Nepal

Nepal-April 23rd 2015

I flew into Nepal from a connecting flight through Kuala Lumpur. I was almost sure that Nepal would be similar to my experience in India but decided to stay positive and hope for a good change. As I waited to board our flight I met a few trekkers who were going to Nepal to do the Everest base camp trek and I started chatting with them. They seemed as unprepared as I was so it made me feel a little better, ha ha. As I chatted I noticed a local from Nepal starring at me. Oh boy, was this going to be India all over? He starred at me for about 20 minutes while I talked to this guy from Australia-so strange I thought, ha ha. I boarded the flight and sat next to a younger Nepali boy who was a factory worker in Malaysia. He mentioned to me that he didn’t speak much English because he had learned Malay instead as that was commonly spoken in the factory. He asked to see my passport and studied the pages intensely looking at all the stamps I had accumulated during my world travels. During this time I was thinking about Vicky and Erika. The two girls I had been keeping in touch via Facebook, who I would be doing a trek with in the Annapurna region of Nepal. I wondered how they would be and if they would be very pleasant trekking partners. The flight landed and we proceeded to immigration to get our on arrival visas.

I had met another guy who was going to the same hostel as me and I figured it would be best to split a cab. I needed to exchange some money and grab a sim card at the airport, which I proceeded to do. The
vendor “created” a last minute extra 100 rupee charge for getting the sim card and called me crazy in Hindi as he thought I didn’t understand. I told him in Hindi that I wasn’t crazy and he should be more polite to his customers. He was shocked. I then realized that I could use Hindi in this country, which was a nice feeling. We got into the cab, which was an extremely old geo metro sh*t box. As we drove away from the airport, my door opened. Oh geeze, were we going to die during this trip? Ha ha. I closed the door, laughed about it with the driver my fellow hostel mate. There was another guy in the front passenger seat. Who was he? Now I realized who he was. He worked for a tour agency and was trying to get us to buy some trekking package with him, pressuring us to get a guide. I just told him sorry that my plans were already arranged. He kept persisting, something very common of an Indian man I thought. Eventually I told him to turn our attention to Nepal and tell us a little bit about what we were seeing, the effects of the earthquake, how tourism was doing, etc. He seemed bitter about the fact that more and more tourists were doing self-guided treks and felt like they didn’t need a guide. We got to the hostel, paid the driver, and I went searching for Vicky. She was staying at this hostel and Erica was at another hotel. Wow, she was so pleasant and nice. I wanted to stay with her to chat but some people I had just met wanted to go out and grab a sandwich and a beer. We enjoyed our first Everest beer on our rooftop patio chatting away about trekking options and I met a group next to us who just finished volunteered at Allhands in Nepal building houses for earthquake victims. I said good night and good luck to the future trekkers who I had just met as I had to catch a bus in 5 hours with Vicky and Erica to Pokhara.

I woke up, took a shower, grabbed my stuff, and met Vicky in the hallway. We met Erica as we walked to the bus stop and exchanged pleasantries. We got to the bus, it was pretty empty for this 8 hour journey ahead of us but we couldn’t complain as we had lot of leg room and peace. We chatted during the bus ride when we weren’t falling asleep and stopped off to try local treats hoping our stomachs wouldn’t take a turn for the worst (seeing tigers as we grew fondly in calling our upset stomachs). We reached Pokhara and there was a driver waiting for us from the hotel we would be staying at. That was a nice surprise. We checked into the hostel, got a room with three single beds, and set out to explore the city. We loved the main street, it reminded me of a ski resort type of town. We decided to chat about what treks we would do in the time we all had out here. Erica needed to be back for her flight which left on May 11th. Vicky had lots of time except her brother was coming on the 8th or 9th to join her for a trek. I didn’t have any time lines in mind so I was easy to go with whatever plan. We met with Raju the owner of the hotel and discussed possible treks with him. Erica really wanted to do the Poon hill hike and possibly ABC (Annapurna Base Camp). I really liked the idea of the Annapurna Circuit as it was a longer trek that many of my friends had done. Vicky seemed to be leaning towards the circuit but wanted to see Tilicho lake. A stunningly beautiful aqua green blue lake near the Thorung La Pass of the Annapurna Circuit. Wehummed and hawed for a while. Erica was thinking she might do ABC and Poon hill instead since her time was limited. Raju then told us it would be possible to do the circuit, we would just have to take a jeep to a town called Chame. That would cut 4 days off the circuit and Erica would have enough time to get down. If we were going to do this plan, it meant we had to leave tomorrow, and I needed to get a few key supplies. You know, like a water bottle, maybe a sleeping bag, gloves, etc. We also needed to get our trekking permits right away so we set off to get those right away. I toyed with the possibility of getting a guide, I know Vicky was opposed to the idea but I felt since this would be my first real trek, it would be helpful to get someone who could help me carry some stuff, guide us, and maybe help in case of an emergency. I asked Raju if he had anyone in mind. He recommended the guy sitting across from us, but he didn’t look like good times. I told Raju our guide has to be entertaining, fun, help push me when I feel like I’m going to do, speak English and be good times. He made a call right away and told us a guide was coming to meet us and if we liked him we could hire him on the spot. Within a few minutes, Bishal walked in. He seemed pleasant, cute, maybe a little shy at first, he had guided for 7-8 years, and was from the North Eastern part of Nepal. We chatted a little bit until I realized he spoke Hindi, which was good too. He agreed he could keep us entertained and tell us jokes so I asked if he’d be ok with a trek anywhere from 11-25 days not knowing how I’d feel or if I’d change my mind during the trek. He said yes immediately. I thought it was a bit strange that he could agree to any time frame, but I figured he was young and probably wanted the work. I showed him the amount of stuff I was bringing and if he thought I’d need anything else. Raju and him agreed maybe a sleeping bag liner would be sufficient for the trip and a sleep bag wasn’t needed. Bishal said he could carry all the stuff, about a little more then half of what I was going to bring. I was delighted that I wouldn’t have to die on this trek. We gathered the rest of the supplies and the forty some odd Snickers bars and granola bars I had brought. Apparently Snickers are the best to bring on a trek because they are the lightest most calorie dense snack you could consume. Bishal didn’t know this yet, but he was the one who’d be carrying all these lovely treats.

