around the world in 180 days

We are ten days into our hike and tomorrow we will cross Thorung La, a pass at about 5400 meters, or almost 18,000 feet. It is the toughest day of the hike and something we’ve been working towards for more than a week.

We’ve been walking towards Manang for a week, and yesterday we finally reached it. We’re at altitude now, above 3500 meters, or 11,000 feet and now AMS, or acute mountain sickness, is something that we have to take pains to prevent. One of the measures the Himalaya Rescue Association recommends is spending an extra day in Manang to allow your body to acclimate, and that’s exactly what we did today.

The scale of the Himalayas, the sheer size, is impossible to imagine and impossible to describe. It is something that must be seen, must be experienced in person. A photograph of one mountain that towers 16,000 feet above your head though you stand at 10,000 feet already can’t capture how it dwarfs you, it can’t convey how insignificant such an enormous chunk of rock makes you feel, and it can’t show the other gigantic mountain 90 degrees to your right, or the thrid one behind you, or the massive slate wall stretching smooth and unbrokan, 4000 meters towards the sky. Please, I encourage all of you to visit Nepal. There is truly no place like it on earth.
We’ve been in the mountains before. We’ve seen Denali, we’ve climbed (easy) peaks in NZ, we’re not new to the alpine experience, even if we are from a state that makes mountains out of hills because there is nothing taller to be found. Still, the scenery we’ve seen today has left us breathless. Nepal is a land of staggering beauty.
We sleep tonight above 10,000 feet for probably the first time in our lives. In Kathmandu, and two days back down the trail, the heat is sub-tropical: daytime highs push into the upper 90’s on a regular basis. Up here, though, the weather is comfortable during the day, perfect for hiking. At night it drops towards freezing. Last night was cold, this night will be colder and tomorrow will be colder still. Our sleeping bags aren’t warm enough and we’ll be sleeping in our clothes for the next few days. Tomorrow we’ll reach Manang, a largish town (for this part of the world) that has an airstrip. If we need to, we’ll pick up another blanket or a sweater, for which the Manangis will charge us an arm and a leg (in Nepali Rupees, of course, so it still won’t be as much as in the US) and rightfully so, as everything has to be carried in on the back of a Nepali or a donkey.
Anyway, I’m not sure what I’m writing about anymore. In sum: the mountains are very tall and very beautiful, the nights are very cold and we are very happy to be on this journey, even if we are very uncomfortable from time to time.

We didn’t do much walking today, we got enough of that yesterday. Instead, we moved up to Chame, 1/2 hour down the trail, and spent the day relaxing. It was wonderful, especially after a day like yesterday.

We seem to be having trouble remembering that when you buy a guidebook, you do so with a purpose, i.e. to give you guidance. In India, we ignored or forgot our guidebook’s advice about Srinagar and the touts at the New Delhi train station and now, today, we ignored our guidebook’s advice on where to stop.

We covered the 7 miles between Tal and Danagye by noon and for some reason, over lunch we decided to make a go at the next day’s hike, which was about another 7 miles, to the largest town we’ve been to yet, Chame.

We should have relaxed this afternoon instead of pressing on. We should have listened to our guidebook and stayed where it suggested. Immediately after Danagye, the trail climbed 180 meters (sorry folks, do the math yourselves) up a hill that seemed endless and used up the rest of the energy we had. The whole way up, we kept thinking we were almost at the top, so by the time we realized how overambitious we’d been, we didn’t want to descend and have to climb all over again.

We didn’t quite make it to Chame. We’re staying at a brand new guesthouse in a small village about a 1/2 hour walk from Chame. We’re both wiped out and, instead of going on and doing the 10 miles from Chame to Pisang, we’re going to do the 1.5 miles between here and Chame and call it a day.

While we were climbing the massive hill outside of Danagye, I spoke with a Nepali gym teacher who was taking his students to Chame for an athletic competition, which included a bunch of track and field events and volleyball. He told us there’s also a traditional dance competition going on. It was interesting to get his perspective on Nepali life. He was taking his students on a field trip and instead of piling them into a bus, they walked. It’s a different life up here.

