angusmccoll

For the last few days thunderstorms have been a feature of the afternoons in Pokhara. They tool in around 3pm and put on a spectacular display. No wind, just great bolts of lightening and nerve shattering thunder, perhaps amplphyed by the surrounding mountains. Life goes on though and three oxen have just walked down a busy street right here in front of me. I’ve seen cows and dogs asleep in the middle of the street and the traffic just bends itself around them. No fuss.

Easy day today. I revisit cafes I’ve enjoyed before and generally walk around, hopefully not getting lost. I tried to by a pair of rubber slipped that I can use with or without socks but they only stock Nepalese sizes! 

Ive started reading the ‘History of Nepal’, a book I’ve found at the hotel. It’s complicated and full of intrigue. India and China have been influential political forces on Nepal’s progress for a long time.

It’s 4.30pm on Sunday and kids are just getting off the bus from school, as is the way in Nepal. Weekends for them is Friday afternoon and Saturday. 

Sam, our taxi driver from yesterday and uncle of the groom, picks me up at 10.15am in the wedding taxi. We go to where the groom lives for the start of the wedding ceremony. There’s music and dancing in true Hindu style. The women are in beautiful traditional dress and the men and boys in smart suits. I’m not the only foreigner there. Others have been invited and it’s said that having foreigners at your wedding adds class! Then it’s a two kilometer procession through the streets to a shrine for the official wedding.

The wedding is entirely arranged. The groom only knew a week ago that he was to marry and he has only spoken to the bride for an hour prior to today’s ceremony. We walked about 2 km from his home to the wedding venue, led by a band through the streets. The proceedings will last all day. While the wedding is in process the food starts. There are hundreds of people lining up for a feast but we are given special treatment and taken to the front of the line. I feel embarrassed.

In contrast, my taxi driver taking me back to the hotel married for love and is now ‘unmarried’, though he hasn’t signed the papers. Under the present constitution, she doesn’t need his signature. He explains they were beaten by the caste system. He is lower caste while she is of high caste and even though they lasted 11 years together, the mother-in-law won out in the end. They have a young daughter. I guess arranged unions avoid the caste issue. Having your bride chosen for you ensures marriages only within your caste.

It’s been a privilege to be asked to be part of this special occasion.

Thunderstorms fill in the rest of the afternoon. There is serious lightening and thunder, and rain. It’s nice.

We leave Jhinu in usual style, around 8am. This is the last day of the trek. We lunch at Kyune right on the Modi River. Modi is the Nepali name. Each ethnic group along its way has a different name for it, as happens with all the rivers apparently. The trail has been easy with mainly down and flat. It’s pleasant and the bird life is amazing, as are the trees, flowers and farming life. Oxen plough the fields and mainly women carry manure onto the layered fields for fertilizer. Suddenly we come onto a road and for 3 hours hike along it until we arrive back in Birathati, where we started. We’re both fairly tired now. A taxi meets us and takes us back to Pokhara. In the way the taxi driver invites me to his nephews Hindu wedding tomorrow.

We arrive at Hitel Buttercup and Ganesh unloads my luggage and heads off. We will meet for a final dinner.

Garnesh meets me around 5.45pm and we walk to a restaurant. Finally he joins me for a few beers and we have fine food and fun. He walks me back and we say farewell but I will meet him again in Kathmandu. It’s been a fantastic trek and he has been an awesome guide and friend.

We leave Shinawa around 8am and make our way across the river valley up into beautiful Chhomrong. We follow some school children. From Chhomrong we divert onto a new path aiming for Jhinu. There is a lot of steep downhill, all the time passing through people’s back yards. All these little places have set themselves up for Trekkers offering chocolates, fruit and drinks. We stop at one such place where a disabled man is running a small shop. We chat with his mother who is stressed by a plague of hairy caterpillars that seem to be tormenting this whole region. They crawl all over and through the buildings causing irritations when making contact. It’s a bizarre thing but it has happened before. I buy some apples.

We reach jinhu around lunch time and organise our lodgings. I meet Chris there. He is a knock-about Aussie from Perth trekking alone with a guide like me. Jinhu is famous for its hot springs and that’s why we are here. The springs are a decent steep walk down. Ganesh shows me the way. Beautiful hot water comes out of the ground just on the edge of the Modi River with its glacial waters. There are three pools, each a slightly different temperature but all at a deliciously warm temperature. There are others here but not too many. It means stripping down to jocks, washing first under a pipe of warm water, then jumping into one of the pools. Chris is there with others from around the world, some I’ve already met on the trek. Some are doing this at the start of the trek. Our way of doing this at the end of our trek is much smarter. I spend over an hour here, poor Ganesh waits. I can’t convince him to join because he is on duty. 

There’s plent of banter as trekkers trade stories. A young German guy decides to leave the warm pool and jump into the icey waters of the Modi River. Crazy! Then an Australian guy follows and so does Chris. I feel a little compelled, so now it’s my turn. If you think wisdom comes with age, I’m proof it doesn’t. I creep in and completely submerge and thrash about for what seems like ages but is probably two seconds. It’s so cold. I get out with skin as red as being dunked in boiling water. And stinging all over. It’s surprisingly invigorating. I have an audience cheering me on from the warmth of their pool. 

