Saturday, May 14, 2005

POST #2: Monkey Clients Checking In: Post-Annapurna Circuit



Lets start with some statistics:

�         Duration of Trek:  9 days + 1 acclimatization day
�         Kilometers Covered:  113 km
�         Low Point:  823 meters above sea level (m.a.s.l.)
�         High Point:  5500+ m.a.s.l.
�         Total Vertical Distance Covered:  ~11,000 m (34 times the height of the Eiffel Tower or 36,666 Sleep Country Mattresses stacked)
�         Number of Bridges Crossed: 17 (primarily suspension bridges)
�         Number of Shirts Worn:  1
�         Number of Pairs of Socks Worn:  2
�         Number of Underwear Worn:  Classified
�         Number of Showers: 5
�         Number of Insects Killed with our Stench:  Countless

Well, although these statistics aptly summarize our Annapurna experience, something more should be said.  We had two approximate itineraries in mind when we left Vancouver.  One was the ideal requiring everything to work like Swiss clockwork with no room for any mistakes or shortfalls.  The other was the fallback itinerary in case we could not realize the first.  The problems with the first one were primarily with regards to time constraints and included us being able to:
  1. find a porter
  2. organize our Chinese visa
  3. organize our permits for Everest
  4. arrange a trip to Tibet via Everest base camp
  5. arrange flights back from the trekking area
All of this had to take place in one day so that we would have just enough time to do a 14 day trek in 10 days and return back to Kathmandu just in time to leave for Tibet.  By some miracle we were able to arrange all this in the first afternoon just after getting off the 40 hour plane trip. However, even so everything still needed to work out perfectly.  We could not have any problems with altitude sickness, otherwise we wouldn�t finish the trek in time.  Nor could there be any clouds on the day of our flight, because the pilots fly by sight and would cancel the flight.  Buses had to run as planned, Maoists were not allowed to attack or blockade the roads and well, things simply had to go our way.  Otherwise our $476 US trip to Tibet would fall through and we�d be half a grand short.

So with this all said, lets actually say what happened.  We spent one soggy day in Kathmandu getting to know the town a little bit.  Next morning we set out for a small town called Besisahar from where our trek was to begin.  These 150km took nearly 8 hours to cover.  Thank goodness no one is forcing us to traverse Canada at this speed. 

The day following our arrival in Besisahar was the beginning of what became known to us as hell� well, maybe not that extreme since we did enjoy this self-imposed torture.  We�ve actually never been happier to get so sweaty and dirty.  For those who did the West Coast Trail with me you�ll know what it is to hike all day long � just add a few kilometers of altitude and you might start to get the picture, although it won�t be quite like it. 

Thankfully though we had Mukti to carry our 14kg bag � otherwise the trek might have taken us a while longer.  Well � we had just about everything during these 10 days � from gorgeous blue sky weather, to rain storms that made us despair of ever catching our flight and even snow when we were at 4800m.a.s.l. We got marriage proposals for ourselves as well as our younger siblings � with the kid offering to wait 6 or 7 years until my sister turns 17.  We had kids grabbing my camera away when they realized that turning the little black wheel will display the remainder of the photos and really rude Israelis bargaining for 5 rupees discount in hostels � the equivalent of maybe 10 cents.  Overall we loved it.  The people were incredibly friendly, the food in most places was amazingly tasty considering the fact that it was generally prepared on fires (imagine eating freshly made spring rolls), or having freshly baked cinnamon rolls at 3400 m.a.s.l.

We stank like hell though � there was no point changing shirts � plus we didn�t pack any to reduce the weight that our porter had to carry � nor was there any point in changing socks.  As the altitude got higher it got way too cold to even attempt to shower so we just learned to live with it.  The last couple of days when we were sleeping over 4000 meters were the toughest.  Hard to breathe, always short on air, exhausted within a couple of steps� Others were suffering from miserable headaches (those only plagued us a tiny little bit), and from sleep deprivation as well as loss of appetite, yet we couldn�t complain about any of these.  All in all felt quite good.  Did a whole bunch of acclimatization hikes to make sure we were fine.