Nepal is extending the road from Besi Sahar to Chame, which will change this area forever. Instead of quiet little mountain towns snugged in amongst the hills, there will be larger, noisier, hill stations, stops along a road to Chame, the district headquarters, which will also grow. The traditional ways of traveling (walking) will disappear end and some of what makes this area unique will die along with it. It is sad to us, but the people who live here want the road. The want the additional tourists it will bring (even as it drives others away) and they want the increased prosperity the road will bring. How arrogant would it be for me, a Westerner and an outsider, to try to say, no, you people don’t really want this road, you just think you do? While it is incredible to experience traditional Himalayan life much the same as it has been for thousands of years, how can I expect the people who live here to want to remain the same, like some sort of museum exhibit? I can’t. I just hope that the people here manage to strike a balance between the modern and traditional ways, taking the good from both and avoiding the bad.

Who knew there’d be so much climbing involved in hiking the Himalayas? Our whole day today was a series of steep climbs with short hilly (up and down) sections in between. The scenery is amazing. We still haven’t gotten into the majestic, snow-capped mountains–the mountains we’re walking through are the foothills to the enormous ones, which are more than 8,000 meters (25,000 ft)–but sometime today, the landscape grew an order of magnitude in size. Yesterday the tops of the hills around us seemed reachable and conquerable, and today the tops of the hills disappear in the afternoon when the clouds roll in. It is a humbling experience. It makes one feel small and insignificant, like an ant crawling over boulders.

While traveling, you get a lot of “only in . . .” moments. Case in point: whilst riding the bus from Kathmandu to Besi Sahar (the “official” beginning of the Annapurna Circuit and the end of the road maybe 20 years ago) a goat stepped on my foot. Not much of an issue, really, my foot probably shouldn’t have been in the aisle while people were boarding, but it’s something that just doesn’t happen in the US. Ever. I think there’s laws against transporting livestock on public buses back home, but not here. Only in Nepal.

Anna and I were both very much ready to leave India. As I may have mentioned, we were sick most of our time there, the shopkeepers and merchants were pushy and rude, there were many touts and many people who lied frequently and there were just too too many people. It was exhausting and we’d had enough.

I don’t want to give the impression that all Indians are rude and pushy, quite the contrary, we found many Indians to be honestly helpful, sincerely wanting to practice their English and tell us what they could about their country. There were also shopkeepers that weren’t interested in cheating us, but in getting a fair deal for their product or service and nothing more. The problem we had was telling the difference. Many people who seemed to be nice, caring and honest later turned out to be lying, cheating liars. It was frustrating to always have to be on guard, and it was frustrating not to be able to take people at face value.

Nepal, so far anyway, is different. We’re staying in Thamel, an area in Kathmandu that is the main tourist hub. The streets are narrow and lined with shops. restaurants, hotels, internet cafes, travel agencies and the like. It’s exactly the sort of place Anna talked about wanting to avoid (we wanted to “experience the real culture of the countries we visit”) and we love it.

People come to Nepal to trek in the Himalayas, so every 10 or 20 meters, there’s a gear store filled with gore-tex coats, north face fleece, down jackets, sleeping bags, trekking poles, and every other piece of gear a person could want. They’re like mini-REI’s, only the shopkeepers are Nepali and you can haggle with them a bit (not like in India, just a few hundred Rs). We picked up two sets of trekking poles and a platypus-style bladder for our trip for $50 total. Anna has also wanted a nice Nepali sweater for a long time, so she got a fleece-lined, zip up sweater and a set of fleece-lined wool mittens for $18, and I got a sweater and a hat for about $14.

I’ve also wanted to have a suit tailor made for me during our trip. I’d heard that suits are cheap in Thailand, so I’d planned on having that done in Bangkok, but we stopped into a tailor here in KTM to check prices.  They were so reasonable that I’m going in for a preliminary fitting later this evening. The guy was such a good salesman that we ended up getting Anna a suit as well. We’ll both be so well dressed when we get back that people will be lined up to give us jobs and the hard part will be choosing which one we want.

