Our trek
around the Annapurna Circuit was one of the most serene, beautiful and majestic
experiences of my life. I found a lot of peace and time for reflection whilst walking in the mountains. It was also extremely challenging at times, both
physically and mentally. Ric and I spent 15 days lone trekking through the Himalayas , walking over 140km (87 miles), climbing to
5,416m above sea level, all the while carrying 12kg backpacks.
We saw the 7th, 8th, 10th and 16th highest
mountains in the world, close up, and climbed one of the world's longest and
highest mountain passes. We walked through tropical jungles, lush pine forests,
and barren mountain landscapes seeing snowy peaks, ice lakes, glaciers, ancient
Tibetan villages and cliff-top Buddhist temples.
Below is a day by day account of our adventure.
Day 1 Kathmandu
- Bhulbule
Distance: 185km (by bus)
Climb: ??
Time: 9 hours
After a couple of frantic days trying to buy
everything we needed in Kathmandu , we set off
on the local bus to Bhulbule. Although only 185km from Kathmandu, the journey
to Bhulbule was set to be a long one due to the appalling state of
both Nepali roads and our vehicle. Our rickety little bus stopped every couple
of meters while three young men hung out of the door calling out our
destination and trying to fit as many people into the bus as possible. On three
occasions during the journey we had children sat on our laps, but we considered
ourselves lucky not to have chickens shoved in our faces like some of the other
passengers. Bumping along narrow mountain roads in heavy traffic, with people
sitting on the roof and hanging off the sides, we eventually made it to
Bhulbule, just in time for the heavens to open and our roof-top luggage to get
soaked.
Our bed for the night was a very basic wooden
guest house over looking a roaring river. From the dining room Ric pointed out
some snowy peaks on the horizon, but I dismissed him, saying they couldn't
possibly be mountains, they were too high, they must have been clouds. Only
when the storm had passed in the morning did I realise he was right.
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| Arriving in Bhulbule, excited to start our trek. |
Day 2 Bhulbule - Ghermu
Distance: 15km/9.4 miles
Climb: 290m
Time: 6 hours 45 minutes
Our first day trekking started at the gloriously
early hour of 6.30am, just as the light from the rising sun was beginning to
reach the valley. We needed to be off to an early start in order to complete a
murderous 350m climb before the sun came up. We succeeded in climbing most of
the way before the sun was fully up but it was still unbearably hot, humid and
sticky. With our heavy bags strapped tightly around us we were soaked with
sweat pretty much the entire day. After almost seven hours climbing and
descending in the sweaty heat we'd had enough and declared the pretty village of Ghermu
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| Enjoying the view and catching my breath after the 350m climb. |
Day 3 Ghermu - Tal
Distance: 15.4km/9.6 miles
Climb: 600m
Time: 7 hours
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| Ric at the top of the 150m zig-zag path, contemplating all the wasted booze just meters away. |
Day 4 Tal - Timang
Distance: 19km/11 miles
Climb: 900m
Time: 9 hours 30 minutes
Today started off really well. The views heading
out of Tal were beautiful; corn fields, the river, waterfalls, snowy peaks, it
was a lovely walk crossing the river over scarily long shaky bridges. We
originally planned to stay in Danaque, and after treading carefully through
some slippery waterfalls, we made it there in time for lunch with energy to
spare. With our stomachs full of pasta we set off again to the village of Timang
We'd just met these two Korean guys and I’d dazzled
them with my fluent Korean (not!) when we came to a point where the
trekking trail and the paved road split, so... thinking we could take a short
cut along the trekkiing trail and overtake the Koreans, we went a different way
to them. Turns out, we'd taken the muddiest, boggiest path on the whole of the
circuit! We both sunk ankle-deep in the mud, soaking our feet and boots. The
path kept climbing and climbing and we seemed to be going higher than Timang,
which was on the other side of the river. Troubled by whether we'd gone the
right way or not we kept saying 'ten
more minutes and then we'll turn back', eventually, after climbing for
one hour we got scared that it was getting dark and decided to retrace our
steps. Exhausted, we found our way back to the road and climbed yet
another steep path to Timang. Our detour added almost two hours and 4km to our
day and we later found out that the path did eventually take us to Timang, we
were probably only 5 minutes away when we decided to turn around. Fortunately,
we found a lovely place to stay, with and incredible hot shower (rare in this
part of the world), great views and good food.
