Day 142: Into the Annapurna Sanctuary

5:30am. "Craig..... Craig! CRAIG!"

"Hmmm.... What the? What?", I mumbled.

"You need to buy a jacket.... You're going to be cold!", she rasped.

"Can we talk about it when we're supposed to wake up?"

"I guess so....."

And that's how we started our nine day trek into the Annapurna Sanctuary. The real wake up time was closer to 6:30. We "got up" and stuffed everything into the packs that we hadn't been able to put in yesterday. We had to buy an extra duffle bag (wtf?) so we are leaving the kids bags and duffle bag with the hotel, and we've got everything else packed into our two bags - Abby and I will be living out of my bag that also has the med kit etc, and a Robin and Beth are using her bag.

7:15am. We went down to breakfast and had muesli with cold fresh milk followed by delicious masala tea (chai). I recounted the 5:30 wake up question to the girls, and Abby said "What? Why would you..... Oh..... Mountain stress?"

We managed to run to one of the millions of trekking shops to grab a jacket for me and an extra base layer for Beth... It was the happy vendor's lucky day. When we got back, we met our two skinny, young porters named Keshab and Suresh. Beth had her doubts but we were trying to keep an open mind. I wasn't expecting Hercules after all, we were in the middle of Asia.

7:55am. We hopped in the jeep, me in the front, the ladies on the wide bench in the middle and the porters squeezed in the back with the bags. Porters make a daily fee - about $16USD a day - and we were more than happy to have hired two in order to give a little more income to the tired local economy. Of course they can earn tips at the end of the trip, and I suspect their overnight costs and food costs would be free or dirt cheap based on them bringing four clients to hotels and restaurants. Still, $16USD a day seems like very little by our standards.

The road out of Pokhara was choked with traffic - I guess it was their version of rush hour. We were on the main "highway" to Nayapul. It started to weave back and forth until we found a small, flat valley that was full of bright green rice fields.

Eventually, we climbed out of one valley, and dropped into another. On our way down, we stopped behind a bus that had stopped on a small bridge. Rubber neckers were outside and our porters hopped out, taking a picture of a small car that had gone off the road and into the creek about thirty feet below. Yikes.

Our driver didn't think twice about squeezing around the bus, almost scraping the edge of his jeep on the side of the bus as we passed.

9:05am. We arrived in Nayapul with little fanfare, and turned off on a gravel road. I saw a part of that road that had dropped away from the edge, leaving just a car width of the road left for 10 meters or so. As we approached, a man walking towards us gave the driver a little head shake and an open fingered twirl of fingers that usually means "that might not be the best idea". Our driver didn't flinch and continued right over the bad section. I'm not sure if anyone else noticed that little interchange, but I didn't hear anything from the back of the car so that was good.

The road got very rough - we were going over boulders that were up to 12-16" high and the jeep was jumping around quite a bit. We stopped near a bridge that crossed the Modi Khola, the river we'd be following for much of our trek, and the porters showed the guard there our trekking permits and registered us in the TIMS system (the Trekkers Information Management System that tracks people coming and going on treks).

We saw lots of little school kids with their uniforms walking towards us on the road. Very cute. At one point, we heard honking up ahead and a small bus with really big tires rounded a tight bend and passed us. I could not believe a bus was travelling on that narrow, bumpy road that fell away on one side about a few hundred meters to the river below.

10:00am. We arrived at the end of the road in a small village called Kimche. Ironically, a group of Korean Trekkers were just coming down the path in all their gear. It put a smile on our faces - we have had such nice interactions with the Koreans we've met on our trip. To generalize, they seem very open, outgoing and very engaging with other non-Korean tourists... The same can't be said for many western tourists we see on the road.

The boys changed into their work shirts, strapped their little bags onto our bigger bags and we set off on the trail leading upwards through the village.

The path was pretty easy going, though narrow and rocky. There are many ways in and around Annapurna Sanctuary, especially at the start. We were using one of the smaller paths to head northwards toward our highest destination, Annapurna Base Camp ("ABC"). The sanctuary is surrounded by some of the tallest mountains in the world, as well as Fishtail.

We passed through small farms that eked out a living on the steep slopes of the mountains. Every once in a while we would see the Modi Khola below, and across the valley there were lots of terraced fields.

Beth was able to limit her falls during that section of walking to two (she insisted I put that tidbit in here, though I normally feel quite reserved about making light of her gaffs) pretty minor slip ups. They were more embarrassing than painful, but it made her ratchet up her awareness of the bumpy ground we were walking on.

