Namaste! Let's go for a walk. (Welcome to Bootcamp!)

Nepal – Annapurna Base Camp Trek: 1 - 12 May 2014

We took a short flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara, a lovely lake-side town that acts as a jumping-off point for the foothills and peaks of the Himalayas. Our guide, Chandra, and porter, Anil, came and introduced themselves at our hotel the day before we set off early the following morning. A few things were constant during the trek; Chandra & Anil, early nights & early mornings, a whole load of walking in between, being cold in lodges and eating Dal Bhaat. It would be unfair to sum up our 7 day trek to Annapurna Base Camp with these things as the scenery was breathtaking and the physical challenge was rewarding. Along terraced villages in the Himalayan foothills we slowly made our way from river-side Nayapul up the valley to Sayuli Bazar and then steeply up through beautiful terraced hillsides to Ghandruk for the first night's stay. We started the first day in the sunshine and ended in the pouring rain. This would also prove to be a fairly constant factor, sunny mornings morphing into cloudy and wet afternoons. As we were getting up at 5.45am and 'on the road' for 7am, hiking for 5-6 hours each day, we enjoyed the best of the day and were mostly finished and at our destination by the time the weather worsened. The second day we hiked to the more elevated village of Chomrong – a fairly tough steeply-undulating walk up and down more terraced hillsides with some mountain-views when the clouds parted. Unfortunately, day three was the worst day weather-wise, light rain for most of the walk from Chomrong to Dovan – the transition from hillside to alpine forest was not as enjoyable as it could have been! On day four we hiked from Dovan to Machhapuchhare Base Camp (MBC) at 3700m – luckily there was no rain, but sections of the forest paths were quite muddy, particularly by the river and stream crossings. During this stage the terrain transitioned from forest to a more rocky, mountainous valley featuring numerous waterfalls cascading down the steep valley-sides from the snow and glaciers. We started even earlier, at 4.30am, on day five to walk up to Annapurna Base Camp (ABC). Our guide Chandra seemed in a particular hurry, he was probably cold! Keeping up with Chandra on the ascent path from MBC to ABC was really tough going at almost 4000m and we were both out of breath. It took almost two hours to reach the 4130m high base camp, but luckily we were rewarded with stunning views and saw the sun slowly rise over the mountain range. We were so lucky – there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. After all the rain and clouds the previous couple of days we were super happy. Following a nice breakfast in ABC we started our descent – it was a long walk all the way back down into the forest to Dovan. We were shattered by the time we got there. The next day we headed back toward Chomrong and onto Jhinu where our hiking efforts were rewarded with a long soak in the natural hot springs – it was awesome! On our final day we hiked from Jhinu all the way back to Nayapul. The first 4hrs to Sayuli Bazar and lunch were nice and enjoyable undulating along the river bed valley. The last two hours along a dirt road with the midday sun beating down on us was more like out of a desert movie where people see mirages hoping there would be an oasis ahead – by the time we reached the end we were done with walking. 7 days with over 5hrs a day of walking up and down valleys was enough for us and we thoroughly enjoyed our rest day in Pokhara.
Everyone who goes up to ABC also has to come down the same way again and so you tend to meet the same groups of people en route: we met a very nice Croatian couple on their holiday, encountered a group of spending spree happy Russian couples, and the dread-locked French contingent was surely delighted by the sight of Marijuana plants occasionally growing on route.
With regards to the flora and fauna Astrid couldn’t help but think that there was no need to come all the way to Nepal to climb mountains, as she can just go home to Austria, although there wouldn’t be any terraces or buffalos.
The real hero of this story is Anil, our porter, who carried our heavy luggage with seeming ease across the rocky terrain. He carried it all bearing the load with his head and was much faster than we were up and down showing tremendous speed, strength and balance (see video). Our guide was a bit superfluous as his English conversational skills were only a smidgen better than that of Anil thus negating the reason of getting a guide in the first place. We therefore didn’t learn much about Nepali culture and customs from him, however, we did find out that our guide started as a porter when he was 14/15 and that around 25/30 years ago this trek only had camping options (no guest houses) and questionable hygienic situation. It wasn't until the arrival of Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) that the region got better organized with better hygiene standards (clean toilets & even hot showers), standardized menu’s, or the no water bottle rule was introduced.
All in all it was a tough but nice week.