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| Treading carefully across the edge of a waterfall. |
Day 5 Timang - Bhratang
Distance: 15.5km/9.4 miles
Climb: 260m
Time: 5 hours
Setting off from Timang we realised for the first
time that we'd climbed rather high. At 2,600m the air was thinner and it was
slightly more difficult to catch our breath on the steep climbs. The scenery
had changed too, from tropical jungle to pine forest and the smell was
wonderful, reminding me of Christmas. The path was mostly flat and we were able
to enjoy the sun in the less humid climate. We reached Charmé for lunch
and once again decided to continue to the next village to spend the night. Once
again, this kind of back fired as the next village was, in fact, just one isolated
lodge, with no shower and no electricity, mud walled smelly rooms and terrible
food. We did, however, meet an awesome Spanish couple, Javi and Carolina
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| Bhratang, just one lodge. |
Day 6 Bhratang - Pisang
Distance: 10km/6 miles
Climb: 340m
Time: 3 hours
Walking from Bhratang to Lower
Pisang we passed this sloping rock face which our guide book
describes as a “veritable geographical wonder… a gateway to heaven”, it was
like being inside a crater on the moon, our photos don’t do it justice. The
walk was mostly level, pleasant apart from a couple of hair rising overhangs,
and we got our first close up of snowy peaks.
Arriving in Lower Pisang we once again got our room for free, a clean
wood panelled room with great views of Upper Pisang
perched high on the mountain opposite. We ventured across the river and climbed
100m up to Upper Pisang , to a monastery at the
very top of the village. There were apples trees and wild marihuana everywhere;
naturally we picked some to take with us… apples,
that is!
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| The "veritable geographical wonder". |
Distance: 13.5km/8.7 miles
Climb: 300m
Time: 5 hours 30 minutes
4.5km and one and a half hours after departing
from Pisang early in the morning we arrived at Humde, a small village, home to
the regions only airport. With flights leaving and arriving only on Fridays, it
was hard to imagine the abandoned airport with cows on the runway ever bursting
into life, but I’m told the weekly flights bring much needed supplies to the
surrounding mountain towns. We stopping at a café and snacked on cheese and
potato stuffed dumplings, before continuing the hike to Bhraga, passing
glaciers and snow covered peaks.
At Bhraga we stayed at a very comfortable hotel
where we had the rare luxury of an en suite toilet. We went for a walk through
the ancient village on the hill facing the hotel; all the houses and buildings
are made of straw, wood and mud, and are stuffed full of hay for insulation. In
many of these mountainous villages, the animals are kept in stables built under
the house. Although smelly, the body heat from the animals provides extra
warmth for the families during the harsh winter months. We went to the gompa at the top of the hill. Built in
1501, it is the oldest monastery in the entire district and is full of
colourful, old, dusty religious paraphernalia that I found simply fascinating.
From the village we got our first breath taking view of the Annapurna mountain
range, with Annapurna III (7,555m) and IV (7,525m) peering majestically over
the village.
Back at the hotel I got myself into a fight over
dinner with a hideously racist man. The things he was saying about Arab people
were so offensive that it was making me anxious. Needless to say, our
confrontation in the busy dining room gave the other hikers something to talk
about over the following days.
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| Bhraga, the ancient village visible at the top (white and red building) |
Day 8 Bhraga - Ice Lake
Distance: effing far!
Climb: 1200m
Time: 9 hours 15 minutes
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| Panorama from the Ice Lake. From left: Annapurna IV, Gangapurna, Annapurna III (obscured by cloud), Tilicho Peak. |
By now we were 3,360m (11,020ft) above sea
level. At such an altitude even the slightest physical exertion leaves you
panting for breath, as due to the pressure of the air, it is more difficult for
your body to absorb oxygen. As we were planning to continue up to over 5,400m,
it was important for us to acclimatise, so with that as our aim, we set off to
climb 1,200m vertically, to Khicho
Tal – the Ice Lake
We went up, and up, and up forever. The path was painfully steep, my
lungs burned from the lack of oxygen and my legs burned from the pain of
climbing. Every 10m I had to stop, panting, almost collapsing and wanting to
give up, the sun scorching down on us.
It took us five hours to reach the lake. It
wasn’t that special, the real joy came from the view of the surrounding peaks;
Annapurna III (7,555m) and IV (7,525m), Gangapurna (7,455m), Chulu (6,250m),
Pisang (6,092m), Tilicho (7,134m), and Manaslu (8,152m), all covered in pure
white snow.
At the top it was howling an icy wind, we’d
reached an altitude of 4,600m, so high that my fingers we swollen and Ric had
pins and needles in his hands, feet and face.
We rested briefly, but as we only had a bag of
nuts between us to eat, we needed to get down again before our energy supplies
depleted. Passing a green plateau of grazing yaks, we started to descend down
the steep slippery path. The ground was loose beneath our feet and without
walking poles, we had to go painfully slow to avoid falling. It was murder on our
thighs and knees.
