It's been an awfully long time, hasn't it? Well, you're in luck, friends, because yours truly just got back from a lovely trip that lasted over a month and a half, and saw her travel what was basically to the other side of the world. I went to Nepal. And for all those who emailed my poor Hubby when they heard about the avalanche, you can rest easy, because I am-in fact-alive and well. While we could at one point see Manaslu from the trail, we were by no means anywhere near it. But I do appreciate your concern. Now, I hate to wax poetic on you here, folks, but quite frankly on this most recent trip I fulfilled a dream. That's right, I finally made it to Base Camp and Mount Everest. Yes, it was hard. But not as hard as you might think. In fact, I have to say that in my 30 years making the face of this planet more awesome, I have actually done things that were much, much more difficult. What it took, really, was patience. But more about that later. Let's start with the basics, shall we. And strap yourselves in, grab some coffee, and perhaps even a little snack(I'd suggest something with chocolate), 'cause it's gonna be a long one.
This all started eons ago on a little trail known as the South Boundary. The topic of epic hiking trips came up, and the idea was born that perhaps those hiking at the time(Slacker, Putz and myself) should all go to Everest Base Camp together. How much more epic can you get, right? So right then and there we decided it was a plan, and that we would go in the year 2010. Well, the best intentions, as they say. When it didn't happen in 2010, we put it off and thought, perhaps 2011? But then dearest Hubby and I decided to go to Australia, and the plans go put on hold for another year. So finally, after putting it off, I decided 2012 was the year. Neither Slacker nor Putz said they could really afford to go when I made the decision, but I was prepared to go alone, if need be. Fortunately, my little sister(Putz) decided she had enough time to save up for the trip, so she would come with me.
That's right. Me and my sister. 5 weeks. In Nepal. Together. Just the two of us. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. I knew we'd annoy the crap out of each other, and that it could be considered a miracle if we came back and were still on speaking terms. And amazingly, we did. We managed to not kill each other, which I think is cause for celebration. I also feel as though I deserve some sort of medal for such a feat, but if you'd like to delve into why that is, take me out for some Starbucks prepare yourself. I might also mention that our mother was very pleased that we were still on speaking terms when we got back. Apparently she was a little nervous about that.
Now for the disclaimer. As always, these are my opinions based on my own personal experiences, and could be completely different from experiences that others have had. Even my sister might describe aspects of this trip completely differently. You might see and experience something completely different if you went to the same places and did the same things. But overall, I came away with a good impression of Nepal, and if I run out of other places to visit or have the burning desire to go back at some point, I probably would.
My sister basically left it to me to plan the trip, and I decided that if we were going to fly all that way, and spend all that money, that we might as well make it worth our while to be there. So I planned 2 trips for us; the Annapurna Circuit, followed by Everest Base Camp. That would put our trip at just over 5 weeks, which, though long, would make the 30+ hour commute from Canada worth it.
There are 2 kinds of treks(the Nepali version of hiking), that one can do in Nepal. There are Expedition treks, and Teahouse treks. Expedition treks are where you sleep in a tent, teahouse treks are where you sleep in teahouses. Teahouse treks cost significantly less than expedition treks, owing to the fact that you don't have to pay extra porters-or hire yaks-to get your camping gear up the mountain. For a teahouse trek all you need is a porter for your backpack that has your sleeping bag and clothes in it(though you can carry all that yourself, I wouldn't recommend it, and given how cheap it is to hire a porter, why not?). So we went with the teahouses, a decision we were more than glad we made once we actually got there.
The teahouse treks we picked were essentially all-inclusive. That means your room and 3 meals each day are covered, as well as the cost of hiring your guide and porters. For the Annapurna trek it also covered rides to and from the trailhead, and for Everest it covered the flight to and from Lukla. There are a myriad of other ways to arrange your trek, but to me this was the easiest, since you really don't have to think about anything once you get out there, other than whether you're going to have the Dal Bhat or the Momos for dinner.
The Annapurna Circuit trek was 18 days long, including one acclimatization day. It took us through everything from tropical rainforest and rice paddies to alpine desert and scree slopes. We passed through 4 different districts and over the highest mountain pass in the world(Throung La, at 5416m). We spent the night in 16 different towns and villages, and got to know our guides and assistants quite well. For anyone with a map, this is how it went. We all met in Pokhara, and from there took a nauseating 3-hour jeep ride to get to Besi Sahar, where the trek started. From there, the villages we stayed in, chronologically, were:
Nadi Bazar-930m
Ghermu-1310m
Tal(where I purchased a lovely pair of flip flops for 250 rupees)-1700m
Danakyu-2300m
Chame-2670
Lower Pisang-2200m
Braka-3439
Manang(2 nights, and home to a 96 year-old lama that blessed us on our journey)-3540m
Yak Kharka-4100m
Thorung Phedi(the base of Thorung La pass and some of the best tomato soup and bread I've ever tasted)-4450m
The Holy city of Muktinath-3760m
Kagbeni-2800m
Marpha(famous for their apples-yes we had pie!)-2670m
Ghasa-2010m
Tatopani(Nepali for hot springs, in which I did partake)-1190m
Ghorepani(home to the famous-and famously crowded-Poon Hill)-2860m
Hile-1430m.
It was a good trek, and we did enjoy ourselves, but I found it wasn't really what I expected.
I was expecting to be walking along a trail, coming across the occasional village, but for the most part we would be a little more isolated and not really see that many other people. This was basically the exact opposite of what we actually encountered on the trek. There were people living everywhere, and there were tons of people actually on the trail. Most of them waltzing around in their flip-flops, staring at you like you were and alien. The best way I can think of to describe it is that it was sortof the third-world version of walking through the suburbs. There are houses nearly everywhere, people everywhere, and occasionally you'll come across a teahouse or a restaurant. But once we got used to the idea that we wouldn't really be alone as much as we thought, we really did have a good time.
This trek was long. The longest hiking trip I'd been on before this was 14 days on the South Boundary in Jasper. But this wasn't exactly your typical hiking. No, sir. Not when you can have a hot shower nearly every day, and you don't have to pack in your tent and all your food. In fact, you don't even need to carry your big pack with you-you have an assistant for that. It's weird having someone else carry your bag at first. It kinda makes you feel a little bit lazy. But as the trip wears on you get used to it pretty fast, especially when you get above 3000m and it gets rather a lot harder to breathe. After having experienced high altitude, I can honestly say that I would not even attempt to go above 4000m while carrying anything more than a day pack. I wouldn't make it. But more about this altitude business later.
The Everest Base Camp trek was 14 days long, and included 2 acclimatization days. It basically took us from Lukla-reached by a harrowing flight from Kathmandu-up to Base Camp and back in the Solukhumbu region. The trail was nearly the same going up and coming back, but as we learned while we were there, the Solukhumbu is a rather remote region. They fly virtually everything in and out of Lukla, and that includes food and anything else you find up on the trail. And there are no roads past Lukla, so the only way they get anything anywhere is either by carrying it themselves or strapping it to the back of a yak. More about the yaks later, I promise. For the map nerds, the villages we stayed in-chronologically-were:
Phakding-2610m
Namche Bazar(2 nights)-3440m
Tengboche-3860m
Dingboche(2 nights)-4410m
Lobuche-4910m
Gorak Shep-5140m
Deboche-3820m
Namche Bazar-3440m
Phakding-2610m.
This trek was a bit more of what we had initially been expecting, in that it was a lot more isolated and there were a lot less people. That being said, I have never seen so many bloody tourists in my life. We hit this trail bang-on in the middle of high trekking season. The trekking season in Nepal is very short, as the weather really doesn't cooperate outside of about 2 months in the fall. So that's when all the tourists show up to go trekking. And that's when the trails get really, really crowded. For example, on our last day of hiking I got stuck at one point waiting at a bottleneck as a large group passed us. I think I must've stood there for a good 10 minutes before the trail was clear enough that I could get through. And the bottleneck wasn't even that small, it was just that there were so many people on the trail and they weren't getting out if the way to let me pass them. But me complaining about trail etiquette is another story for another day. And the trekking poles! At one point Putz and I decided that we were going to toss off the mountain the next person we saw with trekking poles that wasn't using them. Everyone had them, no one was using them properly. And no one even really needed them! Putz and I, as tourists ourselves, made it through 32 days of trekking without once using trekking poles. And we at no point even had the slightest inkling that our lives would be easier if we had them. I think I'm going to hate trekking poles for the rest of my life now. If you're coming hiking with me, leave your poles at home, or they might end up irretrievable at the bottom of a ravine or crevasse. You've been warned.
We went with 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking on Annapurna and Trek Nepal Int'l on Everest. The two companies are very different, and do have different policies. It also doesn't help that we went on 2 different treks in two completely different regions. So it doesn't really seem fair to be comparing the two, and I won't do that here. Plus it would take a lot of time and probably a whole separate blog entry. But if you are interested, please feel free to ask me about it sometime. For the record, though, both Putz and I felt Annapurna was the more difficult trek.
