Some of the most memorable experiences of our lives. The Annapurna Circuit usually takes 16-18 days, covers over 200 kilometers, climbs to a pass over 3000ft taller than anything in the continental USA, and passes through villages and valleys nearly untouched by "modern" times.
There is nothing magical about the start of the Annapurna. A 6 hour bus ride to a ratty, dusty Besi Sahar. There is no grand entrance, just what looks like a forgotten stairway down to a creek where the local women do their laundry. The rest of the day is on a new road shared with jeeps shuttling goods up the valley. The first checkpoint is in Bhulbule. There the permits we bought back in Kathmandu were checked and entered into a book nobody will ever look at. It was only a couple hours of walking, but the long bus and the rain had us stopping early.
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| Bhulbule Permit Checkpoint |
The lower elevation sections of the track become a blur, porridge and tea for breakfast, small mud walled villages (with satellite dishes and spotty electricity), lush valleys, hillsides with thousands of terraces and the river rapids below. Then some tasty potatoes and veg with tea for lunch, letting the feet cool down out of shoes, before pushing on for the inn and dinner. The guest houses vary in quality quite a bit, but the prices are fixed so we tried to finish early enough to stay some place nice(er). Meals were a nice break to the day, as they usually took about 2 hours from the time you ordered. Many times the host would leave after we ordered to find somewhere in town that had an apple, onion, or something else they needed to cook for us. After a few days we learned to put in our dinner order ahead of time and our breakfast the night before.
Annapurna Guest Houses we Stayed In
It is hard to understand how a trail can keep climbing and so steeply for so long, but it does. Like walking from sea level to Denver three times over. After 5-6 days the plants thin out and only scraggly bushes and shrubs are left behind. It will be t-shirt weather in the sun and down jacket temps when it goes behind a cloud. The villages there are ancient. The flimsy wooden inns of the lower elevations are replaced with stone aged buildings with rooms to the liking of any aesthetic monk. All shaped stacked and mortared by hand. Work here is done manually. Need some gravel, smash a rock, need some sand, smash it more. Fields are plowed by beasts with a WOODEN plow blade. Nails are expensive and come from far away, so roofs are held in place with heavy stones. Or they are made by hand with local slate that would cost a fortune in the west. At night the dining hall is a lively place with stories from the trail told in many languages into the wee hours of 9:00pm (if there is a fire). Above the tree line wood is scarce so yak dung fires are the norm, for cooking too.
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| Upper Pisang |
From day one you follow the hand painted signs on rocks pointing toward Manang and after a week of walking we were there. Here at around 3500m is a recommended "rest" day to acclimatize to the thinner air. The town itself feels like the wild west. The road is dirt, the shops are a funky general store hodgepodge of trekking gear, pharmacies, and hand made goods. The even have a "Cinema" but unless at lease 6 people show up they won't start a fire and many left early because they were too cold to keep watching. The area is beautiful mountains all around, along with rivers, a glacial lake and many "gompas." The mood in town is one of excitement and relief from all the trekkers who have made it this far, I think most were quite happy with the thought of a day they got to leave their packs in a room. We used the day to climb up to visit a Lama who gives blessings for trekkers going over the pass. His home is built into a cave on the mountain side and could have come from any point in the last few thousand years. Manang is also home to a few German Bakeries for some reason. The menu had the old standbys like dal bhat and momos, but also fresh made apple pie, cinnamon rolls and croissants. It would be easy to "need" a few more days in Manang, but we pressed on after acclimatization day to the higher altitudes.
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| Praken Gompa above Manang |
Above 3000 meters it is not recommended to ascend more than 500 meters a day. This makes for a day with less time on the trail, but more time to shiver at the inn. Huge Himalayan vultures soared above us and the steep cliffs were occasionally dotted with wild blue sheep and yaks. We walked on in respectful silence alone the spine of the earth. The altitude forces a slow steady pace, anything else and we were immediately winded. A snowy cold day in Yak Kharta (yak pastures) was followed by a snowy cold night, and nobody complained of the smell of the dung fire in the dining room. The best distraction from the cold at hand were some rousing four language games of cards.
