Trekking the Annapurna

Namaste!

This is the magic word in Nepal it is the only word you need to know.... It means hello, goodbye, thank you, no thank you and "really, no thank you, I do not want to buy that bracelet ". It was the first thing we learned when we arrived in Nepal and it was the last words on our lips as we left... This was easily the best family trip we have ever been on...


If you ever get a chance to hike in the Rockies or the Appalachians, West Coast trail ... with your family or significant other, do it! I believe that there are few activities that force everyone to experience everything together at the same time. Because of that, we all came away from this trip with many more shared thoughts, we got to know each other really well at this point in our lives.
I didn't realize how physically and mentally strong we all were. Every day everyone one was game for what ever obstacles presented themselves.

There is something very romantic-mystic about saying your going to Nepal. It sounds more spiritual than recreational. I guess the reality for us was a healthy mix of both... It was never club med but it was a definetly sensory fiesta.

We Flew Qatar to Delhi

Airport-Delhi at 3 am Doha time.

When we flew into Kathmandu we circled the airport 3 times and I could see a mountain, a very big mountain to the northeast... now there was no big sign, or flashing lights, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing bigger .... as far as the eye could see... it just had to be ... it had to be ...

Everest ...
at least I think it was.

When you walk into the Kathmandu terminal you notice how dark it is. It feels like you stepped into the late 1960's... Yes I remember them, somewhat.

Kathmandu International Airport

Kathmandu is very much like Sri Lanka only a little more crowded

"The family vehicle"... if you look closely you'll notice mom on the back, only dad gets a helmet??

All of Nepal has its electricity rationed. The juice is only on at certain times during the day and its not necessarily the most convenient times. Talking to other teachers who have been in many other countries, teaching, these rolling black outs are fairly common.Morning in Kathmandu is relatively quiet. It starts to get crazy at about 10 am and stays fairly crazy until 10 pm and then it goes quiet, like someone flicked a big switch somewhere.
We stayed in the Thamel district which is very tourist centered, relatively clean, lots of bargains, drugs, rip offs and loud music.
We booked at the Katmandu Guest House, very nice, cheap and very clean!

It was a fun area to hang out in with lots of good food ... The noise got to the old folks (me) after a while and I was glad that we weren't staying there more than a couple of days. People honk their horns incessantly. They will hammer that horn inches from you when your not paying attention. This will result in you jumping out of your skin, which, frankly, is a bitch to put back on. Its a very congested city, but all the same, its very interesting.

The next day we flew on a local turbo prop ( Yeti Airlines - honest ) to Pohkarra the third largest city in Nepal. The plane was smaller but felt safer than the big jet was on Kathmandu's "short" runway. The terminal was very dingy and crowded filled with tobacco smoke...

Terminal for local flights ... We are sooo fortunate in Canada

We landed at 11 am and had lunch by Phewa lake in Pohkarra with our guide Nara.

Lunch by the lake

Not sure what it is ... it just looked cool

Phewa Lake looked very inviting from the shore until you got real close. There is no shore line and the silt and mud took away from the lake's overall appeal.

Very windy drive to the trail head. We were all happy to get out of the van!

The Trail Head.. and 5 days of hiking ahead of us.

This is pretty close to the hike we did sarting at Nayapul and ending at Phedi. Ignore the dates.
The trail head is a village called Nayapul or New Bridge, which Breana is standing on.
Our first local contact, she wanted...sweets, all I had was 50 rupees, she was not impressed

and then we were off trekking at 1:30 pm

Our porter, the super human Gundraj all 5 foot 5 of him and his flip flops. Our guide Nara in the background who was even shorter... but the fitness of both was something else. Our porter carried about 50kg of gear, all our stuff, - 4 people worth, it was a feat that left us blown away.

The girls trying to simply stand with our load... no go.
I... have a bad back :) phew!

The trail follows a stream or river when you are down low. The surface you hike on is usually the uneven rock in the above picture. You are always mindful of where you place your feet to insure you don't roll an ankle.
Say cheese!
The trail is not just a a tourist path it is literally a highway for people and products. The products are hauled on the backs of people or if you are richer, donkeys, mules or ponies.

