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

Day 15: Tatopani - Ghorepani

Woke up at 6:30am and experienced an uneventful breakfast and morning packing.  We were sad to leave our oasis at 7:45, but gleeful to successfully avoid the ACAP and TIMS checkpoints, because they are so annoying.  At the slightly sketchy looking suspension bridge, there were two men trying to wrestle a group of donkeys to cross the bridge: they managed to get two to cross, but the others balked.  One man grabbed a donkey’s halter and one of its front legs and was pulling at the poor beast, but he was not successful and the others kept trying to make a break for it when the second man wasn’t looking.  Eventually, the men gave up and took the donkeys further down the road and crossed a short wooden bridge and it was our turn to cross the bouncing bridge.

Day 15

Nilgri: 23,166ft

We then began a very hot climb up a dusty trail; I could understand how the trekker from yesterday had passed out from the heat.  A group of men were walking several cows up the path, but one of the cows, her udder exceedingly plump with milk, kept sitting down: she did not want to move at all and they were having a difficult time.  The animals in this area seemed to be incorrigibly stubborn.

At 10:00am I ran out of energy as we hit the next village and met Johnathan briefly; I began to trek very slowly.  The trail was all up, up, up and miserably hot: the dusty trail turned into a rocky trail, with strange flat rocks made out of some sort of mud stone.

Super cool blue bird was tricky to photograph.

After I had eaten both my boiled eggs and the toast I’d brought as a snack, we stopped, reluctantly, at noon for lunch at a tiny teahouse dining room that was suspended over the valley on stilts.  The place was infested with flies – we ordered simple vegetable soup, because we didn’t want to spend much time there and desired to be on our way quickly.  However, this was not to be, because our food took an hour to arrive.  Included with our meal was a slice of apple pie the trekkers at the table next to us had ordered, but it was whisked away to the proper table once the mix-up was discovered.  Lunch was finished by 1:15pm and we began trekking again.

It was humbling to be struggling up the never-ending stone steps and have school children traipsing along and passing us like we were standing still.  They were cute in their uniforms and we eventually passed their school, shaded under tall trees.  The landscape changed again, and now the trail was wet in places and there were a lot of pastures and fields.

A storm picked up, earlier than usual, at 2:15pm and the rain and hail fell through the forest canopy.  Thunder and wind turned the hot sunny weather into an experience that caused us to think we wouldn’t be able to continue our trek.  Branches crashed to the forest floor and rocks tumbled down the sloping creek drainages.  We passed a Nepali family of hikers who were on vacation and we shared a common thought about the weather, but we all continued our trek.

Looking back down the steps we just climbed.

Random fancy creek crossing.

Thinking maybe we shouldn't be outside with the thunder and lightning.

The weather cleared, just as suddenly as it had begun, and the afternoon was fine as we climbed our way through the rhododendron forest.  Bumblebees of gigantic proportions zoomed here and there and were simultaneously fascinating and frightening and the scent from the wet earth and the flowers was intoxicating.

Needs a bit of trail maintenance.

Donkeys headed down the trail without their human.

So much pink.

My fake smile, because I'm tired of climbing.

We finally entered the vacation destination of Ghorepani at 5:00pm and met Johnathan standing on the stone steps, as if waiting for us.  So we all entered a teahouse and got rooms, luckily, for I later heard that most of the teahouses were completely booked.  There were tons of people in Ghorepani, not just trekkers, since it is another vacation destination place, because of nearby Poon Hill, which is climbed to admire the mountain range as the sun rises.  Our teahouse was enormous and reminded me of a ski lodge, with a large wood stove located in the center of the main room that served as reception/front desk, dining room, meeting room, and lounge with long wooden benches situated around the stove and the perimeter of the room.  We found ourselves seated at a long wooden table for dinner and I gorged myself on pizza, fries, fry bread and peanut butter, and hot cocoa, to the amazement of our table companions: my insatiable appetite had me eating everything in sight and I have been constantly hungry since descending Thorong La.  I made friends with a Nepali guide who was impressed Sam and I were trekking “solo” and we chatted until 9:30pm with him and the other trekkers seated at our table: trail stories were shared and there was a considerable amount of map viewing and comparing, once the dinner dishes were cleared from the table.