This is something that I think Indian salesmen and shopkeepers could learn from the Nepalis. In Indian shops, you are almost attacked for showing the slightest interest in anything. This makes me want to leave and not buy anything no matter what price they are offering. I don’t like pushy salesmen. In Nepal, the shopkeepers let you browse, they let you leave if you aren’t interested, and they aren’t so pushy. This approach has led Anna and I to spend way more than we did in India. It also helps that the Nepali rupee is much weaker than the Indian rupee.

Tomorrow we leave for the Annapurna Circuit, a 128 mile hike around the Annapurna mountain range in the Himalayas. It gradually rises (about 1,000 to 2,000 ft. per day) for about 10 days, when we’ll cross a pass at a high point of 5400 meters, or about 17,000 feet. It’s a popular trek, and we’ll be staying in teahouses along the way. The teahouses are pretty primitive, but it’s not camping, so we’ll be able to get by with a lot less gear that usual. I’m hoping to have a pack that’s around 20 lbs, maybe less.

While we’re on the trek, I’ll have limited internet access (maybe none at all), so updates will be limited. I will write often and post as often as I can, but it might be 3 weeks before I see another computer with an internet connection. Check back for updates, but don’t be surprised if there aren’t any.

Yes, again.

Yesterday, we left Shimla by a very slow train, and, after changing to a much nicer train in Kalka and nearly 12 hours later, we traveled to Delhi. Being somewhat in the swing of this traveling thing, we knew that we wouldn’t want to wander around Delhi at 10 pm (when our train arrived) and so we had the foresight to call ahead. Unfortuantly for us, the hotel we made reservations at didn’t have to foresight to actually save us a damn room. It took us another hour to find a suitable place in the area we were in, and we ended up paying quite a bit more. Oh well.

Before we left Shimla, though, I had a night of dashing to the toilet. It was a sketchy train ride and I ate almost nothing all day. Anna’s had some lingering stomach trouble as well, so we decided to visit a clinic and find out what is going on while we’re in Delhi. It’s a good thing, too, because sometime during the night, Anna took a turn for the worse. We’re both in rough shape.

This morning found us at General Williams Masonic Polyclinic, about three blocks from our hostel, where we were the only non-Indians in the whole building.  Like the rest of India, the place was a madhouse, with people everywhere, long lines and an exhausting amount of activity. We saw a homeopathic doctor who gave us matching vials of tiny white pills, which she’d drizzled with some kind of, well, homeopathic medicine, I guess.

She also authorized us to get blood, urine and stool analysis done, which is what we wanted. We’re going back tonight to pick up the results, but hopefully they’ll clear things up for us and we’ll be able to get rid of this nonesense before we start hiking the Annapurna.

The best part of the clinic experience was the price: Rs 50 for both of us to see the doctor, and Rs 190 for both of us to have all our tests done. That works out to about eight bucks, US. We didn’t even claim it on insurance. Wasn’t worth the effort.

Yeah. Other than that, we haven’t been up to much. We didn’t do much of anything in Shimla except watch a lot of TV. We’re both about ready to be out of India. It’s too hectic, there’s too many people and it’s hard to know who you can trust. Coupled with being sick almost the whole time, it makes India very exhausting.

     We decided that, despite the hippies and the general backpacker air, we liked the peacefulness and at-oneness of the Buddhists in McLeod Ganj, and so we’d stay for an extra day and skip our trip to Manali. These 10 hour bus rides are killers, and missing out on one also played a strong role in our decision.

    We’ve known for a week or so that we need to book our train tickets for the ride from Shimla to Delhi in advance, so we tried to take care of that yesterday. We walked 10km into Dharamsala and waited in a stationary line for the better part of an hour before deciding that it would be worthwhile to pay a travel agent to make the bookings for us. We taxied it back up the hill to McLeod Ganj and sat in a travel agent’s office for the better part of an hour trying to book the tickets, to no avail. It was a huge waste of time, but really, what else have we got to do?