The next day, we set off to Besisahar with Raju’s driver to meet the jeep that would take us to Chame. Vicky and I had taken some Dramimine a drug that would help with motion sickness and thank god we did. That was the craziest jeep ride I’ve ever taken. The driver crammed as many of us into the jeep as humanly possible. There were 3 people included the driver in the front. 4 of us in the back, and 10 riding
in the cab. The driver was ridiculous, screaming and shouting a long the way at people he saw. He reminded me of my crazy Uncle Billy, funny, but a bit insane. He had a random mix of songs like Celine Dion’s Titanic which was gladly belted from the top of our lungs and some Indian Bollywood Hindi love songs. The girls were in physical pain most the ride as they didn’t have the most comfortable of seats basically on top of each other. I thought we might have a good chance of dying on this jeep ride as it hugged the cliffs of the Himilayan mountain range closely. As you peered outside the window you could see the cliff edge and the meandering river below, beautiful but terrifying at the same time. I have no idea how the people in the cab were able to manage the ride in any comfort. After 8 hours we arrived in Chame and got out of the jeep. Bishal had already selected the tea house we’d be staying at and boy, it would be the first of more increasingly painful cold nights on the this trek. We ordered dinner, ate, and head to bed. I managed in my silk liner and two blankets but wished I had brought a sleeping bag. We woke up, ate breakfast, and left the tea house around 8am.

Vicky and Erica were carrying their own bags which I was impressed with. I wanted to do the same but knew that for my first trek it would be too physically exhausting for me. Especially since I just came from drinking and eating my face off in Myanmar, Malaysia, and Thailand. I probably should have purchaseda hiking backpack meant for trekking but instead went with my world travelling pack. I just kept thinking of the words my friend Matt who I had met in Myanmar had told me. He said, “If you can walk, you can do this circuit.” I now realize having completed the trek that it was a bit far fetched to think that. I mean, you have to be in decent physical shape, have proper hiking shoes, and maybe have had carried a heavier backpack before. We all exchanged stories and talked during our trek. We all were silent during uphill battles. Well I’m sure Bishal could have talked since he was a man of the mountain but maybe decided to let us focus on breathing ha ha. I hiked up one hill, got to the top, and felt dizzy. This was already the highest altitude I had ever been in, I thought, what have I gotten into? Well there was no turning back now. I wasn’t gonna admit failure now, I never have, and I wasn’t going to begin today. I was taking my daily doses of Diamox which was for high altitude trekking. It would prevent from acute mountain sickness, headaches, nausea, etc. I had to take more then a few minutes to breath up top. I could see it in Erica’s face though. She was thinking, “what is this girl doing, she’s never trekked or done anything like this.” Ha ha ha..I knew that if it was too much for me that I wouldn’t put my health at risk and go back down. We continued to trek and went through the small tea houses through Lower Pisang, Manang, Yak Kharka, Thorung Phiedi, Thorung La Pass, Mukitnath, Kagbeni, Jomson, Marpha, Tatopani, Shikha, Gorepani, Tadapani, Poon Hill then back to Pokhara

