Day 147: Civilization, With a View

Source: Sir Velo Photography, copyright 2015

Caption: Citizen Cane

7:00am. Timex woke us up at seven sharp on this, day 6 in the Annapurna Sanctuary. We all slept well last night, though Beth's hips were hurting a bit. Beds here are all simple wooden rectangles with a four inch mattress on top. We then push our beds together, and use one of the thick blankets they give us as a second mattress, and one on top. Still, it's hard on the body contact points.

8:20am. Leaving Dovan, we had some spectacular views of Machhapuchchhre.

It was another very clear day like yesterday, with the blue sky really popping out around the horizon.

9:00am. The way down to Bamboo was very fast - barely any uphill. We got there in record time. The four of us are very fast walkers, and the guys were pretty shocked. No, we're not stair climbers, but give us a flat or downhill and we will do just fine :-)

9:10am. No need to stop too long, we left Bamboo, only to be reminded of how much climbing we had today. Oh, those f$%!ing stairs. You really had to refrain from looking up as you could see a long way up, and there was no end in sight.
We got to the top of the f$%!ing stairs after twenty minutes of non stop climbing. Then.... We continued to climb. It was kind of difficult to conceive that we were still two and a half kilometers above sea level, which was making the work that much harder... The CN tower stairway is about 340 meters high, starting at maybe twenty meters above sea level, and it takes 20 to 40 minutes to climb that.
9:45. We finally reached the top of the climb and started to descend. We spent most of the downwards time talking about food... There was plenty of discussion about Dana's baked goods, Michelle's desserts, the Versly meatballs, Probir's seven layer dip at the superbowl and his signature fried tofu, Jewish bagel Friday's, Blum Jaeger schnitzel.... I could really go on. Then it turned to grandparent's (well, let's not kid ourselves, Nana's and Gram's) special dishes, Brian's guacamole, Stephen's potatoes and lasagna. This was followed by a game of a "I give you 3 ingredients and you make a virtual dish out of them" game. This was followed by in exhaustive lists of favourite foods, beer (ok that one was mine) and wine (Beth!) that we missed....
Perhaps we were finally succumbing to altitude sickness after all...

10:15am. We reached Upper Sinuwa, but skipped right through it, continuing the descent to the lower section. We were starting to see evidence of real towns (as opposed to just trekker support villages like Dovan, Deurali et al), which was nice. With real towns, Abby pointed out, you saw women and children. I hadn't really noticed it but she was right, all of the villages higher up were populated almost 100% with men - the exception being Argen's wife in Deurali.

10:40. In a very fast time, according to the boys, we reached our lunch spot at Lower Sinuwa. It was the same place we ate at on Day 2. We really took our time, as we were about halfway to our final destination, and about to face a pretty devastating climb to the top of Chomrong. There was... NO..... RUSH!

12:25pm. Finally, we really ran out of excuses to stay, so we pushed off. The way down to the long suspension bridge that crossed the feeder river that marked the beginning of Chomrong was even more picturesque than I'd remembered it - it was a shot taken right out of Ireland or New Zealand - just beautiful.... And downhill.

12:50pm. It was time to go up. And up. If we thought the climb from Bamboo was tough in the morning, this one was even worse. Every time you looked up you could see a few hundred stairs. Then you'd get to the "top", turn and see another few hundred stairs. Ugh.

1:05pm. We reached the lower part of Chomrong. It is really a beautiful town built onto the side of a huge hill. I recalled seeing the school kids sweating as they walked uphill and I knew for sure there was no getting used to this type of climb. On top of that, we were in direct sun the whole time, with no breeze. Robin was really struggling, almost more than she had the entire trek.

1:30pm. We were about halfway, only taking short breaks to catch our breath. The going was very tough. Step by methodical step.

1:50pm. Still climbing, we reached a "German" bakery that Abby and Beth had spotted on Day 2, so we took five minutes and bought some cinnamon rolls and slices of apple pie. We carried on. Up.

2:10pm. After 80 minutes of virtually non-stop climbing, we reached the very last hotel of Chomrong. So far had we come, that we were around the other side of the hill the town was built on and obscured from seeing the Annapurna mountains or Fishtail. And it was perfect. Keshab explained that you spend six days looking at the same view, and never looking back. The view here was spectacular, and so peaceful. It was perfect.

Four hours and five minutes of hiking today. The boys thought closer to five hours, and they looked tired for it. Apparently we have another extreme down and extreme up day tomorrow, so that should be a blast!

We all jumped in the hot showers and even enjoyed wifi, albeit not exactly high speed. At this point, I've only been able to upload three pictures from day one of our trek, and the pictures have to be uploaded to the blog before I can add the text that I will copy over from the notepad on my iPad. I will have some work to do in Kathmandu for sure!

We had some quiet time in the afternoon, then hung out with Keshab and Suresh, getting to know them even more. Keshab is a remarkable young guy. From zero English two years ago, he has taught himself to a level where he can communicate about almost anything with us. He's so positive and keen. Then there's Suresh - hardworking, a little shy and perhaps sheepish about speaking English for fear of making a mistake, but he has a great heart and, as the girls say, "he's so cute".

We really didn't know what to expect when we hired them. Or I guess, we just hired them expecting they would simply transport our bags and that's it. Instead, it has turned out to be one of those fantastic cultural experiences that you simply cannot buy for any amount of money - it just has to......happen.