Trekking in the mountains...going down, down...

The trek from Tadapani to Ghorapani and beyond - back to Phokara - went faster than anticipated. One, because it was downhill but also because we were supposed to have trekked up to Poon Hill, to see the views of the entire Himalaya Range. When we went to bed, the sky was completely clear and full of stars. We were planning to get up at 5.45am to ascend to the summit (did that not sound incredibly professional? Ascend to the summit, like we were headed for Everest the last hours of our life :) so we could see the sunrise; sadly, by 4am the clouds had again settled in and there was no view. So we skipped Poon Hill and instead started to descend.

Descend and descend...it was more like a crawl for me the first few hours, as my knee tendon decided to give out after 20 minutes. People, you think it's hard going UP! It's the descent that kills you! My thighs were burning, my knee was burning, my ego was definitely scorched! But I wasn't the only one. Aric felt it really bad too (being the bionic man he is with all the steel nails in him) and our guide, Sunil, was in bad shape with his calf cramping up. 4500 steps down in one stretch, it was just hell! Hunter was the only one who leapt down like a mountain goat.

By the time we reached the starting point, we downed a nice cold Coke!

Resembling two Yetis, Aric and Hunter were in bad need of a shave. My legs looked like a blonde wooly Yak, so we were all thankful that we could jump in a hot shower at the hotel. Hunter had his first ever straightedge shave :)

While strolling around Pokhara, Aric posed the question you just don't want to hear unless it begins with "would you ....?" He started insecurely....."I have to ask you a question that might freak you out, but please try not to freak out" - OK by now I'm definetely freaked OUT!! "When was the last time you saw me wear my wedding ring?" - is that a trick question?

So here it was! Aric had taken off his wedding ring at the first teahouse we stayed at and while we were sipping Chianti, the ring was in the bin! While showering in what was still a decent amenity, he decided to empty it out his toiletry bag for old hotel shampoos and paper, soap, qtips etc. After that, he took the pile, under which the ring was so nicely placed and dumped it right into the bin. 4 days later, we were frantically trying to call the owner of the cottage. Other people had been staying in the room - but surely they had cleaned in between and emptied the garbage can into a larger bin? It's not like the garbage mule-train comes every day, so we offered the guys on duty 15,000 rupies (four months salary in this mountain region) to sort through banana peels, rice, curry, mo-mo leftovers and hotel shampoo bottles. They never found it. It's been sacrificed to the Himalayan Mountain Gods, Shiva, Buddha or Ganesh! The $264 (1987 dollars) value is not the big loss. It's more the gold that went into making it - my grandfather's wedding ring, a ring from my dad, earrings from my mom - melted into a piece of art; things you cannot replace with new gold. OK Amy, stop bawling and wipe your nose!!!

My team-mate Steve told me he's on his 3rd wedding ring (still wife no. 1) - so I guess it's something you go through in a marriage sometimes. It was the trip of a lifetime and we have no regrets (well Aric might but I won't hold it against him) - we have seen nature at it's most extreme beauty and met people you never meet otherwise. Seen happy kid faces up and down those hills.....stepped on bloody leeches and somehow through all this, emerged as a tighter family unit with Hunter even admitting that he had some fun.

Leech Therapy

Demi Moore paid thousands of dollars to have one suck her belly button [allegedly]! The 'rare' brown ones will bring you around 15,000 rupies per kilo [allegedly]. It wasn't something I could entice Hunter to collect, to start his own business, so I guess I will be paying his college tuition after all!

We started the 2nd day of our trek in complete downpour. Finishing our black tea took a little longer, as none of us wanted to venture outside the comfy dry Gurung cottage. The higher we trekked, the more cloudy and foggy it got, but we knew this was a factor when we started this monsoon hike.

During the morning briefing by our guide -turned bootcamp slave driver- turned drill sergent - Sunil, we were orientated about the potential hazards out there..."Team, today you will face steep inclines and low visibility as we trek on the very edge of humanity; there is only one way to do this: slowly, one foot in front of the other, and don't look down! You will stare into the abyss of a hungry caterpillar, looking like a prehistoric monster under a microscope, so count yourself lucky we don't have a microscope...there will be blood spilled today team! But you will persevere and you will come out MASTER TREKKERS, and you will never, ever fear a slimy leech again! Well, Ok the briefing may have went more like: "Guys here is a jar of Tiger Balm, you should smear the balm on your feet, socks, boots...as high as your knees"; we will be trekking through lush vegetation.

OK, right, on with it then! Thinking more about the poor, rare and nearly extinct Indian tiger, who was savagely poached for balm purposes, I used the nasty menthol smelling Tiger Balm only sparingly. Besides, how hard could it be to spot a black slimy slug-looking leech slithering its way towards my Goretex reinforced Northface hiking boots? Leeches never sleep! They are highly evolved, wormy suckers, with a stealth attack strategy that puts our Green Berets' Black Ops to shame! As unsuspecting vics walk the grassy paths, sending vibrations through the ground, up through the grass straws, the resting leeches are in stand-by mode. The first hiker makes it through the gauntlet. But by now he has disturbed the serpent in its lair. Hiding behind a damp leaf, the prehistoric spineless worm raises itself straight up - like a no. 2 pencil, and sways there, a cobra in a trance.

The hikers dilly-dallying through the minefield will not see it coming! Swift and silent, like a creditcard swiped in Macy's shoe department, the boot or pantleg gently touches the leaf, where the leech is standing erect and before any light can flash before you - the leech has managed to cling, with its thousands jagged teeth, and will now milimeter its way towards human feeding grounds. If you Google the suckers, it says all leech species are carnivorous and some are predatory....no, you're kidding!!??

We didn't stand a chance; not only are they in no way, shape, size or form like a slug - they are completely in camo - grey/black like the mud we were dredging through, and they are so small and thin, smaller than a starving maggot! Looking periodically down towards my feet, I found I already had a tiny species on me, wedged into the seam of my high-tech and way overpriced boot. So what do I do? Pick it off with my finger, only to now have the slimy ba****rd stuck on my index tip. Flicking and shaking my hand, it clung on for dear life. I had to smear it on a rock before it released. No blood drawn so far.

It was an ambush! Aric went third in line, so he got all of them and they made their way in through his wooly socks and on to his ankles. The next 3-4 hours of trekking were spent "looking down and picking off" -we totally missed the lush woods and green scenery as we scouted for blood suckers. At the next rest stop, I grabbed the Tiger Balm from Sunil's pack and scooped out half of the jar...extinct or not, I wasn't having any leech therapy this day!

Cold, wet, bloody (one made it down my neck and latched onto my upper back - yes they can drop from trees too!) we dragged ourselves into the teahouse around 4.30pm after steep hiking for 6 hours. We had made it up through the battlefield to Tadapani at 2630 meters. Black tea and chicken mo-mo's never tasted so good. It was a primitive teahouse and by now we had left the en-suite amenities behind at 1100 meters, so it was either shared flush toilet or the 'hole-in-the-floor' room downstairs. You know what I opted for folks! That evening we played more cards, Hunter worked on his Sudoku and we generally just relaxed having lost SO much blood ;-)

The next morning it was clearing up and we got a nice view of "Fishtail" - one of the famous Himalayan mountains.

Moondance, Monsoon, Mountains, Mo-Mo's

Nothing worse than eating the same food day in and day out. Nepalese people can go out for pizza and ice cream, but then they must go home and have Dal - it's a staple food they can't live without: Lentl soup, rice and chicken curry. Hunter's staple food in Nepal was Mo-Mos, steamed dumplings, preferably with chicken, but sometimes also with vegetables. Personally, I grew tired of the food pretty quickly even though we tried to break up the routine with omelettes and spaghetti.

After Kathmandu - with the polution, noise and smells, we actually cherished going to Pokhara to begin our trek in some clean air. We flew with Yeti Air !! and the flight was only 25 minutes, but our porters took the bus and sat in traffic for 15 hours! There was a landslide which caused back-up. Good call on paying for the air travel!

Pokhara sits at 900 m and has a large beautiful lake, fed by rivers and streams from the higher Himalayas. Since we had to wait for our porters, we decided to stroll around town and buy a few hiking things (like a better poncho for the monsoon down pours) and extra socks. Next time we go trekking we'll be leaving 60% of our stuff at home. Boy we overpacked and it wasn't until the poor porters showed up to carry it, that we realized we had way too much crap. So much for consulting the internet on what you need on a trek.

Beer was served at Didi's (means sister) - everyone calls their sisters and female friends Didi...Sunil took us over to meet her. After the beer, we headed over to Moondance for lunch, played scrabble and pool. We spent the entire afternoon hanging out in the upstairs area overlooking the main street. Full and happy from a couple of Mojitos, we decided we wanted to go boating...we had heard that there was a secret waterfall you can hike to (just like a scary movie, we couldn't wait to go to a secret forbidden place :). It turned out to be a small stream with a 10 foot fall, which- while nice, didn't offer any swim opportunity. The paddling gave us a good work-out in the arms and shoulders though.

That evening we went to a Blues Bar for dinner. An early call next day when our ride was going to take us to Nayapul for our 6 day trek. Nayapul is around 1100 m and is a small village bordering the Annapurna Circuit. Once you get there, you can't get further than the New Bridge by car.

Thanks to my 1000 prayers we had blue skies and sunny warm weather for the whole day. It was the best feeling, not to know what was ahead and being surprised by different landscape and people around every bend of the trail. All we knew was that we would hike up, up, up, about 900 meters to Ghandruk (sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings) at first, relatively steady and at the end, up 3000 steps - literally a stairmaster workout. The first 2-3 hours we met so many children who take that same trek down and up to get to and from the school bus. Aric said you must be able to bounce a rupee off Nepalese women's butts, with as much as they hike up and down every day....we didn't try to bounce a coin....but I knew that I was going to get Annapurna buns of steel by the end of the trip! Truly, everyone we met had shapely and muscular legs! It was like a bootcamp trip! Even the mules and goats were sporting well built muscles.

Our first stop was lunch at "Didi's" :) - this time an old granny, with two daughters who cooked a killer meal for us. When I saw a parmesan cheese the size of a handbag sitting and maturing in the sun, I knew she had to be an old-school cook. While we rested, we watched her scoop all the sun-dried Millet into sacks. They grow Millet on the hills, it's like hops or Barley I think - used for wine and beer and bread. This old granny did everything. For the vegie dal meal they went and harvested herbs in the field....and we seriously enjoyed lunch and the view.

Tummies full we continued up the steps pass several small villages and an abundance of wild Marijuana. Well, wild and wild - the plants were well tended to and the buds were impressive (not that I have a lot of experience in that field), but all we took were pictures...since we're not into that sort of thing and certainly never inhaled!

By 5.30 we reached our tea house for the night in Ghandruk. That first cup of black tea was so welcome! And here we were, in the middle of the Himalayas, in a small tea house, and there's a Montepicello red wine on the shelf....could not believe it! Sunil taught us how to play "shithead", a card game like Uno, and we enjoyed Chianti that evening. It was to be 4 more days, before I learned that Aric had thrown out his wedding ring in our small bathroom (not on purpose), but that evening, nothing could have wiped off my tired smile as we settled into our sleeping bags and fell into a deep blissful sleep.

Car Horns and Yak Horns

"Does the hotel have internet, mom?" Classic inquiry from Hunter, who was so abruptly pulled away from his PS3 and dragged onto a flight bound for Nepal. He reluctantly agreed to wear sensible hiking shoes and light pants that dries quick. It didn't sit well with his normal fashion style....the underwear didn't show!!

On the flight to Kathmandu, we contemplated how many leeches we would get. I said 7, Aric said 9 and Hunter said he wouldn't get any at all. With that discussion behind us, we sat back and relaxed until arriving in a down-pour monsoon (as expected).

In the line to get our visas, I was relieved that we had exchanged all our money to Nepalese Rupees, since they don't take Rupees at all. "Dollars, Euroes, Yen..." Oh, you don't take your own currency?? No, this is the government, so we only take foreign currency. Yeah that makes sense. Bugger, back in line to exchange Rupees back to Dollars!!

Anyway, in the safe hands of our guide, Sunil, we made it to the Shanker Hotel which would be a base camp for two days until our trek started. This gave us the opportunity to explore Kathmandu - a populated, busy,very dirty, "old meets new" trading place and melting pot of Asian people. Buddhist, Hindi, Muslim and Christians all mingling in a spiritual life, 1300 m above sea level. By now, we have tuned out to all the car horns, bike horns, motorcycle horns constantly messaging: "out of my way, I'm coming through!"

We went to a local traditional Nepalese dinner with Sunil and had way too much rice wine (which tasted like tequila). No matter, we were indeed blessed with red dots to prove it and enjoyed the rice and dal, wild bore, chicken and other savory bites.
The next morning, we set off to see three temples. The first, a mixture between Hindu and Buddhist prayer place, filled with monkeys, and the second, the central place for cremation, were by far the most culturally extreme places I've ever seen. It is still hard for me to get over the charred bodies, smoldering for hours before being tipped into the river as mere ash remains. Further down river, men were swimming and diving into the water to pull out the wood which could be dried and used for burining again at home. With 5 mill people, of which 85% are Hindu, and the only holy way to pass on is cremation by this river, you wonder why bodies aren't stacked up in line to be burnt! Thank God the wind was blowing away from us!
I spent my first money on a nice necklace made of Yak-bone. Probably overpaid at $8 even though I bargained like crazy with the lady. At least I got some Yak... seeing as we wouldn't meet any on the trail (too warm for them so low in the mountains; they apparentlyt only do the Everest trails!)

The last temple we visited was all Buddha, the whole Buddha and nothing but the Buddha!! The third eye still haunts me. The sky was brewing a dark cocktail of thunder so I spun a few prayer wheels for sunshine on our trek. I like this "mass econo prayer"-deal...a spin of one wheel is a thousand prayers. I just spun 12-15 of them to be sure! The sun did actually come out in the afternoon and our first day of trekking turned out to be nice and hot.

Stay tuned for next chapter of "Aults do Nepal".... Pokhara and the Annapurna Poon Hill Circuit.