When people ask me which of my adventures was most difficult it used to be easy to answer. I could add up miles and elevation and there would be my answer. Not so any more. I’ll use this 1998 trip for comparison purposes. Yes, the hiking is hard now (or just impossible) but, by far, logistics are the most limiting factor of travel for me. All plans must be made electronically! And I just can’t do it anymore.
Got your maps out? Find Nepal and check out the Himalayan range that defines northern Nepal. When I first visited Nepal in the 1960s, Tibet was its northern neighbor and refugees were fleeing — walking over those mountains — to reach the safety of India and Nepal as China claimed Tibet as theirs. India and Nepal worked together to process and provide for Tibetan Buddhists and others. The Kingdom of Nepal is a bit smaller than Michigan. It’s at the same latitude as Florida. Elevations vary from 600 feet in the tropical terai to 29,028 atop Mt. Everest. Kathmandu is a bit over 4,000 feet. We are headed for the Annapurna Sanctuary at 14,000 feet! It’s 1998.
To get there we CALLED an airline — a real person — and made a reservation to fly to Los Angeles, then Bangkok, then layover and on to Kathmandu. The airline made our hotel reservations too. We had passports, some clothes and a camera. (No iPhone. No GPS. No portal! Those of you who have traveled recently will know just what a portal is and how it might make old people nuts.)
My dear hiking friend and I took time off from work, booked a trip with Peter Owens’ Asian Treks. (I slipped my boss a vacation approval slip and hoped he would not notice the number of days! He didn’t until too late.) It was wonderful being back in Kathmandu. We were greeted with marigold leis. The valley is one huge museum! Hindu and Buddhist art. More shrines and temples and stupas than anywhere in the world. So many ethnic groups. Markets throughout — with beautiful, colored spices displayed like a painter’s palette. Rice fields. Great food. We had two full days to explore Patan (where I lived in 1967-68) and Bhaktapur as well as Kathmandu — all three in the Kathmandu Valley.
The trek itself was non-technical. Porters carried all gear aside from our 10-pound backpacks. They also prepared all meals, put up our tents and taught us songs and dances. Daily itinerary was designed to gradually acclimatize us to altitude. Two camps were higher than 11,000 feet; the highest was 12,300 feet. Daily altitude gains and losses were often 3,000 feet. We do that much here, you say, BUT not when you start at 10,000 feet above sea level! We had one rest day. The descents were between 3,000 and 4,000 feet daily. The major focus of the walks was to encourage visiting local houses or temples, enjoying photography or bird watching and botany. Cultural interaction was encouraged.
My most stunning memory is this: 1998 was a year in which a very large number of meteors were present in Asia during the Leonid shower. Each night I could see hundreds flashing across the sky — even into early morning. I expected the scenery and the people and the climbing, but when the unexpected presents itself, it is icing on the cake! Also each night, barefoot villagers — mostly children — would come running down into our camp to sing and dance for and with us. Tired as we were, we would join them. It was a beautiful thing!
While many people do this trek and various forms of it, none will look like what we did in 1998. There were no tea shops or lodging places. There was no electricity anywhere on the trail we did. Meaning, it was dark at night and uncrowded and uncluttered throughout. Bridges were all the rope-and-wood type that bounced when one crossed. And these bridges were over DEEP crevasses. Villagers carried everything in large baskets. They “wore” the baskets on their backs, attached to forehead and/or shoulder straps. And these villagers wore flip flops! Here we were, with our leather boots. Women carried baskets overflowing with green twigs and vegetables. Children often helped by carrying the fish or, often, their younger siblings.
Machhapuchhare means “fish’s tail.” It dominated the skyline most days, besides views of Annapurna (26,545’) and Dhaulagiri (26,721’). We got great views of Annapurna, plus Gangaurna, Fang, Hiunchuli — all over 21,000 feet. Gurung villages, with their slate-roofed neat houses and terraces, were located on ridge tops. We visited several. Eagles and vultures circled in thermals. Several days, we ended up no higher than when we had started though we climbed a thousand feet and then lost it all. Some of these ups and downs were on the famous “Gurung Staircase,” the largest of which covers 3,000 feet elevation change. OUCH!
Throughout, the children captured my attention: Beautiful kids who loved to pretend they were shy but who would flirt with us! Young women, gracefully carrying a hen or a manioc (a potato-like vegetable), would glide by us in their lovely sari-type skirts.
In areas of waterfalls and jungle-type vegetation, there were community government signs urging us, “Don’t spit or throw rubbish around this area because it is inhabited by our powerful God.” There were warbler-like birds and monkeys about. We hit the snow line and a slight storm at Machhapuchhare base camp, at 11,500 feet but snow covered. Drop-offs, wind, slick ice and cold! Glacier moraines, hundreds of feet deep. It got down to 15 degrees that night. The toilet tent zipper froze. Sunset was amazing, though. And Mongu, the cook, made pot stickers! And I got to help. Delicious.
On to Annapurna Base Camp in deeper snow. A stone building, Paradise Garden Hotel, was the only structure up there. Like the rest of the country, Buddhist prayer flags were throughout. The storm was gone. The sky was a dark brilliant blue, making for beautiful pictures of the mountain. A few of us headed up as far as we felt comfortable without crampons — 14,500 feet. That night I had on all of my clothes including coat, gloves, hat. Fifteen degrees again. The next morning was beautiful. We headed down 5,000 feet to Durali. We sang and danced at night!
We entered the Annapurna Sanctuary. We were greeted by little kids — some 4 or so and carrying their younger siblings. Barefoot and snot-nosed and curious and darling. Here we don’t need heavy coats now. We feast on buff curry! And again, we sing and dance and watch for meteors. Every trip to Nepal reinforces my love of the people. We celebrated Thanksgiving in Tadopani because that was where there were chickens for sale for our dinner!
As we continue to descend, our views of Dhaulagiri along the Ghorepani Ridge offer a gentle return to people and animals and markets and delivery folks with large heavy bags of grain on their backs, or cages with three or four chickens in them. At this lower elevation we see large woven straw mats on which grain dries, and also large hay stacks. Now there are trails and roads where donkeys carry goods to higher villages. We cross a bouncing, swaying bridge made by securing two cables high by one’s hands and two low, where pieces of wood formed a step-by-step method of crossing the river, deep, deep below. For some, this was terrifying. It was remarkable to see porters with very large loads struggling across the makeshift bridge.
A culture shock of sorts, we arrive back into Kathmandu with traffic and crowds and hawkers selling everything under the sun. Trips such as this one never leave me. While my 80-year-old memory has tossed out a lot, it holds onto beautiful scenes that so deeply affect who I am.