Sam waits for me in Ghorepani.

Our room’s walls were a single thin plywood thickness and were worthless for soundproofing the rooms.  It felt as if we were really sleeping in an enormous dorm with a hundred other people.  I am hoping for decent night photos once the electricity goes out again.

The view from our window of Annapurna South, 23,684ft.

Data

Starting elevation: 8,117ft

Ending elevation: 9,429ft

Distance: 10.5 miles

Weather: variable

Day 14: Tatopani

Nilgri from our room window.

Today we slept in for forever, which turned out to be only 7:30am.  We had decided to spend the day in Tatopani as a mini vacation day, since we built in a couple of extra days into our trekking schedule.  Tatopani is a vacation destination anyway, because of its hot springs, and Nepalis and tourists drive to Tatopani in masses.  This explains why everything was so expensive.  After breakfast, Sam went for a walk and I sauntered up the street we had stumbled down last night, to do some shopping.  I spent a long time looking at scarves and ended up in a little Tibetan woman’s shop. 

Day 14

The entrance to our teahouse.

I sat on the wide plank wood floor and she brought out yak wool scarves to show me; then she joined me on the floor and we chatted while I admired all the brightly colored loomed items.  Her parents fled Tibet when China took over the country and it took them two years to get to some place in Nepal I hadn’t heard of.  She was born in a refugee camp; she said it is difficult for refugees to get a higher education because they don’t have passports and school can be very expensive.  Her children don’t have passports and go to a Tibetan school in Jomsom.  Apparently there are two types of schools in Nepal: schools for poor students and refugees and good schools for wealthy, Nepali students.  She rents her house/shop from Nepali locals and buys her yak wool raw and spins, dyes, and looms it during the monsoon season.  The rain, she said, is very boring and in the winter it is so dark that a person can’t find his/her mouth when eating.  Many old people die during the winter.  She was thrilled to hear that I was trekking without a guide or porters and that Sam and I were trekking the entire circuit, not just bits and pieces of it.  Eventually, I chose seven scarves and a silver ring (the ring she had a local silver smith make according to her design) and paid 2,000 rupees for the lot (about $19 dollars).

I met Sam in our teahouse garden and we took a walk before lunch to tour the garden and find the hot springs.  The spring’s pool reminded us of a zoo pen where spectators can look down on the animals in their cage – it was like watching seals swimming in a pool and sunning themselves on the fake rocks.  The pool was manufactured and surrounded by a chain link fence.  We got a good chuckle over the massage hut that was conveniently located next to the garish blue and white pool – it was misshapen and didn’t look very private or relaxing.  The weather was hot and we didn’t feel even remotely interested in getting any closer to the pool, let alone taking a swim, so we continued along the hot, dusty road and climbed the dirt path back up to our teahouse.

After lunch, Sam made his way up to our room for a nap and I remained seated at a patio table in the garden, under the cool shade of an enormous bottlebrush tree.  I sipped tea and read my Motor Trend magazine – the only non-essential item in my backpack and enjoyed the peace and quiet and warm breezes that made the flowers nod and sway.  When the weather grew cooler, I ordered hot chocolate, which consisted of hot goat milk and melted nutella.

Toward evening, Sam rejoined me and we chatted, watching the weather and the tourists as they streamed past the garden gate.  To our surprise, we saw our friend Johnathan pass us and we called him back so we could enjoy a reunion.  After getting caught up on all our adventures and trail gossip, we suggested John stay at our teahouse, because it was going to rain soon.  He doubted the rain, but sure enough, at 4:00pm, the wind and rain began, just as we had predicted it would.  The weather in this valley is consistent with its daily patterns; it rained off and on, like the off and on of the electricity, for the rest of the evening.  At dinner, there was a trekker who had a big bandage on her head: we were surprised to see her, because she had left in the morning, bandage free, so we asked what had happened.  She had started out okay, but when the weather had warmed she had gotten too hot, passed out, and hit her head.  So she was back at the teahouse to recover.  When we went to bed, the weather changed from rain to hail the size of large peas and we slept to the clatter of ice chunks hitting the metal roof.