Along the trail, you routinely walk by people involved in the very mundane tasks of day to day life and its right there along the trail as you pass by.
A fishing hole!
There are also the not so mundane activities. This fellow is an ultra-marathoner. He is running over half of our hiking route, 71km round trip, without stopping. This includes some vigorous ascents. It would take us 3 days to cover the same distance. There were about 20 runners participating in this race, it was an impressive feat!
Our porter Gundraj was a machine. We would find him periodically on the trail catching his breath, pass him and then he would whip past us as we sat having a snack or a meal.
Hey pretty lady, can I buy you a beverage??
You are required to check in along your trek, for your own safety, they know when you left when you intend to arrive at your destination....
Our first evening was spent in a tiny little village called Tikhedungga. The girl in the tree was a good 3 meters off the ground, right below the window of our room in the tea house. Her family owns the tea house. She was picking the new shoots off of the tree. The shoots tasted kinda like rhubarb, its used in their cooking.
The villages along these trails are nothing more than a few teahouses that will offer you food and beverage, toilet paper and other basics ... That's about it. If you are lucky a village might have a litttle medical clinic run by a medical clerk whose credentials are vague at best... so don't get sick or hurt along the trip... unless you have a nurse with you :).


At the end of the day every teahouse hat this simple board with holes at the corners and poker chips. The porters would play a game like croakeno (??) where they had to knock their chips into the corner pockets.
The teahouses have very basic eating areas, picnic tables and benches.
Cheers! End of day 1!

Very basic kitchens, you might recognize the cook, she was in a tree a few pictures back.
As well, the whole region used the same menu in every teahouse and the prices were almost identical on similar items. Oddly enough the food was as diffferent as the cooks and seasonnings etc... could significantly change a meal. But as you would expect curry was the main fare... and it was cheap and filling. One thing that was really yummy was the tibetan bread. It was deep fried bread that was covered in sugar, it reminded of the beaver tails you can get at the Quebec winter carnival.
We considered a dip, just a little too chilly, yeah I know a real Canadian would have gone in... Qatar is making me soft.
This is day two. The valleys that you hike through are V shaped. There has been no ice age here like you see in Canada. The valleys are very narrow and steep.
We are just begining are first real climb here, day 1 was a warmer upper, day 2 was ok lets get down to business.

In the picture above we were probably two hours into our hike and yet you can see the blue roof of the teahouse where we spent our first night. It would be like climining the stairs of a skyscraper without a real break. We passed one poor fellow who was in his seventies, he was throwing up. He was with a group of seniors who eventually had to turn around and head back to the trail head.... It was too bad, we had talked to them all the day before and they were all very excited about their journey.

A rhododendron tree.
This is a rhododendron tree as well but obviously from under the canopy
In late march these trees go into bloom.

We just happen to be there at the right time. It was like being in Eastern Canada in the fall... a color explosion.
Once you get to altitude (1000 m +), you see these trees... in all directions, a feast for the eyes.
You can buy all kinds of stuff along the way the trick is to wait to see what the standard cost of things are. Every teahouse has a knick knack seller
This fellow was selling his wares, he was a refugee from Tibet he and his son were running a little business together, trying to scrape by a meager living.
Conor's purchase...
- That's not a knife!
.....
- Now that's a knife!
.....
The locals you see on the trip are all wonderfully pleasant, but they are almost all quite petite.
The kids were all fun and liked getting their picture taken ( i hope), as long as there was a treat involved. You could buy this banana flavored gum on the trail and that seemed to do the trick....
This next kid was voted by our team of experts as the cutest kid to ever walk the face of the planet... she was sooooooo tiny, like a little doll... she's in a previous photo with Breana.
The climb was straight up for 2 1/2 hours, switch back after switch back.
We are happy to be done!
The weather was warm mid twenties to low thirties when the sun was out.
We cooled off
We rested
Fortunately, we were frequently on covered trails.
Some times the going down was harder on the old bod then the going up..
End of day 2 Ghorepani
We spent the evening of day 2 in Ghorepani. We watched our porters and fellow hikers play a vigorous game of volley ball, I had a beer.
Basketball
The morning of day 3 we were up at 4:45 am and hiking by 5 am. The goal was to get to the top of Poon hill before the sun rose.
The climb was all in the dark with well over a hundred people on the trail. Everyone was carrying a flashlight of some kind. You could see this ribbon of light in the darkness as you weaved your way up the slope. The morning was crisp(2C) and the sky had just enough cloud to give the sunrise some color.
Conor with Machhapuchhre 7000 m or 23 000 ft (twin peak) in the distance
The mountain is called fishtail locals for obvious reasons when you see it up close.



Our new friend Mohammed from Iran played his drum as the sun came up... I kicked myself later for not video taping a clip.



