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We survived the himalayas! Just! After a massive breakfast we headed to the start point of our trek - Phedi. Just before leaving we met a guy called Ross, who was planning to trek alone until he found someone. I think we were all pretty happy to have other people to muddle through the directions with, and none of us really had a clue what was in store for us for the next 8 days!
The walk started hard - lots of stairs until lunchtime. Lunch was Dal Bhat, a plate of rice, lentils and usually a potato curry on the side. This meal soon came to be habit for lunch, as the boys loved the huge plates of rice and free re-fills! I can honestly say I've never seen two people eat as much food in a week! After lunch the rain came dowbn heavily and the leeches came out in force! After an hour or so picking them off our boots obsessively, I had a big one take a meal from my neck! Luckily they don't hurt when they bite, but that means it's even harder to notice how many you have on you! We battled with them for the next few hours and were relieved to reach our lodge for the night at Tolka, 1700m. The path looked like a warzone after we'd de-leeched and squished the full ones on the floor, but all of us found it mildly amusing that something so small and painless could release so much blood!
Being ill-prepared, most of our clothes were wet from the day before and even our boots were soaked through. We set off at 6:30am in high spirits the next morning though, and the weather had cleared enough to see the valley opening out below the trail. The boys tried millet soup for breakfast - more savoury than anything, until they added a dangerous amount of sugar (this soon became common practise as we couldn't pack in the energy quick enough!). The walk was long again, and hard work up the steep hills. At one point we must have climbed over 1000 steps in one go and started to realise that none of us were quite as fit as we thought! After lunch (dal bhaat of course, with the price slowly increasing with height!) we headed down to the river (a long way back down) to visit the hot springs. They were in a pretty amazing setting, and because of the lack of people on the trails we had them to ourselves :) The steep climb up soon took its toll on our muscles again and it was a very tiring afternoon up to our second lodge at Chomrong. The view would have been amazing from our room - right out over the valley at 2300m. Unfortunately the clouds had set in and all we could see was a white blanket!
On the third day we reached Himalaya lodge a few hundred metres higher. It rained all day pretty heavily, and we were starting to feel the walk in our legs and the cold coming through our soaked clothes and boots! We found an awesome lodge for lunch, where they put the gas heater on for us and we stayed well over an hour, eating dal bhal, drinking warm tea and drying (or burning a hole in, in my case) our socks. We didn't see much due to the cloud, but some of the waterfalls down the mountain faces were very impressive after all the rain. Himalaya was a very unwelcoming place, where we didn't fancy staying one bit. However the next place was 1.5hours uphill and after 8hours walking already we just couldn't face it! Sleep wasn't great as the beds were so hard and i'm pretty sure there was a huge spider somewhere in the room with us!
On the fourth day we reached Annapurna base camp! We thought it was pretty good going, as most people take 5 or 6 days to reach the top. We stopped at Machhapuchhre base camp a couple of hundred metres lower for lunch, where we saw the first sun in 4 days (for 10 minutes, after which it started raining once again!) We reached base camp soon after 2pm and spent the afternoon reading and playing cards huddled in blankets and drinking tea for warmth! Most of our clothes were still wet, and the cloud was set in for the afternoon so we saw no views what-so-ever this day!
We woke at 5am to see the only view of 8 days! It was a pretty impressive one though, as we saw the whole of Annapurna South in the dawn light - we hadn't even realised there was another lodge next door the previous day, as the cloud had been so thick! The clouds moved in quickly and we were all a little disappointed to see the views disappear, especially after the small taster of the incredible views we could have seen had it not been monsoon season! I made a vow to come back here Autumn or Spring sometime in the future :)
For the next few days we were increasingly demoralised and incredibly unmotivated! The rain was constant, and putting on wet clothes and squelching boots every morning was becoming somewhat less of a novelty! Not to mention the achey legs, blisters and beginnings of trench foot (ok, maybe I'n exaggerating a little!). We headed down pretty quickly, and crossed over Chromrong on the 6th day, heading back up to Gorepani for the 7th night. Here is where people head up to Poon Hill, a view point a few hundred metres up from the town. We reached Gorepani at lunchtime and it felt like a posh resort! The people were incredibly kind and lit the huge fire heater for us all afternoon, allowing us to dry out our boots and clothes and keep warm. We checked the weather every hour, but it remained cloudy and we made the difficult (or not so in our negative state of mind!) decision to give Poon Hill a miss. The afternoon was spent drinking Tumba in the back of a local house (Tumba is a local beer made from boiling water poured over millet and drunk through a straw) and feeling a little tipsy we headed to bed early again (after another big meal, obviously!).
On our last day we made one last effort to see a view, waking up at dawn again as it seemed to be the most promising time of day. No luck, so we headed straight down to Nayapul. The walk was 7 hours, all downhill so very hard on the knees. We decended almost 2000m that day, but the weather was slightly better (it only rained for a few hours!) and we were in high spirits with the thought of dry clothes, hot showers and comfy beds waiting back in Pokhara :) The hour taxi ride back to town was really interested, passing through all the hill villages and most of all it was nice to sit down! We spent the evening celebrating with Ross drinking beer after one last massive meal at the cheapest restaurant in town :)
We plan to head to Chitwan National Park tomorrow, then on to Kathmandu for a few days before our flight back to Delhi on the 5th Sept. I don't think I've ever been so glad to be warm and dry and sitting down, and the last 8 days has probably been the most challenging either of us has endured but we're feeling pretty good about it all now! Just have to return when there's some mountain views to enjoy!
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