We're safely back in Pokhara now after nine days trekking in the Annapurna range. My trek didn't really go to plan - my Indian illness came back to haunt me in a big way and I didn't have the energy to continue beyond Annapurna's inhabited foothills into the Sanctuary itself - but Chris made it all the way up to Annapurna Base Camp, at 4095m above sea level.

By the time we set off from Pokhara I still hadn't regained my appetite - something I regret is not having taken the opportunity to see a doctor as soon as I arrived in Kathmandu - and therefore wasn't eating enough to replace the energy I was burning carrying myself and my backpack up and down the hills of Nepal each day. By midday on the third day, I felt physically exhausted, and Chris and I took the mutual decision that as I was walking at a pace beyond my ability and yet was still slowing him down, he would continue to Base Camp alone and I would wait for him. Clearly I'm frustrated and disappointed at not having achieved the trek's ultimate goal, but I also feel that as I wasn't having fun it wasn't worth punishing myself to get to the end - particularly as above about 3000m, I would have had the added effect of altitude to deal with.

I divided my time between the villages of Jhinu, which has some great hot springs, and Chhomrong, the highest permanent settlement in the Annapurna region. The views at Chhomrong in particular were simply awe-inspiring - in the morning, before the day heats up and the clouds roll in, Hiunchuli and Annapurna South seem to tower over Chhomrong, a solid wall of rock and ice three vertical miles above the village. While Chris was trekking to Base Camp - where he tells me the vastness of the mountains is even more impressive - I had time to take in something of trailside life in what, despite the influence of tourism, is still a very remote and rural part of Nepal. Chhomrong, for example, is at least a day's walk from the nearest paved road and almost everything that doesn't grow in the mountains has to be carried there on a man's back - from chocolate, Coke and tinned tuna to keep the trekkers going to things you wouldn't necessarily think of, such as toilet bowls. My recollections of watching life go by for a few days in the Himalayan foothills include watching Nepali children no older than six or seven sitting in the yard outside the village school learning English numbers by rote (three, one, thirty-one; three, two, thirty-two), watching mule trains descending steep stone staircases carrying trekker goodies or kerosene for stoves (burning wood is banned in certain areas to limit deforestation), and meeting a lady with a disabled teenage son who sat on his useless feet on a patch of grass by the side of the trail that he'd worn away to dust, and reflecting on how much harder life must be in a place where you can't go anywhere without climbing a few hundred steps for him than for a trekker with a mild stomach bug.

Perhaps my greatest pleasure, however, was my conversations with the local people. The mountains are shockingly empty of trekkers, and in some villages lodge owners begged and pleaded with us to stay at their lodge. Paradoxically, it's a good time to visit for trekkers: nobody is busy and everybody has time to chat. In some cases, the conversation turned to politics (I always let the Nepali raise the topic if they wanted to, and never brought it up myself; I also noticed that it was always discussed in private). The Annapurna region is outside the area of firm government control (effectively, Kathmandu, Pokhara and the Indian border and not much more) but the Maoists don't exercise control over it either (they ended their strike two days after we began trekking, incidentally). All the government checkpoints were closed after the Maoists blew one up at Ghandruk, a day's walk from Chhomrong, and apart from their trademark blue graffiti the Maoists were noticeably absent. In past years the Maoists have collected 'donations' from trekkers of Rs. 1000 each, but we didn't meet any - although a lodge owner told me he saw two men he knew to be Maoists come down a trail half an hour after I'd gone up, so I may have passed them without realising who they were. Which is unfortunate, as I would have liked to ask them how they believe they can build a better society by violence.

A dominant theme in the conversations I had was that the king is more to blame than the Maoists for the current state of affairs, and they resent his taking the power that used to belong to them (until about a month ago, Nepal was more or less a democracy). Gyanendra is seen as a strongman backed by the army rather than as a king; one old grandmother had a picture of Gyanendra's elder brother, King Birendra, who was assassinated in 2001, in her kitchen and told me if he had lived things wouldn't be as bad as they are now. Whatever the truth, the current political poison is killing tourism in Nepal, and the ordinary people have no choice but to watch their livelihoods vanish and the only industry that gave them the chance of a life other subsistence agriculture collapse. Last month's royal power grab hasn't brought political stability back to the country, and the Maoists' 'People's War' has done nothing to help the people of Nepal.

I'm surprised how sour the tone of this entry has become, and I hadn't realised how angry I was until I began to write. Nonetheless, it's been cathartic, and I will try to be more upbeat next time, which will probably be in Kathmandu.