Life's adventures at 10000+ feet

So i have been in Nepal for a good three weeks now and my feelings are mixed, just like the reports in the newspapers.... the country is very beautiful and though i generally feel pretty safe the reports say otherwise, and many tourists have already left the country. Maoist attacks almost every day, bombs going off in Kathmandu, and police and army presence by the hundreds, fully armed, among the beautiful and calm mountain sceneries make this trip here almost surreal, no tourist has been harmed by maoists in ages and still i believe we will leave Nepal a bit earlier as expected.

Our luxury tourist bus...

But thats not really what i was looking forward to writing you about... after a very quick stop in Kathmandu we headed out to Pokhara to drop off about 25 lbs of our travelling gear and limit backpacks to sub 30lbs, makes trekking a whole lot easier and its amazing how little you need when you need to carry it around for 10-12h a day on your back! We headed out in the morning to catch a bus to Besi Sahar, the starting point of the Annapurna trek.

New and older crop to feed the many hungry mouths of the valley

On the 5 h bus ride to the start, we immediately started talking to Lucas, a swiss mountaineer and recent medical doctor, and Wendy and Natalie, two travelers from New Zealand on a round-the-world trip, not knowing that we would be spending the next two weeks hiking together....the bus hosted some overly loud and obnoxious israeli traveling group with scores of guides and porters. To escape being trampled down or deaf by sundown, we immediately started the trek to start ahead (we had now guides or porters).... As we hiked it became more and more apparent that we had the same interests, hiking speed and got along really well. I had never hiked longer than 3 days in a row so the planned 14-16 days were posing some interesting obstacles (blisters from hell, that could only be treated with second skin and lots of cussing and swearing, tired legs, and hella stinky socks!!)

Our hiking group

Mani stones, beautiful carvings....

Funny substitution for a prayer wheel... whatever works!!

We ended up working so well together as a group that the trek took a lot less time than anticipated.... for the 12 days we were out there, we usually got up around 4-6 am, hiked until lunch-time, then relaxed for 1-2 hours in the sun (as its dry season and always sunny), then hiked for another 1-2 hours to arrive around 3 pm at a lodge, where we would secure a room for 20 rupees (no joke, between 15-25 cents per person!!), and order Dahl Bath (traditional dinner) for the whole group. Dahl bath is the nepalese natioal dish and is eaten EVERY day by locals, usually for an early lunch and for dinner. Its all-you-can-eat rice, curried lentils and vegetables, doesnt taste like much after the second day, but conserves energy (very important to have a low impact while trekking there) and fills the stomach.... We were all very keen on following the excact guidelines from the annapurna conservation project, as in the year 2000 about 80,000 people did the annapurna circuit and left hundreds of tons of garbage up the mountain while using so much firewood that whole wooden areas were cut down (to heat showers, and cook special food ordered by foreginers, as lasagne and cordon-bleu are not really ideal meals to be cooked up there... I was fine accepting these guidelines, but not being able to drink much coca cola was the hardest one!!!

One of my favorites... Annapurna in the back

Lucas being threatened by a goat...

Anyhow, to finish the story of the trek, after an acclimatization day in manang at 3500 meters, (to avoid altitude sickness or even worse a lung or brain oedema), we hiked up to thorong phedi where we trided to sleep at 4500 meters, (no luck there for me, did not close an eye at this altitude), then got up at 4 am and started the most strenuous day from 4500 meters to 5416 meters (thorong la, the worlds biggest pass).... and then descended down the pass to 3800 meters extremely exhausted to find sleep come easy (after a more than 8 hour hiking day.....

Made it to the top of Thorong La! (5400m)

Up the pass manfred and I were in very good shape, probably due to the altitude acclimatization from tibet the weeks before, so we were able to help others over the pass, especially Natalie, who was suffering from frost-shakes and exhaustion, but with her i-wont-give-up personality still made it up the mountain.... Lucas, by the way, who brought lots of medical supplies, was able to use the stuff he brought and help rule out pulmunary oedemia (water in the lungs) and treat a sick swiss couple along the way, so having a doctor along with us was certainly very comforting.... Anyhow,up the valley, the green rice fields and vegetable gardens gave way to higher altitude forests, then bushes and only rock-landscape, and on the way down it happened vice versa, and this over several days. It was so pretty, no wonder each year travelers return to do the same annapurna trek yet again, leaving behind all possibilities of communications (telephone, internet, heck electricity alltogether) and the better part of luxuries, accepting the fact that blisters are a part of hike just as sore muscles, but hiking through mountain sceneries such as the 5 annapurna peaks, or a dalaugliri icefall that compares to the worlds most stunning mountain pictures....

Curious faces...

Lamb too tired to walk...

On the way down we stopped in Tatopani (translated: hot water), hot springs and cold beer, no need to say more! We spent a day relaxing, sunbathing and drinking/eating like we hadn't done in weeks (well we really hadn't actually). After Natalie and Wendy offered a couple of bottles of wine for our help (I hauled up their packs the last few miles when the pass was almost reached and their altitude sickness kicked in), so we drank a bit much and got up with a slight case of headache, hiking our last day down to Beni and catching a bus to Pokhara, where we now have been for a few days, doing nothing but relaxing, eating great pastries and lots of meat, and planning our next few weeks....