So now we've reached that point where I like to take my experiences and separate them into neat little packages so they're a little easier to discuss and explain.
What, exactly, is a teahouse? Well, that's a very interesting question you ask, really. And it varies depending on the region you're in and the city you're in. A teahouse, in it's raw form, is basically just a place where you can get food and a place to sleep. Generally the teahouses we stayed in had separated rooms, with one to three beds in each room. The separation was only a thin sheet of plywood in some places, and in others the walls were a foot of solid stone or concrete. But at least the plywood gave you some visual privacy, if not audio privacy. Two twin beds in each room were the most common, though we did stay in a few that had three beds, and we did see some rooms that had double beds in them. Your bed generally consists of a foam mattress of varying thickness, placed on a wooden frame, all covered by a sheet. There is generally a pillow, though the term pillow is used loosely here, as in a lot of teahouses the pillow could also be mistaken for a rock or perhaps several bricks duct-taped together. I will quickly say now that both Putz and I were a bit afraid for our very expensive sleeping bags, as we thought there was a very good chance we would encounter bed bugs somewhere along the trail. I am pleased to announce that nowhere, either on the trail or in Kathmandu, did we encounter bed bugs. And we were very glad for it. In fact, we both had bed bug sheets that we intended on using every night, and both of us ended up not bothering after about a week or so. The teahouses were, for the most part, clean and tidy, though you have to remember that we were in Nepal, where clean and tidy don't necessarily mean what they do here in Canada. There were a few teahouses that we found hard to sleep in because of the mice in the walls. Most of you out there are now currently making the EEEEEK sound, but it's really not as bad as it sounds. The mice were in the walls, not our rooms. And once we checked that there were no places for them to actually get into our room, it was just a matter of trying to sleep while the little buggers made so much noise. You wouldn't think a mouse inside a wall could really make that much noise, but you'd be wrong. In one place Putz said they were making so much noise at the head of her bed that she swore there was a whole little mouse family in there, including a little brood of babies. Occasionally our room would have an attached bathroom or toilet(more about both of these later), which was a blessing or a curse depending on where you were. Some of the toilets stunk to high heaven, which meant that the room also smelled of toilet. And it's hard enough to sleep above 3000m without having to also overcome the stink of a dirty toilet. I have to say, though, that this whole system of trekking and staying in teahouses was actually pretty awesome. You don't have to set up a tent, you don't have to cook your own meals, and the best part, you don't have to do any dishes. It's awesome. I think we should start something like this up in Canada. I call dibs on running the teahouse at Mount Robson.
Food. Food is important. It's what keeps you going on the trail, and if you're me, keeps you happy. The food in Nepal is good. They have a few dishes that we don't have here that I really did enjoy. Dal Bhat is their national dish, and consists of lentil soup, a healthy helping of rice, and curried vegetables. Sometimes you'll get some fresh veggies, a bit of salad, or some pickled something-or-other as well. It's also-and this is the best part-all you can eat. You can have 10 helpings of Dal Bhat if you like. And they'll applaud you on your appetite. I actually really liked the Dal Bhat, especially if the curried veggies were a little spicier. On the Everest trek I found I was so hungry that I almost needed to order Dal Bhat every night, because it was the only way I could get enough food without having to order 3 dinners just for me. And that includes finishing Jana's food nearly every meal. I also found that at higher altitudes I was really craving soup, so the lentil soup seemed to really do the trick. Another dish they have are Momos. Momos are basically just a dumpling-similar to the ones you'd find at dim sum-with various things inside. We saw everything from yak steak momos to veggie momos. For the most part we had veggie or veggie and potato momos. The insides tended to have a little spice to them, which was delightful given my penchant for spicy food. You'll note that all of the food we've eaten so far is vegetarian. There's a reason for that. Most of the teahouses don't have refrigerators. Our guide on Everest put it rather bluntly at one point-"You don't eat meat in the mountains. They put it in the basket, and then you die." No, he seriously said that. You see, what happens is, they get the meat from Kathmandu, or wherever they get it from, but then they have to get it to the teahouse. Well, there are no roads, and thus no refrigeration trucks, so the meat gets to the teahouse by some dude carrying it in the basket on his back, or by being strapped to the back of a yak or a donkey. That ain't safe to eat, kids. On that note, it's also not safe to eat other things that need to be refrigerated, such as mayonnaise. Because while the teahouse might have a refrigerator, that's not to say that they have power to make it run all the time. I learned firsthand it's not safe to eat the mayonnaise. It is, however, safe to eat the yak cheese, because it does not need to be refrigerated. You wouldn't think so, but yak cheese is actually pretty good. It tastes kindof like a cross between gouda and parmesan, and you can make a decent pizza with it. The teahouses all seem to have virtually the same menu, though it does vary a little from place to place. They all have some version of fried rice and fried noodles, similar to what we'd find in a Chinese restaurant here in Canada. They also all have various types of soup-garlic soup was a new one to us, and it kept the vampires away for a good week or so afterwards. You can also find some western dishes, mostly spaghetti or macaroni and pizza, which are all actually not bad, and even quite good in some places. Jana took to ordering the pizza nearly every place we stopped on Everest, which was nice because that meant I got to finish it all the time.
Tea. Yes, tea deserves its own category. They are called TEAhouses, after all. You drink tea all the time while trekking. The hot liquid seems to help with the altitude, and because the water's boiled to make it, it's the only thing that's safe to drink that doesn't come from a bottle or need to be sterilized. On a side note: Yes, we did have to sterilize all our water before we drank it. It comes straight out of the stream up in the mountains, so we treated it with tablets before we drank it, which gave all the water we drank for nearly 6 weeks a lovely choriney taste. I avoid caffeine, so my tea choices were limited to basically hot lemon and mint, and occasionally hot orange if they had it. Hot lemon is essentially hot lemonade. It's very sweet and very tart. Mint needed to be ordered correctly, because if you asked for mint tea, you would get black tea with mint added. If you asked for hot water with mint, they'd throw a sprig of mint into a cup and pour boiling water over it. We only saw hot orange at a select few places on Everest, but it was hot Tang. And I don't mean it sorta tasted like Tang, I mean it literally was Tang. We were a little leery at first, but were pleased to discover that hot Tang actually tastes quite good. We even decided it might be worth trying the next time we hit the trail in Canada. Almost as good as tea and it doesn't keep you up at night. We drank tea with nearly every meal except dinner. Instead of having tea with dinner, it seemed that afternoon tea was more the norm, and on the Annapurna trek it was actually something we looked forward to, because we were given cookies and biscuits with our tea. I almost miss afternoon tea now that I'm back, but since I haven't been able to find the same Coconut Crunchee cookies here, it just wouldn't be the same.
Sherpas vs. Porters. Yes, there is a difference. And you can't call a Sherpa a porter and vice versa. Porters are the people that help trekkers. They're also the people that carry heavy loads of supplies up and down the trails between villages. Anyone can become a porter, and they can live pretty much anywhere. Porters don't climb mountains. Sherpas, on the other hand, aid climbers when they're ascending and descending mountains. They do all the heavy lifting, but it's only while climbing. Sherpas are, essentially, climbers themselves, but they help other climbers get up the mountain. Sherpas really only live above 3000m. They're actually kindof a small race of people who adapt to high altitudes extremely well. Since I didn't do any climbing while I was in Nepal, I didn't actually get to meet any sherpas. But I did meet plenty of porters.
The trail. Hiking in Nepal is not like hiking in Canada. As a country, Canada isn't that old, thus most of our hiking trails aren't that old. Nepal, well it's much, much older than Canada. And so are its trails. In Canada you're likely to find dirt trails without a lot of steps or other infrastructure built in. Nepal's not like that because the trails are so old they would've been destroyed if they were left as dirt tracks. So in a lot of places, especially on hills where rain could wash the trail away, they've taken rocks and built steps, or improvised pavement. It sounds groovy, but because the rocks are uneven it makes the walking difficult at times. And stairs seem to suck a whole lot more energy than just a dirt trail up a hill. One day on Annapurna consisted of a 1600m elevation gain, that was all stairs, all day. It was awful(made even more awful by the fact that I'd spent the entire night before on the toilet pooping my life away-more about that later, I promise). Some of the trail also look a lot like a road, and some even are roads in spots. Feels a little silly at first to be walking down a road when you could just as easily hop in a jeep and make the trip a little faster, but you get used to it eventually.
