Annapurna Sanctuary Trek...
Trip Start
Mar 02, 2008
1
4
6
Trip End
Jun 07, 2008
Pokhara,
Nepal
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
...day one - we start walking, oh isn't it hard work, ouch my feet hurt, ooh look at the big hills, whoops i tripped over a rock, stop looking at the hills while i walk, gosh i'm tired, sleep...
...day two - we start walking, oh isn't it hard work, ouch my feet hurt, ooh look at the big hills, whoops i tripped over a rock, stop looking at the hills while i walk, gosh i'm tired, sleep...
etc etc..
Annie trying not to throw up... :)
. so no thanks, i'll write it hotch potch instead :)to start with, i better tell you what we did, where this trek is, and other salient facts that should help you visualise... especially as you'll get to see no photosd until i return to the uk and am able to throw them up online without waiting for hours in an internet cafe, paying a fortune for the privilege.
the annapurna conservation area is a vast (sort of) national park north west of kathmandu by a couple of hundred kilometres. it covers a number of the largest mountains in the himalayas, including annapurna I, annapurna II, annapurna III (aren't they clever with coming up with these names?), annapurna south (slightly better named), and the wonderful sounding machhapuchre (aka fishtail, because it has twin peaks which viewed from certain angles looks like a... yep, fishtail). these mountains form a huge circle at the top end of the modi khola valley, so that if you look down on it all it would be the shape of a keyhole.
can you visualise it? the bottom of the circle is the opening to the valley which drops down to the plains around pokhara and nayapal. there is another, more popular, trek called the annapurna circuit which goes round the outside of the circle. but we scoffed at this idea when we saw how many internet cafes were scattered along the way. with the multitude of trekkers who would be walking that way, it would be like going to town on a saturday afternoon (albeit a town with dirt tracks, forest, and snow).
so we decided to 'do' the annapurna sanctuary instead
I love this shot...
. i know i said i wouldn't write chronologically, but here's the itinerary (just to get it out of the way...)day 1: phedi-pothana
day 2: pothana-new bridge
day 3: new bridge-chhomrong (it's not a spelling mistake... they like double 'h's)
day 4: chhomrong-bamboo
day 5: bamboo-deurali
day 6: deurali (altitude acclimatisation day)
day 7: deurali (annie sick)
day 8: deurali-machhapuchre base camp
day 9: mbc (with a day trip to annapurna base camp)
day 10: mbc-bamboo
day 11: bamboo-jihnudanda (aka by us as 'jill dando')
day 12: jill dando-birethanti (then taxi back to pokhara)
right, that's that
Moonrise at Machhapuchare Base Camp
. if you want to know where these places are, you can research it on the web. i intend to buy a map of the area be3fore i leave so if i see you, i can show you on there what i have lamely tried to describe here.the travel up the valley, and the stay at base camp (mbc, not abc) were all at what are commonly known as teahouses. what they are though, essentially, are guesthouses. much the same as you'd get anywhere when you travel. sort of a bed 'n' breakfast without the free breakfast. and without any bed linen apart from a base sheet and pillow. and being made in the nepali style, with slate stone piled on top on each other (like a drystone wall in yorkshire etc) and windows and doors loosely fitted in, the wind (and more importantly, the cold) seeps in with hardly any obstruction. this is fine at the lower end of the valley where cold isn't really an issue, but up at deurali, and especially at mbc, we were frozen to the bone.
teahouses are very basic, as you can see. there is a common dining area, which has a single large table for eating. in the evenings, a gas stove is shoved under the table (which is surrounded by blankets to keep the heat in) so that trekkers can warm their legs (and cockles), and also any clothing which they are prepared to shed so it can be dried - usually very smelly socks. the food is standardised all the way up the valley, and the price is controlled by the 'tourism sub-mangament committee'. this means that trekkers pay a fair price, and no unscrupulous hostellers can charge outrageous fees because someone is struck halfway up a mountain with no other choice. the prices rise with the altitude, so that by the time you reach the base camps, most things have at least doubled. why should this be you ask..