One of my favourite places with Gangapurna lake in Manang. It was stunning. This bright blue green glacier lake. That’s the lake in the featured photo of the blog. The  view from the lake was breath taking as well. It was like you were in a different world. Each tea house was unique and different. They all had pretty good food but there were days were my stomach was not agreeing with what I had eaten. I had began adopting the policy of eating plain boiled eggs, ginger tea, and plain white toast in the mornings before we set off to limit the chances of a seeing “tigers” attack. Erica has told us a very memorable story that she had experienced in Rajasthan, India when she visited a few weeks prior. Her friend had eaten some foods that upset her stomach a for a couple of days she would spend a lot of time on the toilet. The morning that Erica and her friend decided to do a tiger safari in the jungles, Erica had asked her friend if she was ok to do the safari. Her friend agreed and they went off into the jeep. Of course right at the moment when they had spotted a tiger and the jeep was parked, her friend’s stomach was giving her problems. She got up told the tour guide she had to get off the jeep right now to “go”. He wouldn’t let her get off the jeep due to obvious safety concerns since the tiger was there. She pushed her way off the jeep, went around the back of the jeep, and did her business. The tiger didn’t seem to notice and she got safely back onto the jeep. From this story and this story alone, we got the concept of “seeing tigers”. A much nice saying to say instead of, “I’ve got diarrhea” ha ha.

We were worried checking the weather forecast every night to make sure that we weren’t going to wake up in an unexpected blizzard. I wasn’t prepared with heavy duty hiking boots so I was afraid of gettinginto a blizzard and having frozen feet. The other girls were worried about their timelines. Erica had to get back to Pokhara by a certain day to catch her flight out of Nepal to home to start her new job. Vicky had to meet up with her brother during the Poon Hill hike since he had left California after her. Bishal had assured us that if there was a blizzard then we would just hole up in a tea house and wait for the storm to clear. It made the most sense to me since in 2014, 43 trekkers died in Nepal during this freak blizzard and 21 specifically in this circuit. Some of them couldn’t make it to tea houses in time and froze on the path while others decided to leave the guest houses and try their luck out in their elements. A very sad tragedy none the less.

There was a point in the hike where we all went silent as we carefully negotiated through a side of a very
narrow mountain pass. We saw signs, “Danger, Rock Fall Area.” One wrong slip up and we would be plummeting down the side of a mountain cliff to our deaths. We looked up for the goats we saw in a village earlier because it is the goats which cause rock slides sometimes. Thankfully none of the goats had followed us to this area. Bishal had told us about a story of an Israeli girl he had to save who got caught in a rock slide years earlier. Her friends had left her and she was crying underneath an overhang hoping none of the loose rocks/boulders would crush her. He ran out, grabbed her and brought her to safety.

Hypoxia was a real concern here and I made sure to take my diamox pills to prevent it. Bishal had mentioned maybe about 10-15% of his guests were unable to complete the trek for various reasons including injury like bad knees or severe head aches. He mentioned altitude sickness was something some of his guests from the Netherlands would get only because they are born at sea level and use to the elevation gain. He told us a sad story about a Korean trekker who had ignored all signs of his altitude sickness and stopped listening to his porter to slow down. Bishal had run into this trekker and his porter and told him to slow down as well. He This poor trekker had died of hypoxia at a guest house near Thorung La Pass while coughing up blood, falling off a pony while heading down and just succumbing to the hypoxia. Bishal would ask us from time to time if we were feeling ok and if a headache was forming for us to slow down. The higher we got, the colder the showers got until the point where we could no longer shower at -15 degrees Celcius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) in High Camp (Thorung La Pass). That was a cold night, an extremely cold night. I needed to rent a hot water bag to keep my fingers warm so they wouldn’t freeze. No fires can be lit at that altitude because you have already hiked far passed the tree line. No more trees grow at a certain altitude because there is not enough oxygen.  To bring trees up for fuel that high would mean an expense of using donkeys. We woke up at 3am to begin our challenging 9 hour hike over the pass. As I left our guest house, I looked up at the sky and saw the stars. They were the most beautiful I have ever seen in the world. With no light pollution the stars lit up the sky, they were breathtaking. We were extremely tired from our hike the previous day and this last hike proved to be quite challenging. Thankfully my muscle memory from all those years of playing soccer kicked in after day 4, so I wasn’t in terrible pain and got no blisters on my feet.
We made it to the top of Thorung La Pass, an elevation of 5416 meters which is 17,700 feet one of the highest treks in the world. It was hard. It was like walking on the moon. With every heavy breath you took, you would take one step. It seemed impossible but slowly yet surely we made it. The lack of oxygen in the area was quite apparent. We assembled near the prayer flags/signs and took photos of ourselves and our accomplishment. Bishal had let us stay up top for around 20 minutes before he told us we should head down. You can’t stay in this area for too much longer without suffering from the side effects of lack of oxygen like headaches and even worse hypoxia. I was so happy to have completed that pass but I knew the road towards to next village would be extremely hard physically. We made it down slowly and I was the slowest in the group trailing behind because my knees were in severe pain. We were going down some very steep gravel paths and every once in a while one of us would slip but regain our balance. We stopped for a quick lunch at the first tea house we saw and had to hike one more hour into Muktinath. It was no longer cold as we approached the town and the heat seemed unbearable. We thought, “We are almost there, almost there.” It seemed to take forever to get into the town but we finally arrived, checked into our guest house, and showered while stripping layers of clothing off. I had worn every piece of clothing I had brought with me because it was very windy at the top of Thorung La Pass and cold.