Yaks. If anyone in the life insurance industry reads this, could you possibly answer a quandry for me and my sister? Does one need special insurance to cover a yak attack, or would that be included in a regular policy? We wondered this many a time as we traipsed down the trail and were suddenly chased off to the side by these gigantic beasts. And horns! Have you seen their horns?!? Those things could gut you with one poke! We didn't come across a lot of yaks on Annapurna, as it was mostly donkeys there, but there were tons of yaks on Everest. Donkeys are less scary. They're not as big, and they have no horns. Etiquette on the trail is this: the animals have the right of way. Especially when it's yaks. When you hear the telltale sounds of the jangling bell, you get the hell off the trail, because you don't want to be in the way of those mammoth beasts when the come rolling through. You also have to make sure that you're on the mountain side of the trail if you're on a hill, because if you're on the cliff side and a yak gets too close, you're going over. Unlike donkeys, yaks survive better at altitudes over 3500m, which is why they're so much more common on the Everest trek(which was virtually all over 3500m). Yaks can also carry much heavier loads than donkeys. But they have trouble going downhill, so they tend to almost run a little on the downs. Which is why it's even more important to get off the trail when you hear them coming.
Altitude. On this trip, we topped out at 5416m. To put that in perspective, Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada, is 5959m. That, my friends, is a mere 543m higher than I was at the top of Thorung La pass. So I feel quite confident that I'm okay in doling out a little wisdom when it comes to this subject now. I personally started to feel the altitude at around 3000m. But it took until 4000m for it to really kick in. And by kick in, I mean the breathless feeling that there's a linebacker sitting on your chest, laughing in your face when you even attempt to go up the smallest of hills. You're not necessarily breathless if you're just sitting around reading a book when you're that high up, but you do feel it the second you try to do something that requires a little more oxygen. Like rolling over in bed, getting up to use the toilet, that sort of thing. What I discovered is that if you hike and move a whole lot slower than you normally would, it doesn't really seem that bad. I don't like being out of breath, and when you're trying to go up a hill at over 5000m, if you go even remotely too fast, you simply can't catch your breath. That's when it gets dangerous, because if you start to feel light-headed, there's a chance you could pass out, and that definitely wouldn't be good. So Putz and I pioneered the "walk like a Granny" technique, in which we walked at a glacial pace something akin to what a 100 year-old grandma could do. It got us up the hill though. I actually have a video of Putz up at the pass, which I'll try to post up here at some point if she'll give me her permission. It demonstrates rather well our super-slow motion walking. The other thing you have to worry about at higher altitudes is smartly-termed altitude sickness. The best way to avoid getting it? Go slow, drink tons of water, eat lots, and jam yourself full of Diamox. Diamox is a drug used to help your body acclimatize easier and faster. Both me and my sister took it, and it worked like gangbusters. Neither of us ended up getting particularly sick from the altitude, though Putz did end up feeling nauseous for a few days, and I did get a headache coming up over the pass. We also both had headaches when we spent the night in Gorak Shep-at 5180m-but both of us discovered that by guzzling tons of water we felt much better, so it was likely just the dehydration that was getting us.
Sleeping at Altitude. This is a whole other thing completely. It's impossible to get a good night's sleep at high altitude. Welcome to 4000m, I hope you weren't expecting to get any real rest tonight. You can sleep, a little, but you wake up in the morning not feeling rested at all. You also wake up during the night a lot more than you would at home. I'm sure they've done studies as to why this is, but all I know is that it's really, really irritating. What's even more irritating is knowing that you went to bed the night before completely exhausted, thinking that you'll get a really good rest and wake up from a fitful night feeling almost worse than when you went to bed. Apparently, at higher elevations, because your body's so starved for oxygen, it likes to keep waking you up every once in a while, and it also won't let you go into deep REM sleep, which is where you get the truly rested feeling from. So we went about 9 days out of the trip without much sleep at all. But we survived.
"The Diarrhea" and "The Rash". So, apparently Nepal and its food and water don't really agree with me too much. That is to say, I had some rather interesting things happen to me while I was there. If you're squeamish, or don't really care to hear a bit about my bodily functions, I would suggest you stop reading now and skip to the next section. So all was well for a good 15 days of the first trek, and that's when disaster struck. I got "the diarrhea". And believe me, it wasn't fun. I spent a good portion of the night in the bathroom as my life drained from me, and when I wasn't in the bathroom I was laying in bed suffering through the worst abdominal cramps I've ever had. Thank goodness for the supply of antibiotics they gave me at the travel clinic back in Canada. I took them, but as you probably know, they don't exactly work instantly. And when you're on the trail, you don't really have a choice but to hike the next day, whether you're feeling okay or not. Thankfully my sister and the woman we were hiking with convinced me to pop an immodium, so it made the day a little bit better. The problem with having spent all night in the bathroom, though, is that not only are you tired in the morning, but you have no energy to speak of. And it just so happened that the night I got sick was the night before we had the highest altitude gain in a day on the entire trip. It wasn't pretty. I was so tired and weak that day that our guide had to carry my daypack, which was pretty embarrassing for me. And that tired and weak feeling lingered for about another day and a half after that, which sucked even worse. For a while I was worried I'd be so tired that I wouldn't be able to make it to Everest and I'd have to send Jana up without me. But thankfully the antibiotics worked and about 3 days later I was feeling pretty much back to normal. It also happens that while we were on our way up to Everest I got a really wicked rash. This happens to me every now and again, mostly when I go to humid, tropical places. But this time it was different, because it wasn't humid or tropical, and the rash was way, way worse. Normally it spreads over a very small area and goes away after a couple days of Reactine. This one covered pretty much my entire torso and didn't go anywhere after 4+ days of antihistamines. You think I'd be worried at this point, but I really wasn't that much. It didn't hurt, and it didn't itch, so I figured it probably was just a weird reaction to the water(which I later learned I'm allergic to in Kathmandu), or to wearing clothes that weren't clean and not being able to get a decent shower. It did finally start to fade once we reached Gorak Shep, and there's no trace of it now, so I guess everything solved itself. See, I really didn't need to worry anyways.
Cold. It's really, really cold at high altitude. This, of course, goes without saying. But what you don't realize is that the altitude combined with the cold leads to a lovely combination of not being able to warm up at all. What's the easiest way to warm up when you're cold, other than getting up off the la-z-boy and walking over to the thermostat? Put on another sweater. Well, what if you're already wearing every sweater you have? Then you get up and move around a bit, right? A little physical activity generally does the trick to get the blood pumping. And if it's really cold, some vigorous activity works even better. Well, try doing vigorous activity when you can barely breathe to start with. It ain't happenin', folks. So really, there honestly is no way to warm up. The day after we went to Everest Base Camp, we were supposed to head up to over 5500m-the top of Kala Pattar-to get some good views. Well, in order to do that we needed to get up and start hiking at 4am, hours before the sun came up. Not cool, but we did it anyway. It was so bloody cold I think I nearly got my toes frostbitten. It was fairly steep uphill all the way up, and because of the altitude we couldn't go fast. And because we couldn't go fast enough to keep ourselves warm and the blood pumping to our feet, my feet got so cold I literally couldn't feel them anymore. And then they started to hurt, which is not a good sign. We made it up about halfway to the top of Kala Pattar before I had to pull the plug. The sun was nearly up, so we snapped some pictures and then went down as fast as we could move our feet. It wasn't fast enough for me to get the feeling back in my toes. That took Putz rubbing my feet at the teahouse and about 3 more hours. So yeah, it's cold in Nepal.
Showers. Showers in Nepal are not like showers in Canada. While the showers on the trail were extremely nice to have, they were by no means luxurious. For the most part, they consisted of a small concrete room with taps and a shower head. If the teahouse had hot water it tended to be propane heated, which meant that the tap was then hooked up to a small box inside the shower stall that heated the water as it went through. Occasionally you had to pay for the showers if they were propane heated. In a good shower there would be hooks to hang your stuff on, but the majority of them didn't even have those. That's if the teahouse had hot showers, which many of them didn't. That's all fine and dandy for the occasional day, but when you're out there for weeks at a time, you need to get clean. So what's the alternative. Cold bucket showers! What on Earth, you ask, is a cold bucket shower? It's exactly what it sounds like. You get a bucket of cold water and a scoop. Enjoy. The couple I had really weren't that bad, but I'd only recommend them if you're desperate and in a place that's warm enough that you'll be able to feel your toes again afterwards at some point. Gorak Shep is not the place for a cold bucket shower. That said, there was some rather impressive ingenuity over there in terms of the showers. For instance, the propane heaters don't work particularly well when the water is freezing in the feeder line. So at one teahouse, instead of using the heater, they'd boil you 20L of water, and dump it into a bucket situated on the roof of the shower(or tin shack, if you prefer-there's something rather fascinating about having a shower when you can hear the yaks passing less than a few meters away), mix in a little cold water, run a hose inside the shack, and viola, warm shower. To be honest, that was the warmest, most pleasant shower I had on the entire trip. It wasn't exactly the Hilton, but it got the grease out of my hair and the stank out of my armpits, which is better than nothing.