The kids would periodically stop on a dime, marvelling at one sight or another, so I had to institute cycling-like communication rules like shouting "slowing" or "stopping" if we were changing pace in order to let people know what was happening. You really had to balance looking at your feet and remembering to look up at the amazing landscape.

11:25am. We stopped in the middle of the path in a town called Kalchane for lunch - that's when the chicken lost its head.

We'd ordered some simple rice and noodle dishes and refilled our water bottles. We were all sweating a lot more than we thought we would (the sun was hot and the temperature was in the mid twenties), and we really had to watch our hydration levels with the coming gain in altitude.

The girls saw a local guy placing a bunch of chickens on a mat with some seeds. Then he began to examine each of them, apparently sizing them up for dinner. Robin got pretty teary at that, vowing to go vegetarian right then and there (though she followed that up with "but chicken does taste so good.... sniff...sniff"). The guy found his mark and took it over near an outhouse, washed it off, broke its neck and cut its cute little head clean off.

It's always a sad reality seeing how the meat we eat gets "processed", but I don't think we'll be eschewing the Costco meat section too soon....

12:30pm. Time to go. This was going to be a little tougher than the morning. We started climbing very quickly on steep paths, mostly made out of rough hewn stone stairs. Robin was having a tough time and needed some coaching. Shouts of "I can't do this, I'm weak!" interspersed with loud sobs. The tough thing with Robin is she can get down on herself pretty quickly, but the great thing is how quickly and strongly she can bounce back. After a little coaching and letting her know we'd be doing lots of "breath catching" while climbing steep sections, she was back on plan. In fact, soon, she was taking the point, leading our pack up the hill

1:15pm. Break time in the village of New Bridge. A nice little cobbled village that looked nice enough to stay in.... Nope. Keshab pointed across the valley and up, up, up to a little red roof in the mountains and told us that was where we would stop for the night.

1:30pm. Here we go. Steep steps led up to an eventual plateau in the path where we stopped for five minutes. We continued on, through an open farm area, passing a few huts and villagers at work. We looked over at the settlement across the valley at the top of the hill. The kids thought we had climbed up high enough as we were almost on equal footing with the town, but I looked where we were going and knew better. It was time to go down..... Then up.

Going down is sometimes harder than going up. Going down puts a lot of pressure on the joints - it's all about compression. Beth was getting sore knees so I made her pop an Advil. That seemed to help.

We crossed a metal suspension bridge that crossed a beautiful tributary to the Modi Khola, and then we gazed up at our final destination. Moving our sight line from the top to closer to us, we saw steps that disappeared straight up into the forest. Yikes.

Robin and Abby were amazing, chatting away and in their own world. I was more like a zombie and Beth wasn't much better. I felt like I'd prepared for this last year, then pretty much gone on an exercise hiatus for four months..... Oh yeah, I had. For the cyclists of the crew, the last section of the climb was pure suffering.... I got in my little quiet place and ground out the last few gazillion steps until we got into the village of Jhinudanda. I was pretty spent and the kids, those little buggers, looked just fine. Beth looked shattered.

After talking to Keshab, who looked a little tired himself, I guess we may have been going a little fast. We walked for 3:10 minutes today (only!) and we were told anywhere from 4.5 to 6 hours walking time. Hopefully we have not burned all of our matches too early (waddap cycling reference).

Our Hotel was a bit of a shock to Abby... I'm not sure what she was expecting, but she quickly lost the attitude and assimilated. The places are pretty much as we remembered - basic, clean and with shared toilet and shower facilities.

After an ice cold shower for Beth and I, we hung out in the restaurant, blogging and playing cards.

Beth and I shared a nice cold Nepal Ice beer which was enough to put her out for a nap.

I chatted with the woman who owned the hotel. She said they'd been very slow, though tonight was an exception. Tonight there were 29 of 40 beds full, but that was the exception this season.

We placed our dinner orders. All of the menus in Annapurna are the same,and prices are set by the agency, which all depend on how far the guest house is from a road.... The farther up you go the re expensive things are. I ordered the staple Dhal Baht meal set, which is like an Indian Thali with rice, papaddam, curried potatoes, pickle and Dahl... Delicious!

The kids ran around the village while I finished up the blog after dinner. It will be an early night tonight, our first in the Annapurna Sanctuary.