Above the clouds: Annapurna, part III

The last few days of my trek were spent up in the clouds in the spectacular rhododendron forest (pictures in my last post). After gaining around 1,000 meters in the morning after leaving Gandruk, we spent two days hiking what is known as "Nepali Flat" - lots of steep ups and downs, but always hovering around the same altitude. I got one quick far-away sighting of a monkey (I think maybe a grey langur?) and heard a symphony of hidden birds, but the real wildlife in the rhododendron forest is the terrestrial leeches, who love rain and foreigners' blood. I avoided any bites by constantly checking my boots, and I still can't explain why they love me and completely left my guide alone.

The literal high point of the trip was Poon Hill, which everyone climbs to watch the sunrise over the mountains. After five clear sunny mornings, I woke up at 3:45 am to the sound of rain. Crap. But I was determined and hopeful, so at 4:30 when the rain stopped, we went anyway, accompanied by a couple of Circuit trekkers whose guides had slept through the rain, hoping that the clouds would clear up and we'd see the panoramic view I'd been waiting for all week. No such luck. But the sunrise was lovely anyway, and my boiled eggs and Tibetan bread were extra delicious after a little pre-dawn climb.

After Poon Hill we climbed down more than 3,000 stone steps, descending around 2,000 meters back towards warmer weather and "civilization." For the last half hour we walked along a brand-new road that will eventually go almost all the way to Gorepani. Roads mean access to schools, doctors, markets, and generally things that make people's lives better. But trekkers don't want to walk along roads, especially once the roads have cars on them - so what will happen when trekkers stop coming through these villages that seem to rely so much on hungry tourists? On the upside, no more lugging beer up the mountain on foot - if they keep getting beer-drinking trekkers, that is.

On our last day, we hiked out and I splurged on a taxi back to Pokhara, a big "Continental" lunch including the best mango smoothie I've ever had, and a mediocre "trekkers' special" massage.

The rest of my trekking pictures

Ok, I get it, nobody wants to read my ramblings, you just want to see the pictures. So here's the second installment of my trekking photos.

Tourist Highway: Annapurna, part II

Trekking in the off-season has its positives and negatives. On the upside, I didn’t see what I can only assume from the quantity of guesthouses must be an army of trekkers during peak season. But off-season trekkers pay for the peace and quiet by dealing with cloudy skies and heavy muggy air. We were spectacularly lucky not to get rained on, but the clouds rolled in every day around 10am – a good reason, in addition to the heat, to get up and start hiking at 6am. On my second day, I woke up pleasantly surprised to find that our guesthouse had a breathtaking view of the snowy peaks behind those clouds. Who knew?

On Day Two we stopped in Jhinu and visited what is now on my list of Best Hot Springs in the World, right on the edge of a rushing river – just what I needed after a day of walking up and down steep stone steps looking at beautiful mountain views.

We started hiking on Day Three and were soon joined by a handful of middle school-aged girls in school uniforms. I gasped for breath and struggled to keep as I watched them sprint up the steep trails in their cheap plastic shoes, even offering to carry my guide’s bag for a while. My lazy-American feeling was reinforced when my guide told me they were going to school in Gandruk, our destination for the day, and at the end of the day they would hike all the way back. But I felt better about myself when they gave me some berries they picked on the trail and I was able to say they were delicious and ask the girls their names.

I think these girls were the first people we interacted with on the trail. It’s interesting, hiking in an area that gets so many trekkers, how uninteresting we are. Here I am, hiking around in what feels like pretty remote rural Nepal, with my transparent skin and funny boots, and everyone pretty much ignores me unless I walk into their restaurant and ask for a dal bhat. From what I can see, it seems that trekkers are the primary economic support for the region, so it’s not like a white person with a backpack walking through your village is anything new or exciting.

Some pictures from my trek

Here's the first installment of trekking pictures. I'll post the rest tomorrow. To get to a full-sized slideshow click here.

Up, up, up: Annapurna, part I

My trek into the Annapurna Conservation Area started with a one-hour bus ride from Pokhara to Phedi, during which I had the pleasure of sitting on the floor since there were no more seats. As soon as we got off the bus, we started climbing. The vast majority of the trail was paved with stones, which mostly meant big stone steps, as flat is a concept they don't really have here (I asked someone about Nepal's soccer team, and they said there aren't very many flat places big enough to build a soccer field).

I traveled with Tul Devi, a guide/porter from Three Sisters, a trekking company with almost all women guides and porters. I would highly recommend them, especially for any solo female travelers. It provided a very different perspective from the 20-something guys who you usually get on a trip like this, and I never once got asked if I have a boyfriend. For the first few days it was just the two of us - we ran into a few people on the trail, but we were the only ones in our tea houses the first couple of nights.

