Nepal...

...and the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek.

Anyone who knows us and has been to Nepal has always said: "You guys will love Nepal." You're all right: like countless travellers before us, we fucking love Nepal. We've ditched our plans of returning to India for June/July and have decided to stay here until we fly to Nairobi on July 20th: do some treks, a longer kayaking expedition or two, maybe a trip into Tibet.

A little confession: I would trade the entire five months I spent in India for the two weeks I spent trekking among the Himalayan Annapurna giants. This of course says more about me than either India or Nepal, and it's the kind of claim that can only be made with authority after experiencing both.

So we're currently base-camped in the lovely town of Pokhara, which is a little like Squamish on a lake...if you made Mt Garibaldi a foothill used to view the real mountains in the distance. It's the start of monsoon, the town is virtually empty of tourists and prices are cheap. The short evening rains are warm, plump up the rivers and leave the hillsides see-through green. Occasionally we glance up and are startled by a ring of mountains that have decided to detach themselves from earth and hover above, more sky than stone.

Some photos from out two week trek into the Annapurna Sanctuary, one of the finest mountain amphitheatre's on our planet.

OK. We're off, Nepali-style: loaded onto the roof of a bus. No goats tied by the legs this time, just a cargo of propane stoves to be dropped off at roads end and carried on a porter's back to remote villages. The blinding white reflection is Dylan, all smiles because he thinks he's done the impossible: travel the subcontinent without a serious round of the pissing shitters. But that will change...


Our first evening saw us at around 2500 meters. Not too high yet, but enough that our Satan's fire-pit-of-India heat adjusted bodies were loving the cool mountain breeze.


Happily surprised to find the first night's dinner (dhal bhat, a plate of rice and various lentils and vegetable curries, the local staple) were what in BC are called fiddleheads: the uncurled heads of young ferns.


Dayna crushing the trail. The busier trails have an elven-wood quality to them: stone steps, bamboo bridges. These are not 'wilderness' trails as we know them in the West; instead, they connect remote mountain villages and are used to transport goods from lowlands to high. They are often part of ancient trading routes between the Gangetic Basin of India and the high plateau of Tibet.


Children walking to school. The group we talked to had a three kilometer uphill walk every morning. The fat kids stay home.


Detail of a traditional Nepali stacked-stone home. Sometimes the stone is filled in with clay and plastered.


This woman is sifting barley, a grain that flourishes at altitudes above 3000m.


Chillin out at a teahouse.


Oops I switched the captions around so now they're at the BOTTOM of the photos.


Hotsprings! But in the Pale One's stomach a beast lurks...

View across the valley to terraced fields and scattered stone homes. Most of the hill-people live a hand to mouth agrarian lifestyle. It's exceptionally picturesque, and exceptionally easy for zanged-out Western minds to romanticise. It's also incredibly hard labour just to stay fed through the winter.


The trails are punctuated with stone benches, often built in the shade of banyan or pipal trees. This photo is of a post-violently-ill Dylan; I know because he's finally smiling. That must have been a great night, eh Dilly: teetering over a wretched hole in the ground with a plastic bucket in your hands?? LET 'ER BUCK!


I watched this man weave a porter's bamboo head-basket in less than an hour.


Morning views of Machapuchare, the unequaled-in-perfection Fishtail Mountain.


Small people, big landscape. Up the headwaters of the Modi Khola and into the alpine.


Dayna cool like lemonade across a little snow pocket. To her right is a four hundred foot death slide into the freezing river.


Potatos were intoduced to Nepal by Europeans, and have become a favourite plus 4000m crop.


Machupuchare again. The massive face is about 5000ft high. We spent hours in the evenings watching cloud and sun shift it's symmetry.


All up the trek we heard stories about 'crossing the glacier'. Apparently this little snowpatch qualifies as a glacier for some.


Posing beneath the massive headwall of Annapurna 1 (8000m) at 4100m, or about 14,000ft. At this altitude a person is receiving 40% less oxygen with every breath than at sea level. We took our time, aclimatized properly, and had no problems.


The obligatory prayer-flag photo.


For most of the trip we stayed in trekker's lodges in villages. As you get higher food prices become excessive, as everything must be carried up the mountain by porters. We carried our own stove and some dehydrated food. I also had hope for some exploratory rambling around the various side ridges and peaks but the minus five temps and unsettled weather put a fast end to that fantasy. So here we are enjoying some MEC dehydrated food under a pretty boulder.


Machapuchare again. Are you getting the feeling I enjoyed this mountain?



The South face of Annapurna 1. This monster is about 9000ft of near vertical snow and ice. That's around six Squamish Chief's stacked on top of the other. The Brit Chris Bonnington made the first direct ascent of the face. He needed two extra porters just to lug his weighty set of solid brass balls.


Cutie!


Close up of the South Face. You're lead, mate.



South Face with shrine to the alpinist Anatouli Boukreeve, who was avalanched off the fucker. This fact didn't impress much upon the group of pseudo-hippies who proclaimed: "It's like shangri-la, man! It's paradise!". No. Paradise is fig leaves and sunshine. Without the thousands of dollars of gear we were all wearing, the Sanctuary would have froze us to death in a single night. That's part of it's beauty.


Fourteen thousand feet equals breathless bouldering. And don't bother falling: it's a long hobble back down!

Dilly, stylin' the slack.


Day, stylin' the slack.


Annapurna is, unsurprisingly, a holy mountain for Hinduism. These tridents symbolize Shiva, who lives here.



Did I mention the leeches? Dilly got one right in the crotch! Ha! They like to cling to branches and plop off onto you as you pass. I collected a total of six, Dylan one (but a sweet one), and Dayna escaped unscathed.


The trail heading out of the Sanctuary, through the warmer hills.


Nepali children at play.


"Civilized" hiking: we had just slogged up a 1500ft hill. Time for a cup of ginger tea!

The trail wandered through fantastic rhododendron forests.


Evening teahouse. Dilly composing the script for a porno film he was daydreaming about. Machapuchare hovers above.


Dayna helping the local ladies club strip bamboo shoots for curried bamboo and rice.


Machapuchare. Again. Here you can see its 'fishtail' aspect. Keep in mind that this peak is taller than anything in North America. Stack BC's Coast Range three times as high and you begin to get an idea of how these mountians dominate the land and mind.

A donkey with a load of Yak wool. Several of these 'donkey trains' would pass us per day, bells tinkling, the herders coming along behind. Trekking is an incredibly wonderful and vibrant experience...and we're fortunate to be planning two more two-week treks!