After a while the path became indistinct and got
suddenly steeper. We realised we’d been following a dried-up water channel
instead of the footpath. The thing with water is that is takes a lot more
direct route down mountains than people do, so the “path” we’d chosen by far
exceeded a gradient of 50%. Being six feet tall is not an advantage at this
point, I felt so sure that I’ll tipple head first over the edge, that I had to
go down the rest of the way on my behind, desperately clawing at thorny bushes
and tearing my shorts as I went. It was truly horrible. By the time we found
our way back onto the footpath (after jumping over/through a prickly bush) I
had tears in my eyes from the physical and emotional strain of shuffling down
the water channel.
Spurred on by our hunger and Ric’s steely
resolve, we made it back to the hotel in one piece, taking the same amount of
time to descend as it had taken us to ascend.
It was a horrible climb, a horrible descent, a
wonderful view and a good way to aid our acclimatisation. I no longer feared
the rest of the trek as I knew even climbing to our summit of 5,416m couldn’t
be as nerve wracking as sliding down that gravelly water channel.
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| Resting and admiring Annapurna IV. |
Day 9 Bhraga - Manang
Distance: 1.5km/0.9 miles
Climb: >100m
Time: 25 minutes
We left Bhraga after two nights, staying in our
lovely room with the attached toilet, we’d eaten five meals there and drank
endless cups of tea and bill came to just under £40. That’s £20 each for all
our food and board for 2 nights. Pretty damn cheap.
On day nine we only walked half an hour up the
road to Manang, where we stayed the night to acclimatise a little more. The
best thing about Manang was that it had a “cinema”. In this small mountain
town, some ingenious entrepreneur had set up a projector in a big room, where
he played DVDs for tired trekkers. For a few pence, we sat on wooden benches
covered in goat hides and scatter cushions and watched Seven Years in Tibet
Day 10 Manang - Yak Kharka
Distance: 9km/5.5 miles
Climb: 480m
Time: 4 hours
We had some stunning views from Manang to Yak
Kharka and stopped for a cup of tea at a really lovely spot at 3,920m altitude.
Our hotel in Yak Kharka didn’t have electricity or running water but its redeeming feature was a really
lovely, colourful ‘green house’ that was a wonderfully warm shelter from the
high altitude winds. We spent most of the afternoon and evening there, playing
cards, reading and drinking cups of lemon tea.
Yak Kharka translates as ‘yak pasture’ and it
certainly was that – we were kept up all night by the yaks making this horrible
sound, half way between a moo and a howl. It was eerie and extremely annoying.
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| At the tea house. |
Day 11 Yak Kharka - Thorong Phedi
Distance: 7km/4.3 miles
Climb: 430m
Time: 3 hours
This was to be our last section before the
dreaded pass, so we took it nice and easy, in spite of the terrifying landslide
zones we had to traverse, and the difficult climbs that left us gasping for
breath.
We decided to stay at Thorong Phedi (4,430m)
instead of Thorong High Camp (4,860m) as we were already struggling to sleep at
altitude at Yak Kharka, and it can be dangerous to sleep so high. I think we
made the right choice too.
By the time we arrived at Thorong Phedi we
hadn’t showered for two days and we felt pretty grim, so we asked about the
possibility of having a shower, preferably a hot one. What we got was quite
novel; a large bucket of freshly boiled water, which we both washed with in the
lavatory, trying desperately not to fall into the squatter. Although rudimentary
it was extremely refreshing and lovely to feel clean again.
Whilst we sat playing
cards in the hotel common area, a man came in waving a sad looking hiking boot
and asking the staff for glue. His brand new hiking boots had fallen apart on
the very first day of his trek (for he was going in the opposite direction to
us), and he’d lost an entire sole. He was so grateful when I lent me some shoe
repair glue that not only did he give me a lolly pop, he insisted on taking my
home address so that he could mail me a CD by “the very best singer in Israel”,
his home country. How nice it is to help others!
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| Visible on the left slope is the path leading from Yak Kharka. |
Day 12 Thorong Phedi - ThorongLa Pass
Distance: 14.5km/9 miles
Climb: 984m
Descent: 1716m
Time: 11 hours 10 minutes
Today was the big day, our “summit” (although we
didn’t technically reach any summit of any mountain.) We climbed to ThorongLa Pass
We left Thorong Phedi at 5.40am, against the
advice of every other person in our hostel. According to all the guides,
porters, and know-it-all trekkers you have
to set off at 3am to get the best view. Well, our book and our common sense
told us that 3am is just a ridiculous time to start climbing a mountain; it’s
too dark and too cold and without a guide we were worried we’d slip/fall/get
lost. So we had a “leisurely” breakfast and set off when we were good and
ready, and as it turns out, we made an excellent choice.
It was just getting light when we set off, and
it was sleeting. Immediately we were faced with a 400m climb at a 50% gradient.
It was tough going, but a little over an hour later we reached High Camp for a
cup of tea and thawed out our frozen fingers.