Laundry. While Putz and were there for over 5 weeks, we never had a chance to take our laundry out to be cleaned, because we never spent more than 2 nights in any one spot. Which left us with hand-washing our clothes and hanging them to dry. It doesn't sound so bad until you realize that there really aren't any taps in Nepal that have hot water. So you're using cold water. So your clothes don't really ever get that clean. Keep in mind too, me lovelies, that this also includes your socks and underpants. Yes, I said underpants. Now, it's not so bad with the underpants, provided you aren't prone to leaving terrible skid marks, which I am not. The socks, on the other hand, well they deserve a category all their own. Socks go on your feet, which stink. They then subsequently end up in your boots, which also stink. This leads to a veritable super stinkfest that can get so bad you almost can't bear to have your boots stay in the same room as you at night. Now use some socks to soak up that stink and the fact that nothing really comes clean in ice cold water and you see our dilemma. It weren't a bed of roses in our bags on the way home, no sir. In fact, the socks had to be double-washed in hot water, and they're still not even very clean. I contemplated just tossing them-they are only socks after all-but then I remembered that I paid nearly $20/pair for them. For that kind of money I think I'll live with the dirt that won't come out. It ain't that bad, really. I think most of the smell is gone.
Leeches and Monsoon Season. So what they neglect to tell you when you book your trek, and what you will likely never read in any guide book because they don't want word to get out, is that in the past couple years monsoon season in Nepal has actually shifted by a couple weeks. We-of course-were blissfully unaware of this when we showed up, but learned rather quickly when we finally hit the trail. We learned because the first few days on the trail it rained on us. Constantly. Now, I can take a little rain. I do live on the west coast, after all. And the rain on the trail really wasn't that bad. It was wet, but it wasn't cold. And our crew had rigged up these plastic bags so that our stuff didn't get wet in our big packs as they were carrying them. It wasn't the rain that sucked, it was the leeches. Literally. We didn't even think about the leeches until the woman hiking with us came out of her room and hollered at us that she had found a leech in her boot. Then Putz proceeded to take off her boots. She had one of the little buggers on each foot, and judging by the size of them, they'd been snacking for a good couple hours or more. Apparently what they'd done was crawl up the outside of our boots, over the top, and then wriggled down into them between the boot and the sock, and then bitten us through our socks. At which point you start to bleed into your sock, which makes your sock a lovely mess(and as previously mentioned, socks don't really come clean in cold water, so that blood never really washes away). It's a disturbing thing to see when you pull off your boot: a giant bloody blotch on your sock, and this slimy, wriggling black creature dead center. I only had one bite on my left foot, but that one bled for a good 4 hours. Putz had one on her foot that must've bled for 5 hours or more. We had to take a big wad of gauze and tape it over the bite so she didn't leak all over her shoes and the floor of our room. But that's not even the best part. A big group of people rolled into our teahouse just after dark, while we were sitting just outside the dining room finishing our dinner. Once they got their rooms all sorted, they all proceeded to change out of their wet clothes and dry off a little. Then we heard a scream, followed by a girl running down the stairs hollering that she needed salt. Yup, she'd found a leech. At least Putz and I didn't scream. But then about 10 minutes later, another scream. Then another scream about 5 minutes after that one. You would've thought they'd figure it out after the first one found the leech on her foot, but apparently not. At least it was amusing for us. You hear a scream-oh, looks like they found another leech. That night we had one of them ask us if we'd had leeches, too. We said yes, and she proceeded to ask us if we thought they came from the trail or inside the room. Really? Did you really just ask me that? Then yes, there are leeches crawling all over the teahouse rooms. Perhaps you and your loud, obnoxious group should leave. Nevermind that leeches are famous for being found in swamplike environments, and the rooms there were perfectly dry.
Domestic Flights in Nepal. So being in Nepal for 5 weeks and going on 2 separate treks necessitated that we travel between cities within the country. You could take a bus, sure, but those are apparently notoriously slow and unreliable. So we opted for air transport. And with air transport comes airports, and let me tell you, the domestic terminal at the Kathmandu airport is something else. Security? Ha! What is this security you speak of? Sure, they have x-ray machine and metal detectors, but no one's actually looking at the screen of the x-ray machine or paying attention to whether the metal detector beeps or not. No, sir. The Nepali version or screening consists of a person-sex depends on you, so men get men and women get women-who pats you down, and then another who goes through your bag. The patdown, like at all airports, feels like a gross violation of your personal space. But I tend to just suck it up because it lets me get on the plane. And the bag search is really just cursory. Jana and I got on all 4 domestic flight we took inside Nepal with water bottles filled with water. I had a pocket knife in my carry-on backpack twice. Basically, security is there for appearance only. Though if you think about the number of planes that crash in Nepal every year, I guess they really don't need to worry about someone getting something dangerous on the plane, because there's a good chance the plane's not gonna make it to its destination anyways. The domestic terminals are something else, though. There are people everywhere, and all those people are talking VERY LOUDLY. I don't know why, but it seems they all feel the need to talk at a decibel just below a shout when they're inside the terminal. You go through security once just to get into the building(pat-down and x-ray #1), then you have to pay your airport tax. Then you take that slip to the ticket counter, where they swap your printed-at-home ticket with all your flight information to a generic ticket with no information at all on it, other than perhaps-if you're lucky-a flight number on it. You give them your bag and then proceed through "security"(pat-down and x-ray #2). Once you're airside, there are no signs whatsoever. The only signs past security tell you which airline boards through which gate. There are also no signs or announcements that tell you if it's your plane that's boarding. So how do you know? You guess. Seriously, that's the only way. You guess. Putz and I pretty much took turns peering over the shoulders of people who were in line to see if the flight number on their ticket was the same as ours. That seemed to work pretty well. Then you get on a little bus that takes out out onto the tarmac to your plane.
Roads. And if the chaos of the airlines isn't enough for you, then have fun on the roads, my friends! I did not see a single traffic light in Nepal. Anywhere. At all. And I don't remember ever seeing a stop sign. And road lines to mark lanes? Ha! Nepali drivers don't need lanes! They drive wherever they choose, whenever they choose. Want to turn left? Just go! There's not need to signal, or slow down, or even to inform anyone else on the road of your intentions. Just go and hope no one plows into you. And if someone cuts you off, honk. If you're changing lanes, honk. If there's a pedestrian in the way and you need them to move, honk. And if traffic's stopped and you want it to move, honk lots. It was terrifying when we were inside the cars, it was terrifying when we were outside the cars. And because it's a tropical country in the lowland areas, there are motorcycles. Lots and lots of motorcycles. It makes sense to have one, really, since that means that a lot of the time you can just whip in and out and around the traffic and get where you're going a lot faster than if you were in a car. But helmets are, let's say a "suggestion". And the way the cars drive, I'm not sure I'd want to even attempt to ride there. It was chaos, in its most raw, guttural form. Terrifying, heart-lurching chaos.
Toilets. At long last we come to the final, and by far the most important subject. Nepali toilets. But it's just a toilet, you say. How does it possibly warrant its own category? Well, in a good chunk of Nepal they don't have toilets in the sense that we have toilets. They have, essentially, a hole in the ground. Sure, they've dressed it up with a little porcelain and put some walls around it, but really, the squat toilet is just a fancy hole in the ground. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to relieve yourself in the woods, but growing up my family did a lot of camping, so as kids we learned to do our business in the bush fairly early. Our technique involved finding a nice big log to hang your arse over, so you didn't get anything on your pants. So this notion of not having to tree to pee over was a little daunting. How does one pee when there is no support for the behind? How is it done, you ask? Well, you aren't the only one asking. As Putz and I were finishing dinner one night we were approached by a woman who literally asked us the very same question. No, I'm not kidding, and I'm not making this up. An actual woman actually came up to us and asked us how the squat toilets worked. Strangely enough, we were actually quite flattered to be asked, given that it meant that, at least for appearances sake, we knew what we were doing. So I will give you the same answer we gave her, and it's quite simple, really. Enter the room. You will find a porcelain bowl set into the floor with a hole at one end as a drain. Place one foot on either side of the bowl, and drop your pants, but only to your knees. This is important, because if you go any lower than your knees you might get some unwanted splashback on your pants. Proceed to a squatting position over the bowl, and let 'er rip. Now, here's where it gets a little interesting. Not all streams like to go straight. Some people will need to aim a little to avoid missing the bowl and splashing their boot. So you gotta have a little peek every now and again to make sure you're hitting the mark, as it were. That's just for #1's, of course. #2's are a whole different ballgame. You know how every now and again you realize you're just gonna have to sit, 'cause it might take a while? Different experience with the squat toilets. You can hang out there for a few minutes if you need to, but your legs start to fall asleep. Not good. Especially because there's no water in the bowl, so if you try to get up with legs that are asleep and stumble a bit, those $300 hiking boots might end up a different colour brown than when you got them. I found the best way to combat this was to lean from one side to the other, to avoid letting your legs fall asleep. Easier said than done, though, when some of the toilet rooms are so small you can barely fit your feet on either side of the bowl. They like to make the rooms short, too. So if you're tall, such as myself, avoid popping up like an overactive poptart, 'cause if you do you're gonna crack your head on the ceiling. So how does one flush a hole in the ground? In most toilets there was a bucket filled with water that had a scoop in it. That's called manual flushin', kids. It's weird and a bit gross, but it gets the job done. Oh, and you can't throw your toilet paper in there, so for the tourists that do use toilet paper(Nepalis don't), there's a bin to toss your paper in. On a side note, they do not supply toilet paper at the teahouses. You have to carry your own in your day pack. But don't worry, everybody does it.
