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Trekking in the Himalayas – just saying this phrase conjures up images of beautiful sweeping mountain-scapes with some of the tallest mountains in the world right at eye-level.  Helen and I, with our friend Cara (also a volunteer at the monastery last month) decided that a five day trek into the mountains was the ideal length of time to: 1) see beautiful mountains, and 2) not kill ourselves from physical exertion.  We booked ourselves onto a five day trek through our guesthouse (Noble Inn) that would take us to Poon Hill on the third day for some up close views of Annapurna South (7273,) and Machhapucharre (6997m).  Poon Hill itself is a whopping 3210m high – just high enough to afford great views, but low enough that we didn’t need time to acclimatize or take any special precautions.

Here is a picture of what we were expecting to see:

And here is photo taken from my own camera from Poon Hill:

 

You have to look VERY, VERY closely, but Annapurna South is there – faintly through the haze.

And now the day by day of our trek with excerpts from my journal as we went along.

DAY 1 – Naya Pul to Tikhedung

We taxied our way from Pokhara to Naya Pul with our guide (Surya) and porter(Nogin Ry) in tow.  The three of us decided to pack all of our things into one pack and pay for one porter – porters will carry up to 15 kilos and we were only bringing a handful of clothes and soap each.  The 45 minute taxi ride went by quickly and before long I was looking at a small bridge over the river that would take us into the Annapurna National Park area.  We ate got a late start to the day because we had to wait for the permit office to open – no issues there thankfully though and we were on our way.

My thoughts my the end of day one:

Man, today got off to quite a start when Cara prompted Surya to tell us about the hike…she outright blurts out “Do girls sometimes cry?”  His response, a considered but definitive, “Yes, sometimes.”  That didn’t sound too promising but he says that day two is the hardest – today wasn’t so bad really…it was just pretty hot because we started hiking at noon; Helen wasn’t too overly pleased by the heat.

We had fun on the actual hike, Surya is a great guide and is teaching us some Nepali as we go as well as the catchy Nepali songs that we have been hearing over and over again for the past month.  Today’s tune: Resome pheriri – about a bird.  It is THE most popular song in Nepal and we scored some major points with the other guides since we could sing/shout the chorus on our own by the end of the day.  There was one pretty waterfall as we hiked in, but for the most part the landscape was pretty basic and not too many spectacular views yet.

Tomorrow scares me a little – Surya says that we have three or four thousands steps to ascend tomorrow.  3,000-4,000!  That is a lot of steps – and I like how he says 3 or 4 thousand…as it that last extra thousand that might be there is just incidental.  Hah! At least I will know that if I get through tomorrow nothing worse is coming…that’s a good thought.

DAY 2 – Ulleri to Ghorepani

Oh my god – that was so intense.  But it’s over and it really could have been worse.  We started at 7am this morning and hiked for a full seven hours to get to Ghorepani – the first four hours were  literally straight up vertical steps for hours and hours.  Then it changed a bit and we got about 2-3 minutes of level ground and more steps for the last three hours of the hiking.  As a plus for me, there were never any moments where I thought I was going to pass out, which is my norm on strenuous hikes – woo hoo!  Plus, none of us cried – double woo-hoo!

As for the hike itself, apparently we climbed more than 1200 meters straight uphill to get to Ghorepani – I think that’s roughly 3,500 feet and I am pretty impressed with myself if that math is correct.  If this day is the hardest of the five then I am going to rock it!  Best part of today – the Esterberries!  Surya pointed them out and we were able to find bushes and bushes of these along the way.  Every time we saw them I used the picking of them as an excuse to stop – it worked and I got an extra 3-4 minute break (since I am one of the slowest in the group free-breaks without having to slow down the group are always a positive.

We added to our repertoire of Nepali songs – this one is more of a sing and echo song so it was more fun to learn along the way…or shout along the way as the case may be.  Oh – we should have some mountain views from our hotel room today but the haze has blocked out the mountains…we are hoping for rain tonight since we go up to our viewpoint in the morning…we did a little rain dance on the basketball court while we were goofing around.

DAY 3 – Poon Hill to Tarapani

Man, today was a great day all around, my favorite so far. Yesterday was the hardest and we worked our asses off – the payoff though was the great hotel, good food and meeting our new British friend Hanna – oh, and the piping hot water because it is COLD up here.  I was resigned to just not fully shower the five days if we hadn’t encountered hot water along the way.  Today, we woke up at 4:45 am so that we could do the hour plus hike up to Poon Hill to catch the sunrise.  I didn’t make it to the top – since we skipped breakfast in order to catch the sunrise I was just not able to climb straight uphill like that without food – I made it about 75 percent of the way…started to pass out, so I stopped and went to the lower of the two Poon Hill viewpoints.

