I arrived in Nepal just over a month ago, with the vague
idea of going trekking. When in this neck of the woods, head for the Himalayas,
right?
My goal was more than a little ambitious - the Annapurna
Circuit trek is a 300km trek through the Himalayas around the Annapurna range
from Besi Sahar in the east, through the wheeze-inducing pass of Thorung-La, and then south to Naya Pul in the
south. It’s a trek that needs to be negotiated with more than a little care
because of the high altitudes, which can cause Acute Mountain Sickness.
Unfortunately, new road construction along the route is
despoiling the once pristine trail, bringing noisy, bouncing jeeps, zooming
motorcycles, and clogging dust clouds. And although the Annapurna Conservation Area Park (ACAP) is cutting new trails parallel but away from the road, the work will
take years to complete. Now’s the time to go, before this trek is fundamentally
changed.
The adventure started with a seven-hour bus ride through a series of nausea-and-vertigo inducing hairpin turns with narrow shoulders leading away
from the smog and chaos of Kathmandu. I was traveling with my friend Yuvash –
the brother of my best friend from college (who is the reason I’m even in this
pocket of the world, I originally came to Nepal to attend his wedding).
We stopped in the town of Mugling for a massive meal of dalbhat, Nepal’s national dish of rice, curried potatoes, greens, pickled chili
sauce and a spicy curry lentil soup. It came on a gleaming round serving
platter in small ordered piles. I stuck my fingers into the steaming clumps of
food and mixed it all together, eating with my hands along with the dozens of
other patrons of the restaurant.
From Mugling, the bus traveled to Besi Sahar, the last city
before the start of the trek. Unfortunately for trekkers (but not for Nepali
locals) the new road has already snuck its way north from Besi Sahar,
eliminating what was traditionally the first 2-3 days of the trek.
The next morning I took a spine-destroying jeep from Besi
Sahar to Chamje, where the road ends. I strapped on my backpack (which for all
the work that I’d done trying to make it as light as possible, still felt like
I was strapping an RV to my back), and started down a steep rock path behind
a train of pack-horses. I spent the day scrambling up and down the trail,
dodging the pack horses, listening to the melodious tinkling of their harness
bells (and trying to avoid the rank smells of their malodorous farts).
The path continued up through steep rock defiles to the
town of Tal, where I munch of curried vegetables and flat chapati bread, hot
and filling against the rapidly approaching afternoon chill. From there I spent
another two hours climbing steadily until I reached the mountain village of
Dharapani.
This became my pattern. In the morning, a fast breakfast and
a long hike, followed by a siesta to avoid the midday heat (which is formidable
in the high, thin, air). Later in the afternoon, the bite and pull of my pack’s
straps, and another two-four hour hike to a higher elevation and a guest house
where I spent the night.
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| On the way to Brahtang |
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| First snowy mountain sighting - look in the far left |
In Dharapani, I spotted one of the Annapurnas for the first
time, a gleaming white cone nestled in the long canyon that runs
north-northwest. The Annapurna Mountains, which sit squat in the middle of the
horseshoe of the circuit, have something of an august pedigree. They are huge, craggy snow covered peaks, the
highest of which is over 8,000 meters tall. (And the tenth highest mountain in
the world. I’m content having just walked around the beastie.) They were the
first Himalayan peaks of that height that Westerners were able to conquer. Maurice
Herzog and Louis Lachenal made the first successful ascent in 1950, in a
finger-chewing cold that claimed digits left and right. (It’s hard to imagine
how miserable that climb must have been – the pair didn’t have the benefit of
modern gear or supplemental oxygen – and both climbers lost all of their toes
from frostbite.)
Herzog’s spirit is still alive and well – the trek was
crawling with Europeans. I ran into Belgians and Frenchmen, a motley assortment of Czechs, a
German man with some friends from Kathmandu. Sadly, there was a distinct
paucity of adventuring Americans. In my two weeks in the Annapurnas, I only ran
into 3-4 other Americans who were trekking.
After the city of Chame – and there’s something disconcerting
coming to these wide open valleys inaccessible by road, but never the less
holding city-sized settlements – it started to rain. Fat, windy drops,
and leaden skies that blotted out the sun and send the temperature crashing from
the 80s to the mid 50s or 60s. We pushed through a series of apple orchards before arriving
in the tiny village of Brahtang. A few years ago, an avalanche destroyed the
whole place. Now, the town is a place of about six-seven structures, most in
different states of completion. The one hotel was a dusty, two story lodge that lacked
power, (but not extortionary room rates, which were four times everywhere else
we’d seen on the trek.)
That night was the first frigid night of the trek, probably
due to the rain and increasing altitude (I’d crossed above 2500 meters). The
landscape was changing too. Until Brahtang, I’d passed though the twisting
bamboo lined trails cut into rock walls above the Marsyangdi river, with views of
icy sky-blue streams rushing below us.
After Brahtang, the landscape widened out, the vegetation
started to get smaller, and the color changed, from rich blues and greens to
(gradually), a more khaki-mustard kind of brown. Yuvash and I (with an American and a
Malaysian I’d run into) made a steep trek up through a forest with huge views
of the Swargadwari Dande, a long curving ridge scraped smooth by eons of
glacial erosion. Locals here believe that they ascend to heaven from the top of
the behemoth.
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| Swargadwari Dande |
From there we passed through the village of Upper Pisang,
located 500 meters above the long curving trail to Humde (the last city on this
side of the pass with an airport.) Even though the trail wasn’t particularly
hard, it was a little disconcerting realizing I’d just passed the last bail-out
point.
It was time to push on to the crow’s peak village of Ghyaru –
but you’ll have to wait a day for that.
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