Whew! That was a long one. Well, I'm sure I left some stuff out, but I can't think of what that might be at the moment, so we'll call it a night right there. Hope you enjoyed the ride! Until next time!
This all started eons ago on a little trail known as the South Boundary. The topic of epic hiking trips came up, and the idea was born that perhaps those hiking at the time(Slacker, Putz and myself) should all go to Everest Base Camp together. How much more epic can you get, right? So right then and there we decided it was a plan, and that we would go in the year 2010. Well, the best intentions, as they say. When it didn't happen in 2010, we put it off and thought, perhaps 2011? But then dearest Hubby and I decided to go to Australia, and the plans go put on hold for another year. So finally, after putting it off, I decided 2012 was the year. Neither Slacker nor Putz said they could really afford to go when I made the decision, but I was prepared to go alone, if need be. Fortunately, my little sister(Putz) decided she had enough time to save up for the trip, so she would come with me.
That's right. Me and my sister. 5 weeks. In Nepal. Together. Just the two of us. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. I knew we'd annoy the crap out of each other, and that it could be considered a miracle if we came back and were still on speaking terms. And amazingly, we did. We managed to not kill each other, which I think is cause for celebration. I also feel as though I deserve some sort of medal for such a feat, but if you'd like to delve into why that is, take me out for some Starbucks prepare yourself. I might also mention that our mother was very pleased that we were still on speaking terms when we got back. Apparently she was a little nervous about that.
Now for the disclaimer. As always, these are my opinions based on my own personal experiences, and could be completely different from experiences that others have had. Even my sister might describe aspects of this trip completely differently. You might see and experience something completely different if you went to the same places and did the same things. But overall, I came away with a good impression of Nepal, and if I run out of other places to visit or have the burning desire to go back at some point, I probably would.
My sister basically left it to me to plan the trip, and I decided that if we were going to fly all that way, and spend all that money, that we might as well make it worth our while to be there. So I planned 2 trips for us; the Annapurna Circuit, followed by Everest Base Camp. That would put our trip at just over 5 weeks, which, though long, would make the 30+ hour commute from Canada worth it.
There are 2 kinds of treks(the Nepali version of hiking), that one can do in Nepal. There are Expedition treks, and Teahouse treks. Expedition treks are where you sleep in a tent, teahouse treks are where you sleep in teahouses. Teahouse treks cost significantly less than expedition treks, owing to the fact that you don't have to pay extra porters-or hire yaks-to get your camping gear up the mountain. For a teahouse trek all you need is a porter for your backpack that has your sleeping bag and clothes in it(though you can carry all that yourself, I wouldn't recommend it, and given how cheap it is to hire a porter, why not?). So we went with the teahouses, a decision we were more than glad we made once we actually got there.
The teahouse treks we picked were essentially all-inclusive. That means your room and 3 meals each day are covered, as well as the cost of hiring your guide and porters. For the Annapurna trek it also covered rides to and from the trailhead, and for Everest it covered the flight to and from Lukla. There are a myriad of other ways to arrange your trek, but to me this was the easiest, since you really don't have to think about anything once you get out there, other than whether you're going to have the Dal Bhat or the Momos for dinner.
The Annapurna Circuit trek was 18 days long, including one acclimatization day. It took us through everything from tropical rainforest and rice paddies to alpine desert and scree slopes. We passed through 4 different districts and over the highest mountain pass in the world(Throung La, at 5416m). We spent the night in 16 different towns and villages, and got to know our guides and assistants quite well. For anyone with a map, this is how it went. We all met in Pokhara, and from there took a nauseating 3-hour jeep ride to get to Besi Sahar, where the trek started. From there, the villages we stayed in, chronologically, were:
Nadi Bazar-930m
Ghermu-1310m
Tal(where I purchased a lovely pair of flip flops for 250 rupees)-1700m
Danakyu-2300m
Chame-2670
Lower Pisang-2200m
Braka-3439
Manang(2 nights, and home to a 96 year-old lama that blessed us on our journey)-3540m
Yak Kharka-4100m
Thorung Phedi(the base of Thorung La pass and some of the best tomato soup and bread I've ever tasted)-4450m
The Holy city of Muktinath-3760m
Kagbeni-2800m
Marpha(famous for their apples-yes we had pie!)-2670m
Ghasa-2010m
Tatopani(Nepali for hot springs, in which I did partake)-1190m
Ghorepani(home to the famous-and famously crowded-Poon Hill)-2860m
Hile-1430m.
It was a good trek, and we did enjoy ourselves, but I found it wasn't really what I expected.
I was expecting to be walking along a trail, coming across the occasional village, but for the most part we would be a little more isolated and not really see that many other people. This was basically the exact opposite of what we actually encountered on the trek. There were people living everywhere, and there were tons of people actually on the trail. Most of them waltzing around in their flip-flops, staring at you like you were and alien. The best way I can think of to describe it is that it was sortof the third-world version of walking through the suburbs. There are houses nearly everywhere, people everywhere, and occasionally you'll come across a teahouse or a restaurant. But once we got used to the idea that we wouldn't really be alone as much as we thought, we really did have a good time.
This trek was long. The longest hiking trip I'd been on before this was 14 days on the South Boundary in Jasper. But this wasn't exactly your typical hiking. No, sir. Not when you can have a hot shower nearly every day, and you don't have to pack in your tent and all your food. In fact, you don't even need to carry your big pack with you-you have an assistant for that. It's weird having someone else carry your bag at first. It kinda makes you feel a little bit lazy. But as the trip wears on you get used to it pretty fast, especially when you get above 3000m and it gets rather a lot harder to breathe. After having experienced high altitude, I can honestly say that I would not even attempt to go above 4000m while carrying anything more than a day pack. I wouldn't make it. But more about this altitude business later.
The Everest Base Camp trek was 14 days long, and included 2 acclimatization days. It basically took us from Lukla-reached by a harrowing flight from Kathmandu-up to Base Camp and back in the Solukhumbu region. The trail was nearly the same going up and coming back, but as we learned while we were there, the Solukhumbu is a rather remote region. They fly virtually everything in and out of Lukla, and that includes food and anything else you find up on the trail. And there are no roads past Lukla, so the only way they get anything anywhere is either by carrying it themselves or strapping it to the back of a yak. More about the yaks later, I promise. For the map nerds, the villages we stayed in-chronologically-were:
Phakding-2610m
Namche Bazar(2 nights)-3440m
Tengboche-3860m
Dingboche(2 nights)-4410m
Lobuche-4910m
Gorak Shep-5140m
Deboche-3820m
Namche Bazar-3440m
Phakding-2610m.
This trek was a bit more of what we had initially been expecting, in that it was a lot more isolated and there were a lot less people. That being said, I have never seen so many bloody tourists in my life. We hit this trail bang-on in the middle of high trekking season. The trekking season in Nepal is very short, as the weather really doesn't cooperate outside of about 2 months in the fall. So that's when all the tourists show up to go trekking. And that's when the trails get really, really crowded. For example, on our last day of hiking I got stuck at one point waiting at a bottleneck as a large group passed us. I think I must've stood there for a good 10 minutes before the trail was clear enough that I could get through. And the bottleneck wasn't even that small, it was just that there were so many people on the trail and they weren't getting out if the way to let me pass them. But me complaining about trail etiquette is another story for another day. And the trekking poles! At one point Putz and I decided that we were going to toss off the mountain the next person we saw with trekking poles that wasn't using them. Everyone had them, no one was using them properly. And no one even really needed them! Putz and I, as tourists ourselves, made it through 32 days of trekking without once using trekking poles. And we at no point even had the slightest inkling that our lives would be easier if we had them. I think I'm going to hate trekking poles for the rest of my life now. If you're coming hiking with me, leave your poles at home, or they might end up irretrievable at the bottom of a ravine or crevasse. You've been warned.
We went with 3 Sisters Adventure Trekking on Annapurna and Trek Nepal Int'l on Everest. The two companies are very different, and do have different policies. It also doesn't help that we went on 2 different treks in two completely different regions. So it doesn't really seem fair to be comparing the two, and I won't do that here. Plus it would take a lot of time and probably a whole separate blog entry. But if you are interested, please feel free to ask me about it sometime. For the record, though, both Putz and I felt Annapurna was the more difficult trek.
So now we've reached that point where I like to take my experiences and separate them into neat little packages so they're a little easier to discuss and explain.
