though.
We returned to the teahouse and headed out by 7:30am on the long trail down to Nayapul, the village where we would catch a bus back into Pokhara. The hike started our bitterly for me (I was upset to have not seen the whole range, and I was probably cranky from getting up so early) until Kaji pointed out that I had seen all of the mountain peaks in the range individually, if not all together. That, along with the beauty of the green woods and the roaring river we were hiking by lifted my spirits. After about an hour of hiking through this valley, we suddenly came out on the edge of a very steep, very green hillside that dropped maybe a thousand meters into a valley with another river. Villages were perched snugly on the hillsides. The peak of Machapucharre showed itself for the first time that morning. We made a terribly painful descent down into the valley via the dreaded Ulleri Steps. These are 3,000 irregular, slippery stone steps. It was probably the most unpleasant experience of the trek for me with my backpack on and bad knees. I was very relieved to get back into Pokhara that night to meet up with Suse and Alex and relax and eat.
We spent the rest of the week in Pokhara, eating and relaxing and reading and writing. We also watched World Cup games every night on big screen TV’s in bars and did lots of shopping during the day. We spent one night at our guide’s house (and by house, I mean, a 10x10ft room with two twin beds and two gas burners, meant to house Kaji, his wife and their three kids). He made us some spicy dhal baat and we brought his family chocolate. Another day, I met up with a Nepali family whose daughter works with my mother back in Washington. They treated me superbly and stuffed me with food. The parents spoke little English and laughed politely and encouraged me when I attempted to use the little Nepali I knew. Their son is 23 years old and has a Bachelors in Biology from the University of Northern New Mexico, so he spoke fluent English and facilitated the conversations. And, he and I could talk science together! This was very exciting for me.
We spent, many hours at a private pool in this Castle Resort a short hike up a hillside overlooking Pokhara. It cost 1 Euro a day to use the pool. The resort was opened by an Irish man, whom we occasionally talked to as he strutted around with his plaid shorts, penny loafers and pipe. We also ate every morning at a tiny Nepali restaurant out of the city centre on the lake. We could get their special breakfast on their menu, which included fresh juice, a cup of any kind of tea or coffee, a small bowl of muesli fruit curd, BIG pieces of toast with jam/honey/butter, fried potatoes with onions and peppers and two eggs in a veggie omelet for only 130rs…that is less than 2 dollars.
Overall, it was a very strenuous 9 days out in the mountains, followed by a fat, relaxing couple of days in Pokhara. Now we are back in Kathmandu and I have a few other plans involving soccer, white-water kayaking, and Monsoon festivals before I leave in one week. I will keep you posted.
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