Day 16: Ghorepani - Birethanti

Rustling and shuffling could be heard through the thin balsa wood walls, even as my watch alarm beeped at 4:30am.  Nobody was being noisy or talking above a whisper, but I knew for certain that a great many people were on the move.  In the dark, we collected our slow-processing minds, water, and the camera, and stumbled outside to join what Johnathan called the “congo line” of trekkers making their way up the dark hill to see the sunrise.  We climbed up stone steps and roots serving as steps for about ten minutes, until we reached a ticket booth and paid the 500 rupees per person to continue climbing.  (Poon Hill is a tourist attraction and people come from all over to climb the 1,102ft hill to watch the sun rise on the Annapurna Massif.  They usually do a short loop trek that begins in Nayapul and climbs up to Ghorepani and then wraps back around for a 4-day journey.)  Some people had to go back to their teahouses, because they didn’t know they had to pay an entrance fee – I’m glad I read ahead of time and we had money.  Sam paid for our entrance while I sat in the bushes off the trail to get a photo of the trekker headlight procession as it snaked its way up the hill; it is possible many who saw me thought I was doing something else in the bushes, because I got some strange looks from passerby…oh well.

Trekker headlights.

It was about 5:10am when we passed through the gate and began the slow step-by-step climb and Sam left me to go my own pace while he zoomed ahead of the pack.  I actually passed several climbers at the rare wide places in the single-track stairway.  It was very dark and I was glad for my super bright headlight: most of the time, the trees were so dense, all I could see were the dust covered shoes of the stranger in front of me, the clicking trekking pole tips of the stranger behind me, and the stones and roots on which we were climbing.  It was strange to be climbing in the dark with hundreds of other people who were speaking all sorts of languages.  In a particularly rare wide spot in the trail, two lines formed: a fast lane and a slow lane, and since I was packless and jacketless, I got into the fast lane which made good time as the trail twisted and switch backed through the trees, with only a few slow points where there were bottlenecks in the trail or some rude people were clogging it.  I found myself in front of some Americans; their accent crisp and unusual to my Nepali adjusted ears was easy to identify from other English speakers.  After introductions made in the headlight glow, we started making jokes and enjoyed the climb to the top of the hill.  As we went, the early dawn began its approach and I reached the top by 5:50am to find Sam patiently waiting for me with his hands in his pockets to keep warm.

Trekkers making their way up the hill - blurry because of all the bouncing of the platform.

There was an observation tower that I made a beeline for and climbed up to the top to grab a prime viewing spot right next to the rail.  As I mentioned before, sunrises here aren’t all that spectacular: a little pink and then just simple light.  I found myself standing between a Russian and a Japanese, who both had bulky, black SLR cameras and tripods – I smiled at them and held my little teal green camera aloft.  We three waited.  Hundreds of people poured up the trail, onto the flat hilltop, and washed up the platform to squeeze and ooze into every available foot of floor space.  The platform bounced and swayed and I feared the spindly steel legs of the structure would be insubstantial for such a weight as the tourists subjected on the platform.  We, the multitude, waited.  Cold wind swept up and over us, as the sun began its rise.  Slowly, my side of the platform was rewarded with a slight pink alpenglow on the mountains.  Cameras snapped and clicked and zoomed.  People jostled for position – failing to budge people at the rail, middle platform viewers passed their cameras to railing platform viewers, hoping the person who ended up taking a photo for them would be a decent photographer: I have no idea how everyone kept track of who’s camera belonged to whom as black cameras and cell phones were passed back and forth.

Alpenglow on Dhaulagiri.

More light now.

India is beyond those hills.

Machhapuchhare (Fish Tail)

Glorious sun.

I miraculously found Sam in the throng on the ground, we took a few more photos, and then headed back down the trail, just as the last few stragglers were making their way up to the hilltop and the little coffee shack next to the platform was opening its shutters and taking orders.  We ran into my guide friend from last night and chatted for a minute.  He said he thought 500 people were now at the top of Poon Hill; indeed it was very crowded.

Annapurna South

Annapurna South

Dhaulagiri and rhododendrons.

Headed back down Poon Hill.

So, by 7:15am we were back at our teahouse and I stood at the little reception booth by the front door and gave the breakfast order for Sam and me – someone behind me started laughing and it was my Nepali guide friend again: he gave me a hard time about ordering so much food, like I did last night, and pretended to not understand me when I tried to explain that the order was for Sam’s breakfast too.  We had a good laugh about it and he joked with the other porters and guides that I would one day put them out of business because I was a “tough girl.”  Johnathan found us and we all ate breakfast together and discussed our plans for the remainder of out trek.  I was feeling sluggish after the early morning exercise and breakfast, but we eventually left at 8:45am, as tired hikers with messy hair and rumpled and dusty clothes were streaming back to their teahouses for breakfast or naps.

Met Johnathan at a little store after descending Poon Hill.

Day 16: I don't have enough fingers, but it doesn't matter because it's the last day, yay!

We had a very nice and fast morning of hiking and passed through another rhododendron forest.  The trail was soft and mostly all downhill and the shade from the large sweetly scented flowering trees kept the air cool and refreshingly moist.  

The third donkey had propane tanks - a walking bomb.

Oh the places you run into people: met back up with the Israeli couple while waiting to use an outhouse.

Nicest toilet we'd seen in awhile.