The final ascent day was also not as bad as we thought.  We hiked up the last 600 meters in altitude to Thorong La Pass reaching the marker of 5416 meters.  Yet this was not satisfactory enough for us.  So we climbed even higher up a slope of loose and slippery pebbles up to over 5500m.  When we finally made it back down our porter laughed and nicknamed us his �Monkey Clients�.  Unfortunately, the ascent wasn�t the hardest part of the day.  Rather the 1600 meters that we now had to descend proved to be a more grueling ordeal than anything we had gone through so far.

After the 8th day of hiking we had only one more day left to get to Jomsom from where we were hoping to fly.  Our original plane ticket  was scheduled for May 13th, but when we realized that this was a Friday we decided to move it up by one day.  Hence May 12th we concluded our trekking experience in Nepal and arrived after a 16 minute flight in Pokhara � a lakeside tropical town.

There we went climbing through a bunch of caves � one famed for thousands of bats living in it (we saw 1).  We stumbled into it with our own little puny flashlights thinking them to be strong enough (which they may have been had it been a small and enclosed space).  In the end the greatest adventure was finding the way out and fitting through the small hole that they called an exit.  Paulina barely made it through yet somehow we got out, only to agree to go to some more caves with a pre-world-war-one German cave fanatic who would pull out his Leica and 20 different kids of flashes every 5 minutes to photograph the gray walls of the cave�. With that run on sentence out of the way�  But really, it was fun and well worth it � not anything that I could compare with the caving in Brazil, but still a blast � minus the tumble I took while trying to escape the storm and keep my camera dry.  Try to picture this:  me sprinting, covering my camera with my little shirt and my body, just about to reach the cover of a little hut, about to take the last leap and my foot sliding on the wet mud and stones with me sprawling all over the place camera making a loud bang.  I got up quite fast, with everyone asking me about my shoulder and hip that hit the ground quite hard, yet all I could think of was: Is the Camera OK? Wiping the mud off of it with any semi-clean part of my shirt that I could find and eventually borrowing Paulina�s shirt for that purpose.  So now I was mud covered from head to toe and this was the only clean shirt that I had been saving all Annapurna Circuit long to wear after we finished the trek�

Well� Pokhara was relaxing.  We took a row boat out onto the lake.  Washed our clothes and then sat in the room in our undergarments watching our pants dry (since we had nothing else to change into), drank beer, watched very bad pirated copies of DVDs and spent money on souvenirs. 

Today we took another 8 hour bus that covered 202 km back to Kathmandu and upon our arrival here bumped into a couple men checking into a hotel with polish writing on the back of their shirts.  �Zdobywcy� in a �Zywiec� logo.  We approached them, agreed to meet up for dinner and chat and then were informed that they are part of a group preparing to film a show here in Nepal along with Krzystof Wielicki � one of only a handful of Poles who has summitted every 8000 meter peak in the world and the only Pole to summit Everest in Winter.  Well� in about an hour we�ll get to hang out with them and we�ll let you know how that goes.

Till next time.  We're off on an 8 day Jeep trip into Tibet via Everest on May 17th, so don't expect to hear from us again until May 24th.


Kasia and Paulina


PS:  A number of other Nepali Facts:

  • average income in Nepal is $100 US a month � many make a lot less
  • gas prices are 56 rupees per liter ($1.01 CAD � so stop complaining!!!)
  • most marriages are still arranged here
  • it takes 8 hours to travel 150 km in a bus that passes many other vehicles along the way
  • they really like their food spicy




_______________________________________________________________________
Kasia:  Off in Asia - from Nepal to Singapore and Adventure in between!
Blog/Travel Journal:  http://travelingtheworld.blogspot.com/
Photos:  http://nttconsulting.net/kasia/gallery/album01

posted by Kasia Koltunska @ 5:57 a.m.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Free Hit Counters