After we left High Camp the sleeting stopped and
the sky gradually began to clear, revealing the most impressive view of the
peaks we’d seen during the whole trip. We later heard that those who’d set off
earlier had been surrounded by cloud the entire ascent and were bitterly
disappointed.
The landscape at that altitude is barren;
nothing but shale and rocks. It felt like we were walking on another planet at
times!
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| As the clouds began to lift the freshly snowed-upon peaks came into view. A lone, abandoned tea house visible in the center. |
The climb was torture; the ridges rolled out in
front of us, so steep that you could only see the closest one. Only as you
reached the little trail marker at the top would the next towering climb become
visible. It was so hard to breath in the thin air, and so extremely tiring.
It took us five hours 15 minutes to reach the
pass, climbing almost 1,000m vertically, and when we did I was so overwhelmed
with emotion that I almost cried (I would have, had there been enough oxygen in
the air!) Unbelievably, there was a man at the top selling hot drinks and
noodle soup! We were overjoyed to see him, and to pay his extortionate prices.
Re-energised with hot chocolate and chicken
noodle soup, we set off on our descent. We were warned that it was immensely
steep, but after our Ice
Lake
We were relieved when Muktinath finally came in
to view, but it looked impossibly far away. Descending 1,716m from the pass, we
arrived in Muktinath five hours 30 minutes after leaving the pass. We hobbled
into the first guest house we saw, ordered a ton of food, and sat back to
admire our blisters.
This day was without a doubt the biggest
physical challenge I have ever faced, and in many ways a mental challenge too.
I realised that although it isn’t in particularly great shape, my body can do
pretty much anything that I set my mind to. We were both very proud of
ourselves when we fell asleep that night in Muktinath.
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| At the pass. |
Day 13 Muktinath - Kagbeni
Distance: 9.5km/5.9 miles
Descent: 900m
Time: 3 hours
Following a great night’s sleep, and a hearty
breakfast at the renown Bob Marley Guest House, we leisurely made our way down
the valley towards Kagbeni. It was bliss to go downhill after the strain of the
previous day’s climb. En route we left the trail to look at the ancient village of Jharkot
Kagbeni was a lovely town that unfortunately was
swarming with flies and battered by the harsh, dusty wind. I also got food
poisoning there, which was nasty. We did, however, enjoy a walk around the
town, checking out the first guest house that was built there, the ancient town
square, phallic monuments and the splendid views along the river.
Muktinath, Kagbeni and all the surrounding
villages form the Mustang Region, known as the ‘Last Frontier’ for it boarders Tibet
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| Jharkot, from the path leaving Muktinath. |
Day 14 Kagbeni - Jomsom - Beni
(part by bus)
Distance: 9km/5.5 miles
Descent: 80m
Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
Our last day walking!! Following the food
poisoning and the general terrible service, we declined breakfast at the hotel
and set off super early in order to avoid the gale force winds. The walk to
Jomsom was more or less flat the whole way, following the river bed. No longer
at altitude, we were able to walk at a fine pace with no trouble breathing, and
it was a really lovely walk. We were excited when Jomsom finally came into view,
not to mention starving! After a well deserved breakfast of veggie burgers and
chips and a long time waiting around for a bus, we were finally at the end of
our trek, heading back to civilisation… or so we thought!
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| This was to Jomsom! |
Day 14/15 Jomsom – Ghasa - Beni
– Pokhara (by bus)
Our bus from Jomsom took us
as far as Ghasa. We sat right at the front of the bus and let the beautiful
scenery distract us from the terribly bumpy road and deadly drop just inches
away from my side of the bus. We shared the bus ride with some familiar faces;
Helene and Patrick from Austria
and their American friend Lexi, as well as a German man who’d been on our very
first bus leaving Kathmandu .
At Ghasa we waited round for
a while, trying to fill a bus. Apparently 17 people don’t merit a bus journey,
and after some time we were all crammed into a jeep. It was quite a sight to
behold so many people in such a small space; even the driver was sharing his
seat! Us foreigners were relegated to the back, where the seats faced inwards,
our knees painfully wedged between those of the person in front of us. The
drive was hell, pure hell. It was hot, sweaty and bumpy, we couldn’t see out of
the windows, every time we hit a bump in the road our heads smashed against the
roof of the jeep and unbelievably, the driver kept trying to fit more people
in! It took one of the Nepalese passengers to physically threaten the driver
for him to stop putting in more passengers, and even then he drove like a
maniac.
It was dark by the time we
reached Beni and far too late for us to catch
the connecting bus to Pokhara. We were relieved that the journey had finished
but unfortunately the nightmare wasn’t over; Helene’s bag was missing from the
roof rack! After sometime frustratingly trying to communicate with the driver
and the local police, to no avail, we slumped into a shabby hotel and spent the
night. Helene never did find her bag, and the next morning we all made our way
to Pokhara. In hindsight, perhaps we should have walked!