By 10:00am we came to Ulleri and the dreaded stone steps.  By most accounts, there are between 3,200-3,400 steps down to Tikhedhunga and they consist entirely of stone, are of irregular heights, and are exceedingly steep: I did not count them, but they seemed to go down into eternity.  By this time of day, the sun was brutal and the stone steps seemed to radiate the heat, as if to add to the grueling experience; I ran out of water about half way down the steps, but there wasn’t anything to do about it, so I continued descending step after step after step.  We caught up with some young porters attached to a large group of trekkers and they were fun to hike with for a time: they were just typical boys, yelling and laughing as they jumped down the stairs trying to best each other.  Sam and I walked quickly as we navigated our way through a small settlement to prevent the boys from passing us and we left them in our literal dust when they eventually paused to take a break.  Near the end of the steps we stopped in some relative shade so I could fill up on egg power (boiled eggs from breakfast as a snack) and we rested from the heat.  Our entertainment was in the form of a passing donkey train that took longer to pass us than we wanted to wait, so we weaved our way through donkeys as they were going up and we were going down the steps: it was tricky, but we, seasoned trekkers, had dealt with crazy yaks and irritated buffalo, so we were not daunted by burdened down donkeys who whacked us with their swishing tails and tried to pitch us forward to tumble the rest of the way down the stairs.

So many steps.

Eventually, mercifully, we arrived at a suspension bridge at the edge of Tikhedhunga at 11:45am and watched boys swimming in the river as we crossed and staggered into a teahouse built into the muddy cliff.  The place was filled with perhaps a million flies and a dozen Nepalis eating dal bhat.  The flies should have been our clue to leave and go up the trail a bit further to a different teahouse, but we were too exhausted and thirsty to grasp the obvious.  I ordered fries and a ginger tea.  We had to wait an hour for our food to be served and were severely disappointed with it: my potato chunks were covered in grease and barely cooked and the tea was hot water with bits of ginger in it.  Sam and I agreed that the longer the food takes to arrive, the more likely that it will not be edible.  I added some of the honey that came with Sam’s chapatti to my tea and made it reasonably palatable.  So, an hour later, we left, not much rested or less hungry than when we arrived.  We met up with that large group of trekkers we’d passed on the steps and merged with them for awhile, until the weather began to thunder and rain and the group stopped so they could put on rain gear.

Feeling silly about being with a bunch of day tripping trekkers.

Hope it's a controlled burn up there.

Sam and I did not stop, because we knew the rain would pass.  The group caught up with us after we had stopped a few miles up the trail, because I had to use the outhouse at a teahouse.  Sam said I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting toilets – often they are camouflaged or not marked and look just like one of the many little shacks that cluster around teahouses and other buildings.  I’m an outhouse expert.  We chatted with the group for a bit and then we hit the trail again as the wind began to gust.  It was rather brutal and gusts would knock me backwards, so I would stagger down the trail; it also began to rain again and grew cold, so we stopped at a little hut outside of another teahouse so I could dig out my gloves to wear.  A few trekkers were taking shelter there and one of their porters smirked at us and said, “Too difficult, huh?” But we shook our heads and replied, “No, it’s just rain” and stepped back out of the hut and continued along the trail.  In between bursts of soaking rain, my pants would dry from the wind.

Bamboo leaves flying horizontal in the fierce wind.

The trekker group, diminished in size somehow, perhaps they left some to wait out the weather, caught us again as we were fooling around taking pictures and we all hiked into Birethanti at 4:00pm.  Sam and I were nabbed by the ACAP checkpoint and then since our stuff was out, we crossed the bridge and found the TIMS checkpoint too.  Then, we backtracked through the village to the bridge and found a teahouse up on a hill, where we would have a nice view.  Sam had to do a bit of coaxing to get me to agree to the teahouse, because there were more stairs involved, but I eventually agreed and climbed the extra 18 steps up to the teahouse.

Colorful Briethanti.

Our first dinner we ordered at 4:30pm, as soon as we arrived, and then we unpacked.  Priorities.  The food was ready a half hour later and was disappointing: my tomato soup was chicken broth with chunks of tomato and was so distasteful I couldn’t even drink the broth.  My hot chocolate was tasty, though, so all was not lost.  We went up to our second-story room, more steps, and took a nap until 8:00pm when our second dinner was supposed to be ready.  In the dining room, we looked out the now dark windows as we ate dull food and watched headlights wander all over the hillside and people in nearby teahouses eating dinner by candlelight, like we were.  Flashes of lightning behind one of the hills towards Nayapul, tomorrow’s destination, lit the sky and added to the atmosphere.  Things were relaxed.  It was our last night on the trail.  We lingered in the dining room because a trekker came in for his dinner and he turned out to be the cheery guy from Indonesia whom we met way back in Bhulbhule; we swapped trail stories and shared in our mutual success at completing the circuit and it was great to end the evening with him.

Every single door lock to every single room we had made this noise - some rooms were more difficult to open than others:

On our way to our room, we went up to the roof because I wanted to try to get a night photo of all the little lights on the hillside, but the weather had turned cloudy with rain and the rooftop was where all the porters were sleeping and we felt that we were invading their space.  So we retreated and headed for our beds.

My failed night photo of the lights.

Data

Starting elevation: 9,429ft

Poon Hill elevation: 10,531ft

Ending elevation: 3,408ft

Distance: 14 miles

Weather: variable