What, exactly, is a teahouse? Well, that's a very interesting question you ask, really. And it varies depending on the region you're in and the city you're in. A teahouse, in it's raw form, is basically just a place where you can get food and a place to sleep. Generally the teahouses we stayed in had separated rooms, with one to three beds in each room. The separation was only a thin sheet of plywood in some places, and in others the walls were a foot of solid stone or concrete. But at least the plywood gave you some visual privacy, if not audio privacy. Two twin beds in each room were the most common, though we did stay in a few that had three beds, and we did see some rooms that had double beds in them. Your bed generally consists of a foam mattress of varying thickness, placed on a wooden frame, all covered by a sheet. There is generally a pillow, though the term pillow is used loosely here, as in a lot of teahouses the pillow could also be mistaken for a rock or perhaps several bricks duct-taped together. I will quickly say now that both Putz and I were a bit afraid for our very expensive sleeping bags, as we thought there was a very good chance we would encounter bed bugs somewhere along the trail. I am pleased to announce that nowhere, either on the trail or in Kathmandu, did we encounter bed bugs. And we were very glad for it. In fact, we both had bed bug sheets that we intended on using every night, and both of us ended up not bothering after about a week or so. The teahouses were, for the most part, clean and tidy, though you have to remember that we were in Nepal, where clean and tidy don't necessarily mean what they do here in Canada. There were a few teahouses that we found hard to sleep in because of the mice in the walls. Most of you out there are now currently making the EEEEEK sound, but it's really not as bad as it sounds. The mice were in the walls, not our rooms. And once we checked that there were no places for them to actually get into our room, it was just a matter of trying to sleep while the little buggers made so much noise. You wouldn't think a mouse inside a wall could really make that much noise, but you'd be wrong. In one place Putz said they were making so much noise at the head of her bed that she swore there was a whole little mouse family in there, including a little brood of babies. Occasionally our room would have an attached bathroom or toilet(more about both of these later), which was a blessing or a curse depending on where you were. Some of the toilets stunk to high heaven, which meant that the room also smelled of toilet. And it's hard enough to sleep above 3000m without having to also overcome the stink of a dirty toilet. I have to say, though, that this whole system of trekking and staying in teahouses was actually pretty awesome. You don't have to set up a tent, you don't have to cook your own meals, and the best part, you don't have to do any dishes. It's awesome. I think we should start something like this up in Canada. I call dibs on running the teahouse at Mount Robson.
Food. Food is important. It's what keeps you going on the trail, and if you're me, keeps you happy. The food in Nepal is good. They have a few dishes that we don't have here that I really did enjoy. Dal Bhat is their national dish, and consists of lentil soup, a healthy helping of rice, and curried vegetables. Sometimes you'll get some fresh veggies, a bit of salad, or some pickled something-or-other as well. It's also-and this is the best part-all you can eat. You can have 10 helpings of Dal Bhat if you like. And they'll applaud you on your appetite. I actually really liked the Dal Bhat, especially if the curried veggies were a little spicier. On the Everest trek I found I was so hungry that I almost needed to order Dal Bhat every night, because it was the only way I could get enough food without having to order 3 dinners just for me. And that includes finishing Jana's food nearly every meal. I also found that at higher altitudes I was really craving soup, so the lentil soup seemed to really do the trick. Another dish they have are Momos. Momos are basically just a dumpling-similar to the ones you'd find at dim sum-with various things inside. We saw everything from yak steak momos to veggie momos. For the most part we had veggie or veggie and potato momos. The insides tended to have a little spice to them, which was delightful given my penchant for spicy food. You'll note that all of the food we've eaten so far is vegetarian. There's a reason for that. Most of the teahouses don't have refrigerators. Our guide on Everest put it rather bluntly at one point-"You don't eat meat in the mountains. They put it in the basket, and then you die." No, he seriously said that. You see, what happens is, they get the meat from Kathmandu, or wherever they get it from, but then they have to get it to the teahouse. Well, there are no roads, and thus no refrigeration trucks, so the meat gets to the teahouse by some dude carrying it in the basket on his back, or by being strapped to the back of a yak or a donkey. That ain't safe to eat, kids. On that note, it's also not safe to eat other things that need to be refrigerated, such as mayonnaise. Because while the teahouse might have a refrigerator, that's not to say that they have power to make it run all the time. I learned firsthand it's not safe to eat the mayonnaise. It is, however, safe to eat the yak cheese, because it does not need to be refrigerated. You wouldn't think so, but yak cheese is actually pretty good. It tastes kindof like a cross between gouda and parmesan, and you can make a decent pizza with it. The teahouses all seem to have virtually the same menu, though it does vary a little from place to place. They all have some version of fried rice and fried noodles, similar to what we'd find in a Chinese restaurant here in Canada. They also all have various types of soup-garlic soup was a new one to us, and it kept the vampires away for a good week or so afterwards. You can also find some western dishes, mostly spaghetti or macaroni and pizza, which are all actually not bad, and even quite good in some places. Jana took to ordering the pizza nearly every place we stopped on Everest, which was nice because that meant I got to finish it all the time.
Tea. Yes, tea deserves its own category. They are called TEAhouses, after all. You drink tea all the time while trekking. The hot liquid seems to help with the altitude, and because the water's boiled to make it, it's the only thing that's safe to drink that doesn't come from a bottle or need to be sterilized. On a side note: Yes, we did have to sterilize all our water before we drank it. It comes straight out of the stream up in the mountains, so we treated it with tablets before we drank it, which gave all the water we drank for nearly 6 weeks a lovely choriney taste. I avoid caffeine, so my tea choices were limited to basically hot lemon and mint, and occasionally hot orange if they had it. Hot lemon is essentially hot lemonade. It's very sweet and very tart. Mint needed to be ordered correctly, because if you asked for mint tea, you would get black tea with mint added. If you asked for hot water with mint, they'd throw a sprig of mint into a cup and pour boiling water over it. We only saw hot orange at a select few places on Everest, but it was hot Tang. And I don't mean it sorta tasted like Tang, I mean it literally was Tang. We were a little leery at first, but were pleased to discover that hot Tang actually tastes quite good. We even decided it might be worth trying the next time we hit the trail in Canada. Almost as good as tea and it doesn't keep you up at night. We drank tea with nearly every meal except dinner. Instead of having tea with dinner, it seemed that afternoon tea was more the norm, and on the Annapurna trek it was actually something we looked forward to, because we were given cookies and biscuits with our tea. I almost miss afternoon tea now that I'm back, but since I haven't been able to find the same Coconut Crunchee cookies here, it just wouldn't be the same.
Sherpas vs. Porters. Yes, there is a difference. And you can't call a Sherpa a porter and vice versa. Porters are the people that help trekkers. They're also the people that carry heavy loads of supplies up and down the trails between villages. Anyone can become a porter, and they can live pretty much anywhere. Porters don't climb mountains. Sherpas, on the other hand, aid climbers when they're ascending and descending mountains. They do all the heavy lifting, but it's only while climbing. Sherpas are, essentially, climbers themselves, but they help other climbers get up the mountain. Sherpas really only live above 3000m. They're actually kindof a small race of people who adapt to high altitudes extremely well. Since I didn't do any climbing while I was in Nepal, I didn't actually get to meet any sherpas. But I did meet plenty of porters.
The trail. Hiking in Nepal is not like hiking in Canada. As a country, Canada isn't that old, thus most of our hiking trails aren't that old. Nepal, well it's much, much older than Canada. And so are its trails. In Canada you're likely to find dirt trails without a lot of steps or other infrastructure built in. Nepal's not like that because the trails are so old they would've been destroyed if they were left as dirt tracks. So in a lot of places, especially on hills where rain could wash the trail away, they've taken rocks and built steps, or improvised pavement. It sounds groovy, but because the rocks are uneven it makes the walking difficult at times. And stairs seem to suck a whole lot more energy than just a dirt trail up a hill. One day on Annapurna consisted of a 1600m elevation gain, that was all stairs, all day. It was awful(made even more awful by the fact that I'd spent the entire night before on the toilet pooping my life away-more about that later, I promise). Some of the trail also look a lot like a road, and some even are roads in spots. Feels a little silly at first to be walking down a road when you could just as easily hop in a jeep and make the trip a little faster, but you get used to it eventually.
Yaks. If anyone in the life insurance industry reads this, could you possibly answer a quandry for me and my sister? Does one need special insurance to cover a yak attack, or would that be included in a regular policy? We wondered this many a time as we traipsed down the trail and were suddenly chased off to the side by these gigantic beasts. And horns! Have you seen their horns?!? Those things could gut you with one poke! We didn't come across a lot of yaks on Annapurna, as it was mostly donkeys there, but there were tons of yaks on Everest. Donkeys are less scary. They're not as big, and they have no horns. Etiquette on the trail is this: the animals have the right of way. Especially when it's yaks. When you hear the telltale sounds of the jangling bell, you get the hell off the trail, because you don't want to be in the way of those mammoth beasts when the come rolling through. You also have to make sure that you're on the mountain side of the trail if you're on a hill, because if you're on the cliff side and a yak gets too close, you're going over. Unlike donkeys, yaks survive better at altitudes over 3500m, which is why they're so much more common on the Everest trek(which was virtually all over 3500m). Yaks can also carry much heavier loads than donkeys. But they have trouble going downhill, so they tend to almost run a little on the downs. Which is why it's even more important to get off the trail when you hear them coming.
