Start point: Besisahar (820m)
End point: Pokhara (827m)
High points: Thorung-La Pass (5614m), Annapurna Base Camp (4130m)
Walking in the Annapurna mountains was the trek that had it all:
Great, ever-changing scenery
I spent the first few days wearing shorts and a t-shirt as we passed rice paddies and banana plantations. Then as we got higher the layers came on as we walked through snow.
The beauty of an area blanketed in snow and the sight of frozen waterfalls more than compensated for having to wear a woolly hat to bed (something I always think is a bit depressing) and for having to use outside squat toilets where the water in the bucket to be thrown into the bowl was frozen.
Then once we got over the Thorung-La Pass and started descending the landscape became desert-like until we reached apple-growing country.
This all gave a corresponding variety in the animals we saw, which ranged from lizards and monkeys to eagles and yaks.
Cultural insightsUnlike places where I've trekked in other countries, people live throughout the whole Annapurna area. We passed through and stayed in many picturesque villages, their narrow, stone-paved streets and alleys giving them a medieval feel (an impression that was somewhat cancelled out by seeing the locals watching satellite television and chatting on their mobile phones). We came across several village meetings and a couple of weddings, giving us interesting insights to life in this region. On a more practical level, the advantage of trekking in a well-populated area was that we didn't have to carry our own food as there was an abundance of guesthouses along the trail.
A challenge To complete the Circuit, the 5614m high Thorung-La Pass must be crossed. As we began our walk, days of heavy snowfall higher up forced the Pass to be closed. So during the days that we were making our way up towards the Pass, we met scores of trekkers on the way down who had given up the hope of completing the Circuit and had turned around. More heavy snow on days four, five and seven depressingly increased the likelihood that we too would have to turn back. When most people in our lodge in Manang decided to go down, we opted to wait one more day. When the next morning brought the first clear skies for days, we happily though cautiously continued our ascent.
Thankfully a French group with guides and porters did the same. So on the eleventh day, we battled through deep snow and freezing temperatures to make it over the Pass. Though it was a long, hard day, the sense of achievement more than made up for the hardships.
Solitude and Socialising: Paradoxically, time spent trekking can be perfect both for being lost in your own thoughts and for getting to know people. This trek had the perfect mix of solitude and socialising. Importantly, I got on well with my trekking partners Aly and Laura. As it was off-season, we often walked for hours without seeing other trekkers and sometimes we were the only people staying in a guesthouse. But most nights there were usually a few others so, sitting around heaters burning yak dung, I met a lot of nice people and learned some new card games. I can't imagine what it is like to walk this trail in peak season when there are nearly twenty times the number of trekkers (in 2010, 340 tourists came to the Manang district in February compared with 5,960 in October).
While I like the peace that comes with walking on my own, I was reminded of the dangers inherent in solo trekking by an incident we came across on our third day. An Englishman who took the wrong trail slipped and fell off the edge of the path, injuring his legs and getting a concussion. A text message that he was able to send to a friend took over three days to be passed along to the locals in the village that he said he was near. We arrived in that village around the same time as that message. That evening, although we were well wrapped up in the lodge, we were still cold (a few nights later the temperature was measured at minus six degrees Celsius inside our bedroom). It was worrying to say the least to think about that guy out there on his own for a fourth night. Once the message was translated for the locals, they found him quickly after starting their search in the morning. We were glad when we met him as he was being brought into the village to see that all in all he was in pretty good shape.
An added bonus:
I enjoyed trekking around the Circuit so much, that after nineteen days I didn't want to stop. So after watching the sunrise from Poon Hill, I said farewell to Aly and Laura and started the Annapurna Sancturary trek. This week-long walk to Annapurna Base Camp brought me to the centre of the mountains that I had spent the previous couple of weeks walking around. While this trail was a lot busier with plenty of large groups (and therefore safer for a solo trekker), I'm really glad that I had the time to do it and to see the sunrise at Annapurna Base Camp.
On my final morning I reached the road at Phedi where buses run back to Pokhara. Leaving the mountains and returning to town and city life meant returning to an all-too-common feature of such life in Nepal - a strike. I discovered that no transport was running all day becuase, to quote a local restaurant owner, "some group wants something from the Government". I decided to walk the twenty kilometres to Pokhara rather than wait until the following day. While that extra distance wasn't welcome given the hundreds of kilometres that I had just completed, as I walked along the traffic-free road I saw some interesting sights of how the locals handle such strike days, which mainly involves just chilling out.My Annapurna trekking experience was so positive that I decided that the only way to spend my remaining time in Nepal was to do another of the world's great treks - the walk to Everest Base Camp.
No comments:
Post a Comment