Hiking in Nepal: 2

Day 2 of my hike through the Annapurnas began at a little guest house. To the left you can see what was outside my room's window, and below, a little more detail. It was an urbanite-in-the-wild moment as I fell asleep: that dull roar in the distance clearly wasn't air conditioning. Distant traffic? No, it was a mountain river in the extreme distance, but the funnel of the valley pushed the white noise up towards me and lulled me to sleep. Not that I needed help falling asleep after a full day of climbing. Darkness comes quickly in a mountain valley, and the temperature dropped rapidly.



Once I was awake I stumbled down to the dining area (view above), a broad patio between the guesthouse and the kitchen where I chatted in Frenglish with a couple of older Frenchmen in hiking gear. We discussed the similarities between Le Pen and Bush.

In cool air (about 50 f) I at my breakfast of rich Nepali tea and fresh, warm chapatis. The only sounds were the handful of other guests, the teenage daughters who ran the family guesthouse while the parents were shopping in Pohkara, plus the distant roar of the river far below. Around 7:30, we set out on the trail.


This is Govinda, my guide, near the site of a recent landslide. The monsoon rains in August and September always cause a number of landslides in the mountains, most of them pretty small. This one was major- most of a village was washed out and a couple dozen people lost their lives. We would cross this path of this slide a couple more times during the day as we climbed this hillside headed to Gorepani. Huge trees littered the path and were just starting to decompose, but in a couple places the faster growing plants had already colonized the grey path of fallen rock. Some of the larger boulders were enormous- the one above Govinda's head is the size of a semi truck.


The second day was the shortest but steepest; we only walked for four or five hours, only pausing for one break. Then I met a couple of younger Nepali tourists, one of whom had a former classmate studying in Boston. In the photo above, I'm standing near one of the particularly sheer drops. I'd estimate that the opposite slope is a little less than a kilometer behind me, and the drop to the valley flour perhaps half that again. At the end of the day we were near the high point of this particular trip, just shy of 3000 meters above sea level. Naya Pul where we began walking is around 1200 meters, and Pohkara is around 500.


I certainly felt the air getting thinner at this point, but to be frank I don't know how much of that was psychological.

Some of the watercourses were amazing here. Lots of them were narrow and brief but lovely. I often wanted to stop with my book and sit there for an hour or more, and frequently wondered what it would be like to follow the stream uphill to find a more secluded spot.


In the midafternoon, we reached the town of Gorepani where we would spend the night. Here was another family-run guesthouse with a large franklin stove in the middle of the dining room and blessed hot water showers, powered by solar panels as is the norm in Nepal. I sat next to the fire and read my book for the rest of the day. The temperature here was much cooler- down to about 40f at night. It probably would have been even less had it not been for the persistent cloud cover. It was frustrating; during the entire three months I've been abroad, every night I've spent outside major population centers has been overcast, so no good stargazing. Oh well, one can't complain about the view in Nepal.

Days three and four coming up next.