Tea houses. Lest you think I am more hard-core than I am, I should clarify that trekking in Nepal is not exactly a wilderness experience. Guesthouse/restaurants litter the trail - we never hiked more than a few kilometers without seeing one. All offered very cheap beds (around $1.50) as long as you ate in their restaurant, which I was always happy to do. The luxuriousness varied depending on how remote we were, but I had more nights with hot water (usually solar) and electricity than without. And they all offered things like beer and Pringles, but they had a very understandable "we carried this up the mountain on our backs" surcharge, so I stuck to the dal bhat, a refillable plate of some combination of rice, lentils, and vegetables for around $4.

Because the monsoon is due to start any day now, it's the tourist off-season here, so the trek was rather quiet. I had to ration my 300-page book over six nights, so I spent a lot of time poring over my Nepali phrase book and getting my guide to to teach me a few words. I think the first word she taught me was "up" and it took me until the last day for her to teach me the word for "flat," which of course I don't remember because I never had the opportunity to use it.

To the mountains!

After a very long and hellish bus ride (which I think deserves a longer post later, but the take home is, just suck it up, pay the extra $2, and take the tourist bus), I arrived in Pokhara, the second-largest city in Nepal and the gateway to the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. I am breathing deeper already - have I mentioned how polluted it is in Kathmandu? This may be a recurring theme.

Tomorrow I leave on a week-long trek, staying at tea houses along the way and eating a lot of dal baht. I hope to return with lots of stories and pictures, and hopefully without any leeches.

Pictures from my day in the big city

Here are a few pictures I took in Kathmandu. They're better if you look at them full-size (especially since I think I wrote too much in the captions), which you can do here or by clicking on the slideshow itself.

Adventures in Transportation

Yesterday I decided to venture into downtown Kathmandu to check out some of the sights. Trying to save a few bucks (ok, fine, a taxi is only around $3, but the same $3 can also buy two dozen mangos, so I kind of lose perspective of much a rupee is really worth) and add some adventure to my day, I brushed past the taxi drivers in favor of a tempo, a three-wheeled electric vehicle about the size of a station wagon that holds about twelve people. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring out the tempos until we pulled over five minutes into our drive for a reason that I still don’t know (though I know it involved a bunch of police officers and I think a kid with a bike). We sat there for about 15 minutes before everyone finally climbed out and started walking, providing me with a wonderful opportunity to see whether I could match my brand new street map to the craziness in front of me. An hour or so and zero street signs later, I found myself in the backpacker’s heaven of Thamel, and finally got some chapattis and scrambled eggs. Lesson of the morning: don’t attempt public transportation in Kathmandu before breakfast.

After a day of taking in the sights (I’m going to leave you in suspense until I get some pictures up tomorrow….) I was faced with post-sundown taxi prices (now more like three dozen mangos) so I looked around for another option. The amazing thing about being in a place where gas is expensive and labor is cheap is that a bike-rickshaw is a whole lot cheaper than a taxi, and way more fun. And because the bike-rickshaws are all fixies (they have no idea how trendy they are – too bad skinny jeans are probably inappropriate here) we had to get off and walk up the hills. Lesson of the afternoon: gears and lights are excellent additions to bicycles.

Today I decided I was ready to start being my own transportation, so I am now the proud owner of a shiny new mountain bike. The weird thing about Kathmandu traffic is that somehow with it felt easier and safer to be part of the traffic than to be a pedestrian trying to dodge it – like the cars and motorcycles recognize me as another wheeled being and give me a little respect, in the form of not hitting me. Other weird things: they drive on the left, and traffic lights and emissions inspections do not exist here. Lesson of today: don’t leave home without a facemask ever again. The only thing scarier than the traffic is the particulates.

The thing I miss the most about home

Silence.

Close your eyes. Listen. Unless you are blasting music or sitting on an airport runway (or living in 910 Exum....), whatever you are hearing right now is probably closer to silence than anyone ever experiences here. Imagine if you honked your car horn every time you saw another car, or a bike, or a pedestrian. Now imagine that everyone else on the road did the same. Now eliminate the traffic lights, road signs, and all other forms of traffic control. Add potholes. Subtract sidewalks. My 25-minute walk to the office is the most exhausting commute I have ever had because the constant noise makes my head spin (the jetlag and altitude probably don't help in that regard). It is truly overwhelming.

First Impressions

I could tell I was headed somewhere different as soon as I stepped on the plane in Chicago. There were more more colors, more languages, and a lot more bustling around than I've ever seen on an airplane, and I was delighted to find sag paneer on the dinner menu they handed out shortly after take-off. Fifteen hours later and two bad movies later, I landed in Delhi, where I spent a ten-hour layover with a handful of other travelers headed to different international destinations, watching as much of the very disappointing LOST finale as my batteries allowed and trying to finagle a horizontal position on the airport chairs so I could get a few hours of sleep. Finally, thirty-something hours after leaving my hotel in Saint Louis, I was in Kathmandu.

I spent most of my first day in Kathmandu fighting jet lag, trying to stay awake all day so I would be able to sleep at night. I mostly failed, but in a break from my naps I did manage to find a lot of temples, a white hippie with dreds down to his waist playing a didgeridoo, a pair of monkeys, and a place to buy a mountain bike. And I don't know why I was worried about being able to sleep through the night.