It starts to get hazy early that's why you have to get up early, by noon the mountains are gone.
The Mountain behind us is the highest in the area called Dhaulagiri. At 8167 m ( 26 800ft) it is the seventh highest mountain in the world.
Here is Conor and our musical friend Mohammed walking down from the mountain after our heavenly early morning experience .
Mohammed was a very cool young man from Iran. We had several great conversations, it was interesting to hear how things are going in his country from just an ordinary guy. But Mohammed wasn't alone on they trip he brought some pals . This other guy we just started calling him JC and that doesn't stand for Jean-Claude. The guy just looked like.... well Jesus ... we began naming the rest the crew after the 12 disciples, it was hilarious.
together at last JC and Mohammed.
Did you know that you can eat rhododendron's, actually you pick the flower and suck the bottoms, its very sweet like honeysuckle.














yummy.
There were many of these minature goats along the way...

These are yaks
to the left that is.....
That's Conor below, sorry for the confusion, yes I know he is due for a haircut, but you know teenagers...

All kidding aside, I can't remember the last time Conor enjoted himself so much on a trip! He was a machine climbing up the hills leaving us all far behind.
Do you ever feel like you are in a scene out of a Harry Potter movie?? We had that feeling several times on our trip.
Steep and deep watch that first step its a lulu!
There are teahouses and then there are tea...Condos! This place had great restaurant.
We ran into another group that was headed to ABC or Annapurna base camp. Very nice youg group from the Birmingham England. One gentleman named Tucker or Tuck ... caught our daughter's eye as some sort of guru or bench mark, heaven forbid.

The Birmingham Bunch at the Tadapani teahouse ! Nice folks!
A standard room in tadapani 3 beds no bath or toilet but... 50$ for the night including an all you can eat meal with a brewski. After hiking all day the bed is irrelevant, I could have slept in the courtyard. The toilet was a hole in the ground with a buket of water at the side for you to rinse when you are done. Contrast that little tid bit of information with the observation that everyone and I mean everyone has a cell phone even our porter who march five days in "sport sandals"....

Our second to last day
we ended up stuck in a fairly intense thunderstorm which rolled through the valley we were traversing. Within seconds it went from spitting to downpour to deluge and finally hail. We were lucky to find this small shop with a wonderful family who just by chance knew our guide quite well. The fellow next to Breana is disabled while the boy is Down Syndrome. Our guide actually had some money for them that he was delivering from his boss.

Within the hour we were back on the trail down into the valley.

The Himalayas were like ghosts. They pop out of the mist and the haze for a few moments and then they were gone again!

These are hanging beehives. There has been an article on National Geographic about the Nepalese who harvest the honey from similar hives. They do so hanging from ropes.

We ended up getting quite close to these hives, That's me hanging on for all I'm worth!Look at all the honey I collected on my first try!
Naw I'm just joshing ya... That's not me... It's Breana ;)


Our last night was in a village called Landruk. At the head of the valley was Annapurna South
This was the view from our bedroom window :)

The view was picturesque and pastoral, and I thought peaceful. But later that evening there was a cacophony of noise outside. When I went to investigate I came across this bizarre ritual. The people were dancing and crashing on all manner of kitchenware. The dancers were all covered in masks and stuff, and I thought to myself ... cool. So i go to snap a couple of quick picks and this little ragamuffin grabs my sleave. I'm thinking this is actually a stick up or something judging from his "outlaw"attire. But he just pulls me over and gets me dancin' and chantin... I have no clue what I am doing or why, but hey,,,, whatcha gonna do when you're in the middle of the Annapurnas and you can't get the latest episode of "House" on the Tele.
You do a traditional "house" blessing dance instead.
Later that night Conor got a real pad bout of flu and was up all night. We had to hike the whole next day. I was so proud of him. He felt like absolute s..t but he toughed it out.
He threw up along the way but kept going. The next day both of the girls came down with the same ailment.It was nasty! I dodged that bullet ... my advice drink out of a bottle... always.
Nepalese agriculture, lots of terraces full of grains and veggies. They're quite beautiful.
Conor makes a new friend. The lil' guy kept head butting Conor's hand it was fun to watch.
A new tea house being built.Just like they have been doing it for hundreds of years.

Trails end day 5... We made it !
A well deserved swim late the next day in Phewa Lake
And a meal
The rest of the trip was the same as earlier, nothing else really to share Conor was feeling better and the girls started feeling worse. I actually waited until I was back to work before the bug took me down... You just gotta know how to time these things...

Here are a few pictures we took of Durbar Square in Kathmandu the day we left... This is the religious center of Kathmandu...