Chest goop in Manang - Part three

I woke with a start, almost choking, and bolted out of bed, moving for the bathroom with determination and a little bit of panic. Once inside, I almost immediately started coughing – wet, goopy hacks, until a wad of malicious green goo rocketed out of my upper respiratory passages and collided with a wet “thwack” against the white porcelain.

I had been worried about altitude sickness from the beginning of the trek. But my biggest challenge ended up being not the thin air, but a vicious little beasty that took up residence in my lungs while I was sleeping inGhyaru. Perhaps it was the cold, or unsanitary conditions, or the dry mountain air, but when I left Ghyaru, I was feeling off-balance, and I my voice had the rasp of a middle aged jazz crooner whose vocal cords have marinated in a lifetime’s abuse of cigarette smoke and whisky.

The trail to Manang, the capital of the district below Thorung-La, was another day of beautiful trails. I traveled upwards overlooking Ghyaru, which in the distance looked like a little pile of scattered bricks against a patchwork of barley fields and denuded hills.

But I couldn’t really appreciate the view. I found my energy sapped, and I’d started to cough, weird chest rattlers punctuated by little phlegm missiles. Already tired by the ever-more thinning mountain air, I was losing steam faster and faster.

The trail to Manang continued through Ngawal, with its lush green hills and temples. In the middle of town, a massive tree stood guard over the main line of prayer wheels. It curved through a long plain punctuated by scattered pines and pint-sized coniferous bushes, and past weird otherworldly rock formations.

On the road to Manang

Then, to Mungi, where I gulped down a glass of sea-buckthorn juice, made from a Himalayan berry, which (in juice form) tastes like a cross between a mango and an orange. Half an hour later my friends and I reached Braka, and stopped for lunch at a local bakery. Heaven – which we demolished with almost maniacal efficiency – came in the form of a collection of pies, croissants, and cinnamon buns.

We lolled in the sun for a few minutes, loathe to shoulder those packs once again. But finally, we threw them on, and made the last short dash to Manang, 3500 meters up, isolated from everything.

The road into Manang

The city – basically one long track filled with trekking hotels, a small cultural museum, and a bunch of shops hawking everything from laundry soap to knee braces to a schizophrenic assortment of books (I found everything from Hunger Games to the philosophical teachings of the Dalai Lama).

Luckily, it also had a small health post of the Himalayan Rescue Association of Nepal, where the next day (after a phlegmy night) I was able to buy some penicillin. The doctor there forbade me from trekking for a day or two, so I cooled my heels in the Tilicho Hotel (named after the world’s highest lake, about a day’s hike from the city, and which I was NOT able to see because of that chest infection).

Yuvash and I spent the time downing garlic soup and dal bhat, and getting to know some of our fellow trekkers, principally among them, Lenny and Ittai. Lenny was an Australian stricken with wanderlust (he’d already worked his way through Thailand, Burma and quite a bit more of SE Asia – and he was planning to go to Europe after the trek). And Ittai, was a sardonic long-haired Israeli with an infectious laugh sense of humor and bawdy wit.

Some of the scenery just outside of the city

We spent three days playing chess and drinking tea while I waited for the meds to kick in. Finally we set out for the town of Letdar, and Thorung-La (though that was still three days away). The pass loomed large, something to get over and past. That’s how I was feeling about the trek in general, for a few days. Those once pristine mountains, which had filled me with awe, didn’t do anything for me.

“Oh, more mountains,” I thought.

Yuvash shared my apathy.

“I just looked down and walked,” he told me after one long day’s trek.

But our collective indifference would evaporate the next day after we passed Yak Kharka.

Headed higher!