We took the next day off to do nothing but let our muscles relax. I think Bishal was also happy to have the day off to do whatever he pleased. The next day we decided to begin the journey to trek through Kagbeni, there we stayed at the famous “Yak Donalds” restaurant and guest house. I met Elaine from Brasil at the restaurant and this woman is an amazing photographer. She goes to remote locations to photograph tribes and does an incredible job. Maybe one day I’ll meet up with her to travel together.

The views as we passed the Mustang Valley were incredible. Like something out of Planet Earth and I couldn’t believe I was viewing these enormous valleys which were carved through by meandering rivers. We walked through Jomson and into Marpha which was a beautiful town with uniform painted white walls. There we met a lovely girl American named Jessica who started up a day care for the children of Marpha. She was so dedicated to helping and spent 9 months a year in Nepal and spoke Nepali. She really opened up our eyes to being selfless. After that day we head to Tatopani for a swim in the local hot springs then onwards to Shikha, Gorepani, Tadapani and finally Poon Hill. The stairs on the
way to the guest house near Poon Hill were excruciatingly painful for me. My knees were wondering what I was doing every day for 4-5 hours and why I was doing it. There was one point, where I turned to Bishal and asked him how much longer to the top? He said 8 more minutes and then he would take my backpack for me. I told him no. I didn’t just hike 4-5 hours today to have the last 8 minutes taken away from me. He patiently walked up the rest of the stairs with me even though I was probably going the pace of a turtle. At least I completed it I thought. The Poon Hill hike was not very rewarding as we woke up at 3am to hike it. The reward was suppose to see all of the Annapurna Himalayan mountain range but we only met the clouds that covered it. It was this hike where Vicky had met her brother Alan. It was nice to meet Alan and the friends that he had hiked up to Poon Hill with. They included Caleb, Mike, Roos, Stefen, and Ellen.

After the hike in Poon Hill, we head down with Erica to another village before we were heading to
Pokhara. Vicky was with her brother and the other group hiking to Annapurna Base Camp. I was
debating whether or not to this hike as well but I was really tired and my knees hurt. I think 15 days of hiking was a good time frame for a first ever hike. We had a great time in the next town having a few drinks celebrating that we had added another accomplishment to our lives. We had another few hours of hiking and then we got a cab back to Pokhara. Erica and I hung out that night and went out to dinner with Bishal to say thanks for all of his guiding efforts and to pre celebrate his birthday that was in a couple of days. I said good bye to Erica which was sad because we had a great trip together and wonderful memories. I pondered heading out and volunteering to help build homes since the earth quake last year but the site was really far away and I didn’t think I’d get back in time for my flight to Laos. I stayed in Pokhara and spent the remaining days reading by the lake, site seeing and relaxing. Vicky and the gang came back to Pokhara and we spent a few days together hanging out and one night we celebrated Mike and Caleb’s wedding anniversary. Vicky and I did a Nepali cooking course to learn how to make momo’s in Nepal which was lovely. We also hit “da club” one night with Stefan and saw the Nepali night life scene. Then Vicky, Stefan, and I took a bus back to Kathmandu and stayed there a few more days with Caleb and Mika. I spent a day viewing temples with Alex who I had met in Penang, Malaysia. Vicky left a day before me since she was volunteering at a place a little bit away from the city. I shortly left Kathmandu for my flight to Laos connecting through Kuala Lumpur. Although I was looking forward to seeing Dylan again, my memories from Nepal were unforgettable. It had quickly made it to the top 3 countries I’ve visited in the world due to it’s nature, beauty, and kindness of people. Good bye Nepal, you will be missed xo

GALLERY PICS OF NEPAL