Altitude. On this trip, we topped out at 5416m. To put that in perspective, Mount Logan, the highest mountain in Canada, is 5959m. That, my friends, is a mere 543m higher than I was at the top of Thorung La pass. So I feel quite confident that I'm okay in doling out a little wisdom when it comes to this subject now. I personally started to feel the altitude at around 3000m. But it took until 4000m for it to really kick in. And by kick in, I mean the breathless feeling that there's a linebacker sitting on your chest, laughing in your face when you even attempt to go up the smallest of hills. You're not necessarily breathless if you're just sitting around reading a book when you're that high up, but you do feel it the second you try to do something that requires a little more oxygen. Like rolling over in bed, getting up to use the toilet, that sort of thing. What I discovered is that if you hike and move a whole lot slower than you normally would, it doesn't really seem that bad. I don't like being out of breath, and when you're trying to go up a hill at over 5000m, if you go even remotely too fast, you simply can't catch your breath. That's when it gets dangerous, because if you start to feel light-headed, there's a chance you could pass out, and that definitely wouldn't be good. So Putz and I pioneered the "walk like a Granny" technique, in which we walked at a glacial pace something akin to what a 100 year-old grandma could do. It got us up the hill though. I actually have a video of Putz up at the pass, which I'll try to post up here at some point if she'll give me her permission. It demonstrates rather well our super-slow motion walking. The other thing you have to worry about at higher altitudes is smartly-termed altitude sickness. The best way to avoid getting it? Go slow, drink tons of water, eat lots, and jam yourself full of Diamox. Diamox is a drug used to help your body acclimatize easier and faster. Both me and my sister took it, and it worked like gangbusters. Neither of us ended up getting particularly sick from the altitude, though Putz did end up feeling nauseous for a few days, and I did get a headache coming up over the pass. We also both had headaches when we spent the night in Gorak Shep-at 5180m-but both of us discovered that by guzzling tons of water we felt much better, so it was likely just the dehydration that was getting us.
Sleeping at Altitude. This is a whole other thing completely. It's impossible to get a good night's sleep at high altitude. Welcome to 4000m, I hope you weren't expecting to get any real rest tonight. You can sleep, a little, but you wake up in the morning not feeling rested at all. You also wake up during the night a lot more than you would at home. I'm sure they've done studies as to why this is, but all I know is that it's really, really irritating. What's even more irritating is knowing that you went to bed the night before completely exhausted, thinking that you'll get a really good rest and wake up from a fitful night feeling almost worse than when you went to bed. Apparently, at higher elevations, because your body's so starved for oxygen, it likes to keep waking you up every once in a while, and it also won't let you go into deep REM sleep, which is where you get the truly rested feeling from. So we went about 9 days out of the trip without much sleep at all. But we survived.
"The Diarrhea" and "The Rash". So, apparently Nepal and its food and water don't really agree with me too much. That is to say, I had some rather interesting things happen to me while I was there. If you're squeamish, or don't really care to hear a bit about my bodily functions, I would suggest you stop reading now and skip to the next section. So all was well for a good 15 days of the first trek, and that's when disaster struck. I got "the diarrhea". And believe me, it wasn't fun. I spent a good portion of the night in the bathroom as my life drained from me, and when I wasn't in the bathroom I was laying in bed suffering through the worst abdominal cramps I've ever had. Thank goodness for the supply of antibiotics they gave me at the travel clinic back in Canada. I took them, but as you probably know, they don't exactly work instantly. And when you're on the trail, you don't really have a choice but to hike the next day, whether you're feeling okay or not. Thankfully my sister and the woman we were hiking with convinced me to pop an immodium, so it made the day a little bit better. The problem with having spent all night in the bathroom, though, is that not only are you tired in the morning, but you have no energy to speak of. And it just so happened that the night I got sick was the night before we had the highest altitude gain in a day on the entire trip. It wasn't pretty. I was so tired and weak that day that our guide had to carry my daypack, which was pretty embarrassing for me. And that tired and weak feeling lingered for about another day and a half after that, which sucked even worse. For a while I was worried I'd be so tired that I wouldn't be able to make it to Everest and I'd have to send Jana up without me. But thankfully the antibiotics worked and about 3 days later I was feeling pretty much back to normal. It also happens that while we were on our way up to Everest I got a really wicked rash. This happens to me every now and again, mostly when I go to humid, tropical places. But this time it was different, because it wasn't humid or tropical, and the rash was way, way worse. Normally it spreads over a very small area and goes away after a couple days of Reactine. This one covered pretty much my entire torso and didn't go anywhere after 4+ days of antihistamines. You think I'd be worried at this point, but I really wasn't that much. It didn't hurt, and it didn't itch, so I figured it probably was just a weird reaction to the water(which I later learned I'm allergic to in Kathmandu), or to wearing clothes that weren't clean and not being able to get a decent shower. It did finally start to fade once we reached Gorak Shep, and there's no trace of it now, so I guess everything solved itself. See, I really didn't need to worry anyways.
Cold. It's really, really cold at high altitude. This, of course, goes without saying. But what you don't realize is that the altitude combined with the cold leads to a lovely combination of not being able to warm up at all. What's the easiest way to warm up when you're cold, other than getting up off the la-z-boy and walking over to the thermostat? Put on another sweater. Well, what if you're already wearing every sweater you have? Then you get up and move around a bit, right? A little physical activity generally does the trick to get the blood pumping. And if it's really cold, some vigorous activity works even better. Well, try doing vigorous activity when you can barely breathe to start with. It ain't happenin', folks. So really, there honestly is no way to warm up. The day after we went to Everest Base Camp, we were supposed to head up to over 5500m-the top of Kala Pattar-to get some good views. Well, in order to do that we needed to get up and start hiking at 4am, hours before the sun came up. Not cool, but we did it anyway. It was so bloody cold I think I nearly got my toes frostbitten. It was fairly steep uphill all the way up, and because of the altitude we couldn't go fast. And because we couldn't go fast enough to keep ourselves warm and the blood pumping to our feet, my feet got so cold I literally couldn't feel them anymore. And then they started to hurt, which is not a good sign. We made it up about halfway to the top of Kala Pattar before I had to pull the plug. The sun was nearly up, so we snapped some pictures and then went down as fast as we could move our feet. It wasn't fast enough for me to get the feeling back in my toes. That took Putz rubbing my feet at the teahouse and about 3 more hours. So yeah, it's cold in Nepal.
Showers. Showers in Nepal are not like showers in Canada. While the showers on the trail were extremely nice to have, they were by no means luxurious. For the most part, they consisted of a small concrete room with taps and a shower head. If the teahouse had hot water it tended to be propane heated, which meant that the tap was then hooked up to a small box inside the shower stall that heated the water as it went through. Occasionally you had to pay for the showers if they were propane heated. In a good shower there would be hooks to hang your stuff on, but the majority of them didn't even have those. That's if the teahouse had hot showers, which many of them didn't. That's all fine and dandy for the occasional day, but when you're out there for weeks at a time, you need to get clean. So what's the alternative. Cold bucket showers! What on Earth, you ask, is a cold bucket shower? It's exactly what it sounds like. You get a bucket of cold water and a scoop. Enjoy. The couple I had really weren't that bad, but I'd only recommend them if you're desperate and in a place that's warm enough that you'll be able to feel your toes again afterwards at some point. Gorak Shep is not the place for a cold bucket shower. That said, there was some rather impressive ingenuity over there in terms of the showers. For instance, the propane heaters don't work particularly well when the water is freezing in the feeder line. So at one teahouse, instead of using the heater, they'd boil you 20L of water, and dump it into a bucket situated on the roof of the shower(or tin shack, if you prefer-there's something rather fascinating about having a shower when you can hear the yaks passing less than a few meters away), mix in a little cold water, run a hose inside the shack, and viola, warm shower. To be honest, that was the warmest, most pleasant shower I had on the entire trip. It wasn't exactly the Hilton, but it got the grease out of my hair and the stank out of my armpits, which is better than nothing.
Laundry. While Putz and were there for over 5 weeks, we never had a chance to take our laundry out to be cleaned, because we never spent more than 2 nights in any one spot. Which left us with hand-washing our clothes and hanging them to dry. It doesn't sound so bad until you realize that there really aren't any taps in Nepal that have hot water. So you're using cold water. So your clothes don't really ever get that clean. Keep in mind too, me lovelies, that this also includes your socks and underpants. Yes, I said underpants. Now, it's not so bad with the underpants, provided you aren't prone to leaving terrible skid marks, which I am not. The socks, on the other hand, well they deserve a category all their own. Socks go on your feet, which stink. They then subsequently end up in your boots, which also stink. This leads to a veritable super stinkfest that can get so bad you almost can't bear to have your boots stay in the same room as you at night. Now use some socks to soak up that stink and the fact that nothing really comes clean in ice cold water and you see our dilemma. It weren't a bed of roses in our bags on the way home, no sir. In fact, the socks had to be double-washed in hot water, and they're still not even very clean. I contemplated just tossing them-they are only socks after all-but then I remembered that I paid nearly $20/pair for them. For that kind of money I think I'll live with the dirt that won't come out. It ain't that bad, really. I think most of the smell is gone.