     While we were in Dharamsala, we stopped by the bus station to line up our trip to Shimla the next morning. The ticket agent told us we could either take a night bus that evening, leaving at 9:30 pm, or a morning bus at 8 am. We wanted the morning bus, but the evening bus was a deluxe bus, which means 2×2 seating instead of the 2×3 of the ordinary bus, fewer stops and seats that recline. We’d done ok on our last night bus, so we signed up for the one that left yesterday evening.

     It was on our ride last night that we learned the difference between public buses and private buses (which our last night bus was). Private buses are quiter, they don’t stop, and, most importantly, they don’t have a conductor on them blowing a damn whistle every 2 minutes. Inside the cabin of the bus, the whistle was ear piercing. Anna and I both wore earplugs and it was still pretty bad. Once we got into the country, he slowed his pace though, but we still had a restless night. We just couldn’t get comfortable.

    Once we arrived in Shimla, we were attacked by touts, offering to take us to a hotel (where their commission would be tacked onto our room rate) or carry our bags. The main area of Shimla is pedestrian only, which makes for nice walking, but makes getting your luggage to your hotel a lot of work.

     This time, instead of being overwhelmed and pushed around by the touts like we were in Delhi, we were grumpy from not sleeping and I yelled at them, told them to go away, which they finally did. Anna was impressed that I was able to tell them off without using the f-word, and, in hindsight, so am I.

     Shimla seems a pleasant town. It strikes us as more of a domestic Indian travel destination, something like Estes Park or Aspen (without the skiiing) in the US. The main street is lined with restaurants and touristy shops, but it is a nice walk along a ridgeline and the temperature is very comfortable.

    If things go as planned (how often does that happen?), last night’s bus trip will be our last one in India. We are leaving Shimla on Friday, April 27 and heading back to Delhi on the trian, which is supposed to beautiful ride through the mountains. In 96 km, the first leg of the trip goes through 100 tunnels. We’ll be in Delhi for two nights and one full day. We’re going to give a call to Sandeep, a guy we met on our flight to Delhi who is moving to the US in a couple of months to complete an MBA and hopefully we’ll meet up with him and his family at some point. We’ve got a few other errands to take care of in Delhi before we leave on Sunday.

     Then, on April 29, we’re flying to Kathmandu, Nepal with the intent of hiking the Annapurna circuit, which, just like the name implies, is a hike around the Annapurna range in the Himalayas. Its a very popular trek in which you hike from tea-house to tea-house. It won’t be a wilderness hike by any means, but the scenery is supposed to be fantastic. The hike will take something like 20 days to finish, and during that time I might not be able to update the blog very often or at all. I don’t know what to expect as far as internet facilities in the mountains of Nepal. I’ll keep writing, though, so there might be a huge chunk of stuff that goes up all at once. Sorry.

    The Annapurna circuit will be the centerpiece of our trip. After that, we’ll only have about 6 or 7 weeks before we need to come back home and start dealing with all those realities we’ve been lucky enough to avoid for so long. From Nepal, we’re going to fly to Bangkok and spend 2 or 3 weeks in Thailand, both in the north and on the beaches in the south. I want to get a suit made while we’re there and from Bangkok, we’ll likely book the rest of our airplane tickets.

    After Thailand, we’re going to Europe, or that’s the plan right now, anyway. We’re going to stick to eastern Europe, Poland and Czech Republic and the like, and then head towards Scandanavia if our money holds out. Right now, we’re thinking we’ll be back in MPLS on our around the 15th of July. That, of course, is subject to change, but it sounds like it’ll be helpful for Anna’s schooling if we can be back mid-July. I think we’ll be ready to be home by then anyway, even if it does mean dealing with the “real world” again.

    Our hike in Nepal will be a lot of work. It will be the longest hike we’ve gone on, even if it’s not quite a real backpacking trip, we’ll still end up carrying a lot of weight, because we may not be able to find someplace to drop off our unnecessary gear, which would mean lugging everything we brought with us. It wouldn’t be too bad, but we’ll be ready to relax once we get to Thailand. Until then, we’ll relax as much as we can in Shimla before we say goodbye to India for a very long time, if not for good.