I spend over an hour here. It’s totally relaxing and even mesmerizing viewing the tree covered mountains with the babbling sound of the river, from the warmth of a heated pool.

I join Chris over a few beers that night. He’s easy to talk to and at 31, has great knowledge and insight into things. He’s well travelled and we talk deeply about many things. He leaves Nepal for India to catch a friends wedding before watching some World Cup 20-20 cricket in Mumbai. How exciting would that be.

Ganesh knocks on the door at some horrible hour. It’s time to get up for the sunrise. It was well under freezing last night. It’s ice everywhere. The sky is clear though and the hidden landscape from cloudy yesterday is now revealed. We’re surrounded by snow covered peaks and ridges, including Annapurna. We walk up to a bit of a shrine to killed climbers and hikers, which sits on the edge of a glacier. The glacier is hardly recognizable because it just looks like overturned gravel and dirt. If you look hard you can see ice. The sun peaks over the ridge and lights up the tops of the peaks. The colour at this time is stunning. There are many of us now wandering around, soaking up the views and taking photos. Maria who is from Brisbane and works for Griffith university is here. Dianne the school teacher from Canada is here too. And many others we have met on the way. 

We breakfast and I’m freezing. Packing is done and we’re on our way.

A helicopter has arrived with wealthy clients to take skiing. It delivers three at a time up the slopes and after the nine are in position, it waits at the bottom for them, to take them back up. Today the weather is great for them. Yesterday the helicopter couldn’t fly because of the weather so they had to contend with walking up the slopes.

We get to MBC and Ganesh says he’s left his wallet behind. He has to dash back. Despite telling me to wait for him I pick up the packs and head down the track. I get to the point where the track meets the river and wait. Maria comes by and we sit, chat and take photos. Ganesh arrives and we’re on our way again. Much of the scenery is very familiar because we came this way yesterday. But this time we will walk through Dherali where we stayed previously and aim for Sivas, where we stayed the night before that. The going is easier because it’s mainly downhill. But the extra distance tired us out. 

Increadibly we bump into Jayde on the track. She is here with her friend Tim. I thought she was going to be hiking the Annapurna circuit, not base camp. So I was very pleasantly surprised to see her.

We get to Sinuw around 5pm. It’s raining slightly.

The lodges are only here for the Trekkers. Once the trekking season is over, so is life in these trekking villages. Interestingly they are run and managed by men. Their purely here for business.

Happy Birthday Dad.

We leave Deurali in bright beautiful sunlight. As well as snowing yesterday afternoon it must have fallen heavily because the countryside is just white. What an amazing sight. The sun lights up the snow so everything is like some fairyland. It’s a rare experience for me to see a landscape in such colour. The trail takes us through a landscape of white. The sheer mountainsides are white. The sun is in charge until around noon when the clouds roll in. This has been a typical weather pattern for the last few days. The trail takes us beside the Modi River. You have to strain your neck to look up at the sheer mountainous slopes either side of the river. The trekking is reasonably easy and at one point the trail and river meets. The water is glacial so icey cold. We reach Machhapuchhre Base Camp after two hours and decide to lunch. It’s overcast now. We leave the river and aim for Annapurna Base Camp. It’s reasonably easy going so is fun trudging through the snowed landscape. We meet a variety of people from many different countries and we re-meat friends we’ve made along the way. Just prior to the lodges at ABC is a welcoming sign and we all take a moment to record the occasion on our cameras and phones. The weather has completely hidden the mountains so I really have no idea what the landscape looks like. We reach our lodge round 3pm. There are four lodges here. This is called Annapurna Base Camp but it’s not the base camp the serious mountaineers use to assault Annapurna. Annapurna is just over 8,000 so is a popular scalp for enthusiastic mountaineers. Where we are staying is mainly used be Trekkers. Interestingly there is a company here organising helicopter skiing. They fly clients in from Pokhara, just 15 minutes flying away, and take them up the slopes for them to ski down. If the weather suits they do this all day. Clients are rich Europeans mainly. 

It’s freezing here but we are above the tree line so no wood and no heating. We fill the afternoon with cards before early dinner and bed. I’m so cold.

Happy leap year!

We leave shivia around eight. We start to go up so today will be hard. Ganesh says a little bit up but I know it means more than that. We are following the Modi River now, literally following a path clinging to the side of the river. The constant sound of water scrambling over rocks is in the air despite the river being a long way down and out of site. The day starts fine but around 10.30 it closes in and the raincoats come out. It’s not ideal for viewing the mountains but it’s still spectacular. We are amongst rhododendrons again as well as a wide variety of beautiful flowers and plants. The soil seems rich and there is no shortage of water. It literally bleeds out of the mountains via some geological reasoning that I can’t get my head around. This endless supply of water allows villages to spring up all over the mountains. And what water doesn’t get used ends up in the rivers below.