Leeches and Monsoon Season. So what they neglect to tell you when you book your trek, and what you will likely never read in any guide book because they don't want word to get out, is that in the past couple years monsoon season in Nepal has actually shifted by a couple weeks. We-of course-were blissfully unaware of this when we showed up, but learned rather quickly when we finally hit the trail. We learned because the first few days on the trail it rained on us. Constantly. Now, I can take a little rain. I do live on the west coast, after all. And the rain on the trail really wasn't that bad. It was wet, but it wasn't cold. And our crew had rigged up these plastic bags so that our stuff didn't get wet in our big packs as they were carrying them. It wasn't the rain that sucked, it was the leeches. Literally. We didn't even think about the leeches until the woman hiking with us came out of her room and hollered at us that she had found a leech in her boot. Then Putz proceeded to take off her boots. She had one of the little buggers on each foot, and judging by the size of them, they'd been snacking for a good couple hours or more. Apparently what they'd done was crawl up the outside of our boots, over the top, and then wriggled down into them between the boot and the sock, and then bitten us through our socks. At which point you start to bleed into your sock, which makes your sock a lovely mess(and as previously mentioned, socks don't really come clean in cold water, so that blood never really washes away). It's a disturbing thing to see when you pull off your boot: a giant bloody blotch on your sock, and this slimy, wriggling black creature dead center. I only had one bite on my left foot, but that one bled for a good 4 hours. Putz had one on her foot that must've bled for 5 hours or more. We had to take a big wad of gauze and tape it over the bite so she didn't leak all over her shoes and the floor of our room. But that's not even the best part. A big group of people rolled into our teahouse just after dark, while we were sitting just outside the dining room finishing our dinner. Once they got their rooms all sorted, they all proceeded to change out of their wet clothes and dry off a little. Then we heard a scream, followed by a girl running down the stairs hollering that she needed salt. Yup, she'd found a leech. At least Putz and I didn't scream. But then about 10 minutes later, another scream. Then another scream about 5 minutes after that one. You would've thought they'd figure it out after the first one found the leech on her foot, but apparently not. At least it was amusing for us. You hear a scream-oh, looks like they found another leech. That night we had one of them ask us if we'd had leeches, too. We said yes, and she proceeded to ask us if we thought they came from the trail or inside the room. Really? Did you really just ask me that? Then yes, there are leeches crawling all over the teahouse rooms. Perhaps you and your loud, obnoxious group should leave. Nevermind that leeches are famous for being found in swamplike environments, and the rooms there were perfectly dry.
Domestic Flights in Nepal. So being in Nepal for 5 weeks and going on 2 separate treks necessitated that we travel between cities within the country. You could take a bus, sure, but those are apparently notoriously slow and unreliable. So we opted for air transport. And with air transport comes airports, and let me tell you, the domestic terminal at the Kathmandu airport is something else. Security? Ha! What is this security you speak of? Sure, they have x-ray machine and metal detectors, but no one's actually looking at the screen of the x-ray machine or paying attention to whether the metal detector beeps or not. No, sir. The Nepali version or screening consists of a person-sex depends on you, so men get men and women get women-who pats you down, and then another who goes through your bag. The patdown, like at all airports, feels like a gross violation of your personal space. But I tend to just suck it up because it lets me get on the plane. And the bag search is really just cursory. Jana and I got on all 4 domestic flight we took inside Nepal with water bottles filled with water. I had a pocket knife in my carry-on backpack twice. Basically, security is there for appearance only. Though if you think about the number of planes that crash in Nepal every year, I guess they really don't need to worry about someone getting something dangerous on the plane, because there's a good chance the plane's not gonna make it to its destination anyways. The domestic terminals are something else, though. There are people everywhere, and all those people are talking VERY LOUDLY. I don't know why, but it seems they all feel the need to talk at a decibel just below a shout when they're inside the terminal. You go through security once just to get into the building(pat-down and x-ray #1), then you have to pay your airport tax. Then you take that slip to the ticket counter, where they swap your printed-at-home ticket with all your flight information to a generic ticket with no information at all on it, other than perhaps-if you're lucky-a flight number on it. You give them your bag and then proceed through "security"(pat-down and x-ray #2). Once you're airside, there are no signs whatsoever. The only signs past security tell you which airline boards through which gate. There are also no signs or announcements that tell you if it's your plane that's boarding. So how do you know? You guess. Seriously, that's the only way. You guess. Putz and I pretty much took turns peering over the shoulders of people who were in line to see if the flight number on their ticket was the same as ours. That seemed to work pretty well. Then you get on a little bus that takes out out onto the tarmac to your plane.
Roads. And if the chaos of the airlines isn't enough for you, then have fun on the roads, my friends! I did not see a single traffic light in Nepal. Anywhere. At all. And I don't remember ever seeing a stop sign. And road lines to mark lanes? Ha! Nepali drivers don't need lanes! They drive wherever they choose, whenever they choose. Want to turn left? Just go! There's not need to signal, or slow down, or even to inform anyone else on the road of your intentions. Just go and hope no one plows into you. And if someone cuts you off, honk. If you're changing lanes, honk. If there's a pedestrian in the way and you need them to move, honk. And if traffic's stopped and you want it to move, honk lots. It was terrifying when we were inside the cars, it was terrifying when we were outside the cars. And because it's a tropical country in the lowland areas, there are motorcycles. Lots and lots of motorcycles. It makes sense to have one, really, since that means that a lot of the time you can just whip in and out and around the traffic and get where you're going a lot faster than if you were in a car. But helmets are, let's say a "suggestion". And the way the cars drive, I'm not sure I'd want to even attempt to ride there. It was chaos, in its most raw, guttural form. Terrifying, heart-lurching chaos.
Toilets. At long last we come to the final, and by far the most important subject. Nepali toilets. But it's just a toilet, you say. How does it possibly warrant its own category? Well, in a good chunk of Nepal they don't have toilets in the sense that we have toilets. They have, essentially, a hole in the ground. Sure, they've dressed it up with a little porcelain and put some walls around it, but really, the squat toilet is just a fancy hole in the ground. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to relieve yourself in the woods, but growing up my family did a lot of camping, so as kids we learned to do our business in the bush fairly early. Our technique involved finding a nice big log to hang your arse over, so you didn't get anything on your pants. So this notion of not having to tree to pee over was a little daunting. How does one pee when there is no support for the behind? How is it done, you ask? Well, you aren't the only one asking. As Putz and I were finishing dinner one night we were approached by a woman who literally asked us the very same question. No, I'm not kidding, and I'm not making this up. An actual woman actually came up to us and asked us how the squat toilets worked. Strangely enough, we were actually quite flattered to be asked, given that it meant that, at least for appearances sake, we knew what we were doing. So I will give you the same answer we gave her, and it's quite simple, really. Enter the room. You will find a porcelain bowl set into the floor with a hole at one end as a drain. Place one foot on either side of the bowl, and drop your pants, but only to your knees. This is important, because if you go any lower than your knees you might get some unwanted splashback on your pants. Proceed to a squatting position over the bowl, and let 'er rip. Now, here's where it gets a little interesting. Not all streams like to go straight. Some people will need to aim a little to avoid missing the bowl and splashing their boot. So you gotta have a little peek every now and again to make sure you're hitting the mark, as it were. That's just for #1's, of course. #2's are a whole different ballgame. You know how every now and again you realize you're just gonna have to sit, 'cause it might take a while? Different experience with the squat toilets. You can hang out there for a few minutes if you need to, but your legs start to fall asleep. Not good. Especially because there's no water in the bowl, so if you try to get up with legs that are asleep and stumble a bit, those $300 hiking boots might end up a different colour brown than when you got them. I found the best way to combat this was to lean from one side to the other, to avoid letting your legs fall asleep. Easier said than done, though, when some of the toilet rooms are so small you can barely fit your feet on either side of the bowl. They like to make the rooms short, too. So if you're tall, such as myself, avoid popping up like an overactive poptart, 'cause if you do you're gonna crack your head on the ceiling. So how does one flush a hole in the ground? In most toilets there was a bucket filled with water that had a scoop in it. That's called manual flushin', kids. It's weird and a bit gross, but it gets the job done. Oh, and you can't throw your toilet paper in there, so for the tourists that do use toilet paper(Nepalis don't), there's a bin to toss your paper in. On a side note, they do not supply toilet paper at the teahouses. You have to carry your own in your day pack. But don't worry, everybody does it.
Whew! That was a long one. Well, I'm sure I left some stuff out, but I can't think of what that might be at the moment, so we'll call it a night right there. Hope you enjoyed the ride! Until next time!