Our shortest day of two hours (because we climbed our 500 meters already) put us in Thorong Phedi. Normally a town made up of two inn/ restaurants Thorong Phedi was more dismal than normal because one of the restaurants had recently burned down and left a pile of ash and mud. It was very tempting to push on another 400 meters to high camp, a mere hour and a half away. We may have succumbed to this temptation IF we hadn't met a yak on the way down carrying someone who went up too fast and woke up in the middle of the night with fluid in his lungs, coughing up blood. He had to take a yak down to where a helicopter could get to him and then a nice stay in the hospital in Kathmandu, no thank you. Our decision to stay at Thorong Phedi instead of going to high camp meant we would have a longer day up the pass and back down the next day. The question everyone wanted to know was "What time are you starting tomorrow?" Some groups were leaving at 3am, most guided groups at 4am. We are a little quicker and settled on leaving at 5:30, just before sunrise.
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| 5:30 a.m. |
After a cooked breakfast that became ice cold between the kitchen and our table we set out in the dark to climb 1000 meters to Thorung La pass at 5417 meters (17,776 feet) and then to descend 1800 meters to Muktinath. Our pace was slow. Walking had us breathing like we just finished a triathalon. The sun rising felt like mana from heaven, still it was so cold we had to stop to put on extra layers. For a while Marina had socks on over her mittens. Above high camp our slow walk became a shuffle. Groups were falling apart, hikers coming off the back like spent racers in the Tour de France. Water bottles were frozen shut and our sunscreen was the consistency of sherbert, but we slathered up our faces anyway. We made the pass after a surprisingly short 3 hours and 15 minutes, thinking it would be 5-6. Maybe our pace wan't so slow. I think we were mostly just steady, always moving forward. We stayed at the pass a little over an hour. Enjoying the frozen fresh air and the incredible view, as well as congratulating our new friends and fellow trekkers when they made the pass. Victory tea was had, photos were taken. We decided to hike down with two Austrians we had met. We were all giddy and fed off each others excitement. We did not walk down the mountain. We slid, glisaded, scrambled and skipped down. We were passing porters (they hate that), skiing on our shoes, nearly falling (and actually falling) for hours laughing like buffoons until we needed to stop and catch our breath.
Eventually the snow ran out and our antics came to an end. After days in a very remote part of the mountains it was disappointing to arrive at a town with a road. Muktinath... If you cannot say anything nice, well. We stayed at the Bob Marley Hotel, a nice room, hot shower and tasty food. So did most the people we had met. After 2-3 nights of the anticipation of the pass on everyones' mind there was party atmosphere after the pass was done, until about nine when most collapsed exhausted.
For many the trek ends in Muktinath, where the road begins. We continued down a foot path to a new valley and villages that see fewer tourists. The village Lubra has a certain charm, and I imagine myself there when I try to fall asleep at night. There is nothing for tourists there, but a woman invited us into her home for tea and apples. She showed us her families bamboo bow they use in the villages archery area. Onward to the dump of Jomsom. From here we hopped the worlds worst bus to Tatopani. It broke down twice, and you had to brace against the ceiling to keep from banging your head the road was so bumpy. Tato= hot Pani= water. We soaked in the hot springs for a few hours and got good and pruny. We were now back down to only 1100 meters, and were enjoying the warmth.
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| Poon Hill Sunrise |
Our bus ride gave us the extra time to do a section of trail over Poon Hill. From where we were in Tatopani, through Gorepani, up Poon Hill, and down to Nayapul. From 1100 meters to 3400 meters to 1000 meter in two days, great. The trail was a hazy mix of tiny fifes where women were bringing in the rice harvest and men quarried stone from the hillside by hand to forests of rhododendrons in bloom. In the early morning the air was clear enough to see Annapurna, the mountain we had been walking around for over two weeks. We watched the sun come up on the peaks our last day on the circuit. Changing the world from blankets of blue cloth to the warm hues of a spring morning it would have been the perfect goodbye, but we still had to climb down 2400 meters. The steep stone walkway down was a test to our hardened knees, but eventually we made it to Nayapul, and a short taxi ride back to Pohkara.
In some ways the Annapurna Circuit was disappointing the road was in site frequently for the first few days. In most ways it was far more challenging and rewarding than we had anticipated. The people were warm and inviting, the lifestyle is hard and beautiful, and the landscape is breathtaking.
