Liketytrip

“It’s so pretty”, they all said. “You’ll love it, it’s so much more stunning than Everest!”. That was it, our minds had been changed. We were no longer going to climb up to Everest Base Camp, but to that of Annapurna, a bit further over to the west of Nepal. (Excuse me if I go on a bit in this post, but it’s been an awesome 10 days).

On another of Rory’s recommendations, we strolled up to The Himalayan Glacier Company in Kathmandu to meet our wonderful guide, Giri. A gentle, kind and fun guy who looked after our every need, every day. Naba, they person who Guy had been liaising with over email from India, put the finishing touches to our trek while we all chatted and got excited. The next day we were up super-early (a common theme throughout our trip) and off on the ‘tourist bus’ to Pokhara, 150km away on the same rickety old falling apart ‘highway’ that clung to the mountain side on which we had arrived from the Chitwan Park. On the bus we met Sila, our porter who would carry our rucksack throughout the trip for us. He spoke no English (but we swear he understood more than he let on) and whilst we only managed to get one smile out of him for the first few days, we were joking and playing cards with him by the final day. He left flowers in our room one afternoon for our arrival off the mountain :-) sweet.

Now, if you’d have told me the trek would have been so hilly I’d have probably trekked elsewhere. It’s like being on a step machine in the gym and staying there for hours at a time – the only difference being the irregularity of the steps; uneven slabs of grey slate, over gnarly tree roots and through waterfalls of icy cold water with slippery stones. Up, down, across, over, wobble, whoops, up, down. It’s hard on your body but we made sure we were ultra slow. Our last bit of exercise had been that silly Ironman back in June. We told Giri we’d be happy to take it really easy so we became the tortoises of the mountain; constantly being overtaken by dashing hares, only to pass them again whilst they were having an extra-long recovery tea break in one of the many guest houses along the way. By the end of the day we often arrived before them all. At times it was quite soul destroying to haul yourself up wobbly uneven steps on one side of the mountain, only to plod all the way back down again on the other. It is never East Anglia flat, only Nepali flat… something which takes a bit of getting used to.

It was also surprising, in terms of our altitude, how Continue Reading »