St Dawn of the Himalayas
. have you asked? if not, please ask now or you'll have to skip the next paragraph.thanks for asking... i'll tell you. the porters, which you'll probably know as sherpas. the most famous being sherpa tensing who carried edmund hillary's spare socks and underwear when the ascended everest for the first time in 1953. but sherpa is the name of a hilltribe, like the akha or lahu in thailand. in our area the dominant hilltribe are called the gurung. anyway, the porters are the people who do all the hard work. an incredibly sturdy, hardy, overworkede and underpaid set of men, women and children. while we are huffing, puffing and complaining our way up a 500m steep hill with knees jarring and thighs screaming out in pain carrying our 8-10kgs of supplies, clothing and sleeping bags, these people are carrying on average 50kgs, every day of their lives, for much further distances than we can ever hope to achieve. all for the princely sum of about 300 rupees a day (approx 2.50quid or $5). i even saw some, trudging through the snows around mbc, just wearing flip flops - these are nepalese flip flops which are the most uncomfortable and painful things you can imagine). most porters have the 10,000 yard stare needed to cope with the daily grind up and down the hills, but if you greet them with a 'namaste' and a smile, the majority return it. and when they sit down at the end of the day, eating and sleeping in the same dining halls that we slurp our noodle soup in, they are full of jokes and fun, eat voraciously the dall baht (like an indian thali), and take the odd nip of bolied water and rum to warm their own cockles
The mandatory photograph
. the porters carry all the supplies needed to sustain life up in the hills. this includes: the ingredients for cooking - eggs, rice, noodles, most vegetables, spices, pizzas, burgers etc; products to sell to the trekkers and climbers - chocolate, drinks (soft and hard), toilet paper, cigarettes, snacks; building materials for new houses; gas bottles; live chickens; and everything necessary to keep the community and the trekkers in some semblance of comfort.these people are akin to the hilltribe people of thailand in other ways as well. apart from the hardiness and hardness of the life, they share a path back to a common ancestry, which hails from china. listening to their speech, i can hear echoes of akha, with similarities of tone, emphasis and mannerism. it made me feel a little homesick for chiang rai and mirror. there doesn't seem to be a discernible style of dress above the wearing of long, modest skirts from the women, traditional hats for the men, and earrings for just about everyone (girls get the extra bonus of a nose ring). but again, most people as you pass will smile happily as you 'namaste' them (i should say that 'namaste' basically means 'hello').
once we left the taxi which dropped us at the bottom of a dauntingly tall hill, and began to climb it, we didn't see another petrol driven vehicle until we reached birethanti twelve days later (apart from the odd helicopter). everything that had to be carried, delivered or despatched, was done by human effort, or pack mule. here's what both have to endure to get and down the valley...
remember the shape when looking down? now add to that impression by viewing the valley end-on from the start. so we look at the wide end of our keyhole. either side are hills (when does a hill become a mountain btw?) which rise usually 300-600m. don't forget that we started at around 1,300m above sea level. you have the modi khola running down the centre of the valley, but coming in from the sides, cutting their way down the hills are tributaries which flow into the main river. over the millennia, these have created deep gashs in the hills meaning that when you walk up the valley, you have to go 300m+ up one side of a hill, then usually 300m+ down the other, cross the tributary, and then start again. to get up the entire valley i think we must have crossed 10-12 of these, and then maybe 6-8 going back down (we took a different route back after new bridge which cut out a couple of the worst of these). it can get very dispiriting getting to what you think is the top of a hill to find that you have another 50m to climb. and then you get there and there's another 50m. and another. and when you do finally reach the summit, you look across the valley to see that you have to do it all again when you have jarred your knees to pieces getting down the other side of this one. but, by crikey, i'm fitter now than i have been in years, and slimmer than i have been in months.
there wasn't too much animal life that we saw. the outstanding sights for me were the eagles. because we were so high up (we finally peaked, at abc, at 4,130m - about 12,500ft), we often watched them wheel below us, on the search for prey, and on our last day as we descended down the valley one cruised above me, just a few metres over my head, casting a large shadow which made me look up. a beautiful awe-inspiring sight. the other notable wildlife, which only tom and dawn saw, were some hamster/mouse type animal. from their description it sounds like a jerboa (which is the emblem of the WWII british army division, the desert rats. but i have no eye deer whether they are also found in nepal.
fauna was strange in that even above 2,000m we saw not only bamboo growing, but also banana trees. scattered across the hills randomly, and sometimes complete forests, were rhodedendron trees with vivid magenta/pink flowers, which i understand is the national flower of nepal. i can see why. at the top, not much grew above 3-4 inches above the ground. the weather is too severe and the climate too harsh for much else to endure. there are the odd tree and bush which brave the elements, but it isn't until you return to the valley that there is enough protection to allow more plants to take a grip on the earth.
finally, i'll tell you about our reason for going. the whole point of the trek. we could see, occasionally, peaks of mountains as we ascended. usually fishtail, and annapurna I. but the others largely remained hidden from view, either due to the surrounding hills, direction of the valley, or clouds. as we got to mbc and entered the arena, the stadium, the inner circle of annapurna, we dropped our jaws at the sight. but even that was nothing compared to the view at abc. an extremely hard two hour climb, across rock, boulder, scrub, through snow, at sub zero temperatures, at an altitude which left me breathless and walking like a drunken 90-year old with asthma (stopping every few yards to suck in more oxygen while my lungs screamed and wheezed at the same time), ended with one of the most magnificent views i've had the honour to see first hand. it isn't until this point that you realise the scale of the mountains, or the beauty of the circle you standing in the middle of. it's difficult to describe, but if you can imagine walking into the centre circle of somewhere like wembley stadium or the bernabou, and increasing the size by 100 times, and swapping the stands for snow capped jagged mountains which dropped minor avalanches of melting ice, snow or rock as the sun beats down on them, and send an enormous glacier through the middle of it all which carves its way like an earthdigger sending up piles of dirt and stone to either side on its journey, and cover the whole scene in glistening snow... then you may have some idea of what i mean.
