The one thing that made me homesick was the prevalence of squat toilets. A trick I never perfected, the squatters dogged me for two-thirds of the trek, only getting relief (so to speak) on the Western and more travelled part of the trail, where Western style toilets became more frequent. So I struggled with my clothes and foot positioning and ended up developing some powerful thigh muscles as a result of those toilets. Still did not figure out how to peruse the sports page simultaneously! ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER The first few towns we passed bore names like Bhule Bhule and Besisahar and Bahundanda. We worked our way along the rice paddies of the Marsyandi River river valley; the entire circuit follows two river valleys, the Marsyandi on the Eastern side of Thorung La and then the Kali Gandaki on the other (Western side). Unlike treks in the Everest region, this track slowly climbs to the Thorung La Pass at 5,316m then declines fairly steadily on the other side; Everest treks offer a lot more daily ups and downs. We quickly settled into a routine, rising around 6am and eating a hearty breakfast of eggs and chipati (torillas) and tea or coffee. We quickly packed and hit the trail for three hours or so, breaking for lunch (the inevitable daal baht) around 11am for a couple hours. Then we finished the day with another two or three hours of trekking before arriving at our night's destination. The whole trip, we purified our own drinking water with iodine tablets. Otherwise, the landscape of the Himalayas would be even more littered with plastic water bottles. The iodine tablets rendered our water quite medicinal tasting, which I solved this with some Gatorade powder my Mom brought to me in India. prayer. JUST THE FACTS After the first five days or so, I decided that my bag weighed too much. It felt about ten pounds heavier than everyone elses. I finally took a ruthless attitude to whittling down my gear. I ended up throwing out some Gatorade powder (sorry Mom), four AA batteries, signal mirror, EMT shears, extra shorts, shampoo; I emptied my extra water bottle, and decided to cut my soap in half! I think this lightened my load about five pounds, getting me down to about thirty, which felt much better. |
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The weather varied each day, as expected in the mountains. Usually each day started very clear in the morning, cobalt blue skies giving way to afternoon clouds. At lower altitudes we escaped a couple rainshowers, but ended up walking in a steady rain for three hours one day. As we gained altitude, it snowed most afternoons, starting around 4pm.
The temperatures in the lower altitudes ranged in the mid-70s during the day and we walked in short sleeves, sweating through our clothes. We all kept long pants on as a sign of respect for the local culture; men and women in shorts are regarded as low-caste porters and prostitutes, respectively. As we climbed, the nighttime temps fell into the freezing range, but the daytime remained comfortably in the low 60's in the sun.
THERE BE GIANTS
In a couple days, we climbed through the rice paddies gave way to potato fields, then apple orchards, then pine forest as we entered the alpine zone. We caught glimpses of the mountains around us, small ones at first, just 5,000-6,000m. We finally discerned the treeline above us, and snow and ice became evident in the higher reaches of the mountains.
Finally, after ten days we rounded a valley and on our left side, a sharp snow covered peak stood out, Annapurna I, our first 8,000m peak (of fourteen total), the 10th highest mountain in the world at 8,091m. It did not look that high from where we stood, but after summiting Kilimanjaro, I knew better. Ten of the fourteen peaks over 8,000 meters reside in Nepal, part of the Himalaya range.
The Himalaya Range is relatively young, on a geological basis. The enormous tectonic forces at work are evident only in the range themselves, too slow for humans to percieve. But as the Indian subcontinent pushes north at sometimes 15cm per year into the Asian plate. The Indian plate wedges the Tibetan plateau upward and crumpled it, creating the worlds tallest mountain range.
AND THEN THERE WERE THREE
We spent three days acclimatizing to the 3,300m altitude in the town of Braga in the Manang Valley, with views of Annapurna II (7,937m), Annapurna IV (7,535m), and Gangapurna (7,454m). Taking time to allow our bodies to adjust to the lower air pressure and therefore less oxygen to the blood; this is critical to any altitude work. If you stepped off an airplane onto Everest at 8,848m, you'd pass out in 30 seconds. Acute mountain sickness (AMS) kills. In fact, we found out that a 65 year old German man died a couple days ago on the summit of Thorung La.
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