The trail is hard. All supplies for the villages now seem to be coming via human porters. I see no sign of donkeys or horses. I think the trail may be too rough for them. So we vie for space on a narrow trail with a steady stream of porters.

We leave Tadha Pani around 8am after a typical breakfast of omelette, potato and milk coffee. We go down through more magnificent rhododendron forests. We come across an elderly American trekking on his own coming back from Annapurna Base Camp. This is his fifth visit to the base camp.

The forests suddenly open out into terraced farmlands and villages. We continue down more steeply now because we have to cross a river before climbing up onto the next ridge. The landscape is extreme here. The trails are impressive. They’re engineered the whole way. Rocks are shaped into steps and paths are paved with local stone. I suppose hundreds of years have gone into their making, if not more. 

We lunch at Chhomrong. Chhomrong is the last real village before Annapurna Base Camp. From here are just lodges. The top part of the village sits on the top of a precipase and the village then opens out into layered farms, which I suspect supply much of the fresh foods for the region. A hydro station is here providing 24-hour electricity. It’s a beautiful village. From here we can see our destination for the night. It’s across on the other ridge, easy… It’s down again and across a wire bridge then up. It’s taking now, enough for us to stop and get out our rain coats. We reach Sinuwa around 3pm and pick out a hotel to stay. Garnesh doesn’t seem to pleased with the hotel but we stay. The view from here. I just sit and watch. From here we can see how Chhomrong sits on the ridge across from us – just spectacular. There is an occasional clap of thunder from seemingly nowhere. The monsoon, which shapes the Nepalese summer weather isn’t due for a few months but we are getting some activity now. In fact the forecast for the next few days is not great. Annapurna Base Camp may be cloudy!

Just before dinner I stroll up the stairs and happen upon a spectacular view. The setting sun is at the right angle to light up the snow covered Machhapuchhre (fishtail). It’s stunning, standing out brilliantly against a dark, shadowed foreground.

There are many Koreans here tonight. They seem to have a significant presence in Nepal, both in business and trekking. They are noisey neighbors for me tonight. There are three of them in the room next door and the walls are very thin.

Water is not a problem in these mountains, it literally bleeds out of the ground and collects in the rivers below. This allows villages to successfully splatter the hillsides everywhere. I’m told a consequence of the earthquake last year was to change the aquifers so that supplies in some villages either diminished or stopped in some springs. This could be tragic for a village.

The day started painfully. When you come to Ghorepani it’s a popular thing to climb up Poon Hill well before sunrise so you can witness the rising sun coloring the Annapurnas. It’s like ‘looking at heaven’. The climb up the many stairs is tuff in air thinned of oxygen and it’s freezing. I’ve got so many layers on but I’m still freezing. And also there are hundreds of other people, many of them school children because Saturday is their day off. It’s noisey and cold and the wait for sunrise is hard to bare. Sadly the effort was wasted because the sky is clouded and we’re robbed of the ‘heavenly’ views. 

We go back for breakfast and pack. We aim for Tadapani today. The trail takes us through magnificent rhododendron forests. The trees are magnificent flowerless, but in flower these forests are even more impressive. We are at the start of the flowering season now so only some of the trees are in flower. The peak flowering season is about a month away. What must hiking through here be like then? 

We arrive in Tadapani around 3pm after a lot of steep downhill and some uphill. It was an easy day compared to previous, despite the early start. It’s raining now and I’m in the dining hall around a fire heater and with wifi. There are about 15 others here unfortunately. It’s crowded.

The village here has 24-hour electricity provided by a local hydro plant. What a treat!

No rush to start today. We aim to get to Ghorepani, which will take about five hours. We get there in four because I set the pace and we didn’t stop for smoko. It wasn’t deliberate on my part. I like to walk at a pace and just expected Garnesh to pull me up when he wanted a break. He didn’t so we walked straight through, arriving around lunch time. We will stay the night here to do an early morning walk up Poon Hill tomorrow morning. The weather has deteriorated with hail falling and fog. Fortunately Ganesh and I get a walk in before the rain. It’s overcast and feels like it could snow but one of the local lads walks past in a singlet! Unbelievable! I’ve got layers on and am still struggling.

We’re staying at the Hotel Moonlight. There is a French family here, parents and young daughter, with their small dog. They’ve brought their dog on the trail, which is an amazing feat. They source foods from butchers because the dog only eats chicken. Walking through villages, their little dog gets plenty of attention from the local dogs. 

MF gave me news of Tessa’s bad news. It’s devastating to hear that her latest results show the cancer is back and the experts are running out of options. Tim has chatted to Alan but Ros isn’t speaking to anyone. Experimental drugs may add to her life but will cause pain. They have some difficult decisions to make and my heart goes out to them. I can’t stop thinking about them, despite trekking in one of the most amazing places in the world. I had a chat with Alan this afternoon, which was nice. So many of my friends have done this trek, but back in the 1980s. I’m a late comer. Had a chat to Tim too. How amazing is the technology today that allows this.

Pizza for dinner tonight, then early bed.