While I would have been disappointed in myself if there had been a spectacular sunrise that I was going to miss, the view was complete crapola.  You could only just barely make out Annapurna South for a couple of minutes and then it was all just obscured by the haze and clouds.  Poor Cara was really disappointed – after all, we were all expecting a pretty spectacular view.  Apparently we have one more day of possible mountain views if the damnable haze will ever clear!

Luckily for me, Poon Hill wasn’t actually our highest point on the trek though it was our peak – as we hiked later in the day we made it a bit higher – so I don’t feel too badly about myself.  Today’s  hike was mostly downhill and through some really beautiful forests and streams – the most beautiful and idyllic landscape so far.  We hiked for another 6 and half hours to make it to Tarapani.

We arrived around 1:30 in the afternoon so we still had tons of time to wander around and play games with the locals.  Surya and Nogin Ry taught me how to play Cannonball – all of the kids in Monastery love this game so it was fun to learn.  We played teams and I sucked for the first couple of hours but gained Cannonball legend status when I managed to sink a near impossible shot that won the game for Surya and myself.  I really enjoyed just having the afternoon to hangout, relax, and have fun with the locals…my Nepali is getting better and better!

As for an update on the pain level – surprisingly I don’t hurt too much right now but there is just a general achy-ness…I anticipated much worse by this point!

DAY 4 – Tarapani to Tatopani

Urgh – we hit a wall of exhaustion today.  The hiking was mostly steeply downhill for hours which is almost as hard as the uphill and made my knees hurt.  At the end we had a bit of steep uphill but nothing to killer.  All of these days of hiking for more than six hours each day though finally caught up – by the end of the downhill today my legs were all wobbly and unsteady.  When we got in, we didn’t even get to rest before heading to the hot-springs nearby – Surya had been taunting us with the prospect of relaxing in the hot water baths so we all trooped down to the river where the hot-springs spurt forth.

The hot-springs were actually a lot better than the three of us anticipated!  They had three pools that you could relax in and then some little pipes coming out of the rocks so that we could finally shower off some of the caked on dirt from the past few days.  The only drawback – after sitting in the hot water for an hour my muscles were even MORE tired and yet I still had to hike 45 minutes back uphill into town…soooooooo tired…

It’s only 8:00p now but Cara and Helen are already fast asleep – we scarffed our dinner, nixed the plans to have a “last day celebration party,” and instead chose to turn in early.  Oh, and we STILL have not seen any mountains – just a brief glimpse again through the haze this morning at sunrise…what a bummer  :(

DAY 5 – Tatopani to Naya Pul

We are done and back at the Noble Inn!! We each took a shower straight off as soon as we got in – after days and days of more than six hours of hiking every day, I feel like I will have to soak myself in soap before the sweat and dirt will leave – not to be a princess or anything but, man, I hate being that dirty; it felt like it was seeping out of my pores!

Today was six hours of really fast hiking because we had to cover a lot of distance – but 95 percent of it was either downhill or flat, so it wasn’t too bad…after the first couple of hours though it wasn’t very pretty either…I guess by that point in the hike most people are still happy from the high of seeing the mountains and don’t care… :(

Anyhow, we all hit a wall of annoyance with our guide today and refused to keep singing the Nepali songs – Helen was really agitated by the hours and hours of repetitive singing so we instead opted to hike while singing everything from some Hootie and the Blowfish to Journey, and even a bit of Madonna thrown in for good measure.  Once we ran out of songs we played 7 Degrees – we really got good at tying Hollywood celebs to each other in three or four degrees instead of seven!

So, now that the hiking is over we have just tonight to scurry around and get ready for our Vipassana Meditation course tomorrow…or as we have nicknamed it, voluntary solitary confinement!

So, that was the end of the five days of trekking.  We headed back to the Noble Inn – a family-run guesthouse that we just loved to pieces and would recommend to anyone- and that night it rained bucket loads and wouldn’t you know that all of the pretty white mountaintops were visible off in the distance!  I guess now this gives me another reason to come back to Nepal – more trekking, and more teaching at the monastery for that matter.

I have a challenge to issue forth – as we were playing seven degrees the only one that totally stumped us was linking Michael Cera and Elizabeth Berkley in 7 Degrees.  So if you know how to play and you’re good at movies leave a comment linking them and I will give you mad props!  Oh, and you can’t cheat and use IMDb!  Cheers!

Our reward for the hike and one last hurrah before Vipassana: