Day 1: Kathmandu-Bhulbhule

Wake-up time was 5:30am and it didn’t take us long to pack and be ready to leave.  With a few minutes to waste, we went up to the roof and took photos from the top of Hotel Nepalya.

Ready to begin the day!

Then, we climbed down the six flights of stairs to the front desk and asked for our bus tickets.  It was the same boy who sold us the tickets last night, but he asked us if we’d paid for them.  I told him: “I paid you last night!” Such a scam.  Sheepishly, he handed over our tickets and waved us in the general direction of the bus park.

The sign for our hotel is on the blue building, above the biker, but the hotel is down the alley.

At about 6:15am we left the hotel.  There was a thick layer of wet dirt covering patches of the concrete streets and a mixture of rubble, stones, and general trash littered the ground.  It was tricky walking.  We picked our way through the rather deserted streets and winding alleys in the assumed direction of the bus park and sort-of just followed the flow of the few pedestrians who seemed to be headed to the same place as part of their morning commute to work.  I was sorry we didn’t have breakfast, but we had left too early for the free continental breakfast that the hotel supposedly provides.  Within about 10 minutes, we reached the bus park: a very, very, long line of buses parked along the side of a busy street.  Of course, we had to cross the street to get to the buses.  All of the buses were marked by numbers in their windshields, but nobody seemed to know the bus numbers; instead, they referred to the busses by name.  Our bus name was “Holiday” something.  Since we were standing at about the middle of the bus line, we didn’t know if we should walk up or down the line and I started to have a sinking feeling about missing our 7:00 bus departure.  Several men accosted us, trying to sell us bus tickets (apparently buying tickets the night before was unnecessary), but they left us alone after I said we already had tickets.  One rather important looking man, who was issuing orders to dozens of scurrying men, paused his task and motioned as if to ask to look at our tickets – we must have looked pitiful standing there not knowing what to do – and then he personally escorted us up the line and showed us our bus; all this without speaking a word of English and continuing to bark his orders to the jumble of men and boys milling all around us.  It was a tumultuous scene.  Trekkers and locals jostled one another as they made their way between buses, workers flung a wide assortment of bags and packages and boxes up on top of the vehicles while other men stood up on top to catch everything and tie it securely with ropes, stray dogs barked, cows lazily wandered down the sidewalk, a rooster crowed, and the beep of mopeds steadily increased in number.

At the bus park.

We boarded our bus bound for Pokhara, found our seat numbers, and kept our backpacks with us by placing them in the space where our legs should have been.  Sam sat sideways and I sat with my legs bunched up on the seat.  I’d read that trekkers very often have their bags robbed if they are placed up on the roof.  The bus, full of passengers, left at 7:03am.  There was much honking and we made one other stop at another bus park for a couple of minutes, perhaps to get fuel.  I was so happy to be leaving Kathmandu and get away from the noise and the inglorious smells.

The streets are chaotic.

It took an hour to leave the city behind us and then we were immediately in the hills and cliffs.  Happily for me, a window seat passenger, they drive on the left hand side of the road and so we weren’t on the cliff edge side of the road: unless we passed something or someone.  I was able to observe that they really only honked their horn if they were going to pass something (bike, person, vehicle) or if there was an especially tight corner.  The problem is that there was constant passing and being passed and the road so curvaceous that the honking was essentially nonstop.  I also noticed that all the motorbikers wore helmets, but just the drivers.  Must be a law.

See the road up there on the right - sooo many switchbacks.

I passive-aggressively fought with the Indian guy in front of me who kept trying to recline his seat back.  However, the seats were so closely set together that his seat back would have crushed my pack or knees.  So, every time he made an attempt, I would push his seat forward to prevent him from leaning.  I garnered a great many backward glares from him, but I didn’t care in the slightest.  Other than that, the ride was uneventful.  We stopped twice at little roadside stalls to use pit toilets and for the other passengers to purchase food in the form of potato chips, fruit, and warm bottles of water and soda.  Sam and I ate some of my dehydrated bananas and rhubarb fruit leather and drank from our airplane provided water of yesterday.

At 11:30 we arrived in Dumre.  Sam and I had been a bit fearful that the bus wouldn’t stop and would simply keep going all the way to Pokhara, but thankfully the bus did stop and we bailed out with our backpacks bumping back and forth up the crowded aisle as we set ourselves free from the confines of the vehicle.

We were the only people from our bus who got out at Dumre; this again gave me a twinge of fear.  It was a little scary to be on our own and not able to simply follow the crowd.  We stood there, on the concrete platform, in the glaring sun, with tan dust swirling all around us.  I don’t know where the dust came from, because everywhere I looked off the platform was dark mud – there was literally a large spotted pig wallowing at the base of the platform, squealing with delight as it wriggled back and forth in the stinking filth.  The townspeople simply stared at us and then went about their business.  I turned around in a full 360*, as if that would help me get my bearings, and magically, a man appeared and said there was a bus leaving for Besisahar (our destination) in a half hour.  He said the ticket price was 650 each and he led us down the street and around the corner to a colorful little bus.  Sam paid him and we climbed aboard the empty vehicle.  We knew we’d paid too much, but we didn’t care: we were just happy to be where we needed to be.  Also, we ended up not having enough small bills, so we ended up only paying 630 each.

Sam, happy to be on board our second bus.

Again, we kept our packs with us and our man kept telling us to not let anyone put them up on top of the bus.  No problem there, buddy.  By 12:05pm the bus was filled completely full of local people of all shapes and sizes and smells and we began our drive.  I think there was even a small goat with us.  The bus stopped every mile or so to let people off and put people on; somehow more people got on than got off and sweaty bodies were spilling out the windows and door and riding in each other’s laps and along the aisle.  It was great fun, with people yelling from the back that this was where they wanted to stop and then everyone passing the message up to the driver, or someone had forgotten to pay and the money would be passed from hand to hand up to the front (they were only paying 45, so yeah, we totally got ripped off).  I couldn’t see Sam, since he was against the window on the opposite side of the aisle from me, with about 8 or 9 people between us on the room-for-two bench seat, but I could see a white man sitting up at the front of the bus, riding backward and talking to someone.  Hmm, possibly another trekker, I thought.

Right on time, we arrived in Besisahar at 2:00 in the afternoon.  We oozed out of the bus doors and stood in the dirt, gasping for fresh air like fish out of water.  Only two other people flopped out of the bus with us: the white man and the short, young Chinese girl he had been talking to on the bus.  I began to chat with the man as we were all bent over our backpacks, repacking and tying shoelaces.  He and the girl had only met on the bus and were going our way, so we started as a group up the tan dirt road, trying to figure out where the beginning of the trail was.  We walked straight down the middle of the main town road, traffic consisting of only a couple of bicycles, and I decided to send my first SPOT signal.  I rummaged and brought it out from its Ziploc cocoon and walked down the street with the SPOT in my hand - my hand and arm held straight up in the air, like an antenna, trying to get a good satellite signal.  Eventually, uncertain that I’d been successful in sending a signal, and because all the blood had left my arm, I turned the SPOT off and returned it to my pack.  We finally found the TIMS checkpoint, in a little bookstore, where we registered and tried to get directions.  The non-English speaking TIMS officer, irritated with our presence having interrupted his nap, was not interested in giving us accurate directions and merely waved in the direction out the other side of town.  So we continued and finally found the suspension bridge that marks the start of the Annapurna Circuit.

So we begin to trek the Annapurna Circuit!

As we were crossing the bridge, we came upon an ancient and very grumpy old woman in brightly colored clothing sitting cross-legged, smack dab in the middle of the footbridge, about ¾ of the way across.  She yelled something unintelligible at us as we approached her and flung her arm at us, indicating she wanted us to turn around and walk down the road.  We refused.  After squeezing past her, we consulted my maps and guidebook for assurance.  We are following the New Annapurna Trekking Trails which avoid the road as much as possible, so we were indeed on the correct path.  We were pretty sure, anyway…

Looking back at Besisahar and the road we had just walked before the suspension bridge.

Immediately after the bridge, stone stairs climbed steeply up the hillside.  We followed the path until it diverged and we were again in a quandary.  We took the steeper and wider route, but after 5 minutes of climbing, it didn’t look like the path would drop down to the second suspension bridge that we could see below us and that we needed to cross, according to our guidebooks.  So, we backtracked and took the lower, smaller path.  This path was fine until it disappeared all together and we were forced to make our way through some terraced gardens and people’s backyards (sorry) and then eventually met with our original trail as it descended.

Hot, but happy!

A combination of humidity and 90*F heat, did not mix well with the cotton I was wearing as my travel clothes.  I told the others to go on without me and I did something I’ve never done before in my life: took off my shirt, right there in public, and changed into a different shirt.  Public, might be a stretch, since I didn’t see anyone amongst the trees and terraced rice fields, but I was completely exposed to anyone who might have been looking in my direction.  Usually modesty is high on my priority list, but not today – I simply didn’t care.  I left my travel shirt sitting right there beside the trail for some local to add to their wardrobe; feeling much cooler, I rejoined my merry band of trekkers.  They were taking a break along the road and I sat on a rock and changed out of my cotton travel socks and into my wool hiking socks, narrowly avoiding the creation of a blister on my toe.  When we started hiking again, the cotton socks remained on the rock.

On the trail to Bhulbhule.

We crossed another suspension bridge and followed the trail as it wound up and down the mountainside until we finally came to Bhulbhule at 5:45pm.  There was a bit of confusion when we neared town because we didn’t know if we were supposed to cross a suspension bridge that diverged from the trail or not.  The main road was across the river and we decided we didn’t want to be near it, in case of noise, so we continued straight ahead and stopped at the first place we came to, which happened to be a teahouse overlooking the river.  Usually I am on the lookout for the best deal, but I’d read that teahouses are regulated and the prices they charge are all about the same, so I didn't feel compelled to shop around at other teahouses. Also, I was bone tired.  The proprietor led our group up the craziest, steepest staircase I have ever witnessed to show us the rooms.  I claimed the first room we came to that faced the river, not the trail/street; hoping the sound of the river would be sleep inducing.  The walls of the building consisted of plank boards with gaps between them.  I could see into the room adjoining ours, as well as into the hall, the stairwell, and the outside world.  Privacy, what’s that?  I was glad my inhibitions about changing in front of people had diminished earlier in the day.  Our room was just long enough to fit a single bed and wide enough for a two foot path from the door, with a single bed on either side.  It was cramped with two people and two backpacks: we could not both be standing up at the same time and neither of us could stand at all with our packs sitting on the floor.  But there was a window and a poster that said “Nepal” so I was feeling totally awesome about being there and being a trekker.

Our room - you can see daylight in the gaps between the plank walls.

Our room view of the river and that confusing suspension bridge.

The crazy steep staircase - super challenging with a heavy backpack.

We all met downstairs for dinner on the balcony overlooking the Marshyandi river at 6:00pm.  After ordering dinner from a simple and cheap menu, I went about resupplying my water, unpacking, and sending out another SPOT signal.  I found the toilet/shower combo in the backyard and decided I wasn’t dirty enough to risk a shower.  I also realized there was a possibility of being murdered in the dense shrubbery during a midnight potty trip, so I limited my liquid intake for the rest of the evening.  Food finally arrived at 8:00pm.  My vegetable momos were dry and I only managed to choke down 8 of them and passed the rest to Sam.  Then the four of us looked at our maps, tried to strategize for tomorrow, and learned how to pronounce Marshyangdi from the woman who collected our dishes.  As is the common practice, she took our breakfast order and I said I wanted it ready by 7:00am.

It’s now 9:41pm and Sam and I are in our sleeping bags.  I’m trying to not be creeped out by the fact that I can see the man in his sleeping bag against the wood-plank wall that separates his room from mine.  The river is rushing, the moon and stars are out, and I’m sore and covered in Arnica gel and Tiger balm.

Data
Starting elevation: 2,493ft
Ending elevation: 2,756ft

Distance: 5.5 miles

Weather: Hazy, Warm