POKHARA, Nepal - To say the bus had bad suspension would be to imply it had suspension at all; it was the most rickety thing with four wheels I have seen this trip (it’s a high bar). A cockroach greeted us when we arrived in our thinly padded seats. When matched with the 470-mile string of craters masquerading as a highway from the Indian border to Pokhara , the 30-foot jalopy made for a grim 13 hours. In the midst of a snooze I awoke in mid-air – the driver had maintained his speed through a series of Himalaya-sized potholes – just in time to smash my head on the roof.
There couldn’t have been a worse start to one of my favorite journeys.
The Annapurna Circuit climbs more than 15,000 feet, through jungles, pine forests, and dizzyingly high alpine deserts ringed by glaciers up to the 18,000-foot Thorong La Pass. On the way you pass grizzled old mountain men in flip flops carrying 100 pounds on their backs (and sometimes they pass you), shaggy yaks, ornate Buddhists shrines, and villages of stone clinging to mountainsides.
And, after a few days of delay due to general strikes in the weird, burnout-hippie town of Pokhara, we were on the Annapurna Circuit trail, with no guide and no porter, heading up …
TREK DIARY DAY 1: The spacesuit gets a test flight (Besi Sahar to Bulhebulhe, 2706 to 2772 ft.)
It begins and it's a scorcher.
Our roommate the first night.
BESI SAHAR – Nepali bus operators are savvy enough to know Westerners like seat assignments and disorganized enough to simply make them up. After some initial confusion, everyone had a seat and we were on our way to the jungle lowlands, a steamy start to a 15,000 foot climb.
Ahead of the trek, Connie and I have augmented our gear with a couple cheap ponchos – I chose bright silver for its spacesuit quality.
We started paying for bad karma early – 30 minutes down the hot, dusty road that provides an inauspicious start to the trek, the skies rumbled and burst. The spacesuit came out, worked admirably, and got us to a crumbling wooden tea house that provided refuge from the rain for both us and the largest spider I have ever seen.
TREK DIARY DAY 2: Walk it till it breaks (Bhulebuhle to Jagat, 2772 ft. – 4290 ft.)
One at a time.
Terraced agriculture in the lowlands.
More agriculture. Actually, it grows wild, and this patch was marked on our map, along with waterfalls and points of historical interest, as 'fields of marijuana.'
BHULEBHULE – Eye-achingly early in the morning (I’ll dispense with that – every morning was early on the trail), we are jolted awake by the scariest bridge I have ever seen over some serious game-over rapids. This comes at about minute five of the hike.
It’s a wooden contraption, in roughly the style you built those toothpick bridges back in grade-school with similar engineering finesse. The ends are fastened to – will I’m not sure, exactly, but they were kind of shoved under some big rocks. Remanants of the former bridge dangled next to it, highlighting the Nepali philosophy on maintenance we would come to know and fear: use it until it breaks, replace, repeat. Don’t be the one to break the bridge.
Frankly, it was a thrilling way to begin and once past the fear I was able to appreciate the gray-blue, glacial waters rushing by in the river (waters that we would follow for many miles to come).
Our first glimpse of the high Himalaya in the form of snowy, triangular Annapurna II (the Annapurnas go up to IV and also include Annapurna South – someone got lazy). By 11 a.m. we crave that distant snow – still in the jungle, we’re sweating through our clothes.
Relief comes in the ancient toll road city of Jagat, where put our packs down for the night and coincidentally stay at the same tea house as two of Connie’s co-workers who she hadn’t seen in four years. Really. It becomes a good excuse to have a few Gorkha beers.
TREK DIARY DAY 3: An ass-kicking (Jagat to Dharapani, 4290 to 6270 ft.)
Day of the donkeys.
'It's so beautiful.'
This man has a long way to go.
The (former) Maoist insurgents - now your friendly government partner (more on them later).
An accurate description of rakshi.
Working on a chyang-over.
JAGAT – Trudging up mountains is hard work, but having to stop is even worse. Today, there were many commercial breaks.
The commerce came in the form of a ceaseless parade of mule trains, carrying goods and trekkers’ gear – an integral part of everyday life in a land with no roads, but frustrating nonetheless. Every time the heavily laden beasts clopped by, we had to move to the side of the narrow trail. The fresh mountain air was cut by dung and stale donkey farts.
As soon as we walked free of the traffic jam, a frantic Nepali soldier to “Must go quick.” Through pantomime and broken phrases he made clear that the rock-face across the valley, towering above the trail was about to be blown to bits. “Twenty minutes,” he said.
Bewildered by exactly what was going on – the Maoist insurgency is long over – and knowing the care-free attitude Nepalis tend to take when it comes to safety, we made serious haste. When we arrived at the “safe zone” after a tortuous and nerve-wracking climb, we found some soldiers with radios that apparently worked. Exhausted and confused, we asked if we could stay and watch them blow shit up. They happily agreed and explained it was part of a road-building project.
And man did they blow shit up. A massive puff of smoke was followed by a thunderous bowel-shaking rumble, and the mountainside disintegrated, sending a cloud of debris into the valley, onto the other side and onto the trail where we thought the friends we had met the night before might be.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ the soldier in charge said. It was something, though ‘beautiful’ seemed an odd adjective.
After a frustrating day we met up again with Connie’s old friends and a couple of strays they had picked up along the way (we ended up hiking on and off with all of them the rest of the way) at that night’s tea house. They had survived the explosion, though no thanks to the soldiers. All the danger and donkeys called for some drinks and it was time to go local, so we ordered some chyangs (silent ‘y’ hard ‘a’) and rakshis.
Chyang is the local millet beer, milky white, and slightly sour, with a mild kerosene aftertaste. Actually, not bad. Rakshi is the local ‘rice wine,’ though it has nothing to do with wine, and is murky clear with floating bits. It smells like sake and tastes like burning. Connie (understandably) couldn’t finish hers, so I made it a double.
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