Thursday, April 23, 2015

For our last day together in Pokhara (I would leave for Kathmandu by bus the next day) we decided to walk to breakfast at Mike’s Restaurant, on the boardwalk of Lake Fewa. I highly recommend it! The food and service are great, they have a good mix of Nepali and American food on the menu, and the outside eating area is beautiful. Seated right on the boardwalk we were able to watch people walking by as we ate.

This particular morning in addition to the people just out for a walk we also saw a man walk by with some large pieces of colorful corrugated metal roofing on his head. There was also a somewhat loud old man, who seemed to be drunk, moving from table to table, maybe looking for a handout. He finally settle at one table and I think they served him – or maybe it was given to him. But they handled it with class and all turned out ok.

After breakfast we spent the morning walking about Pokhara’s lakeside district looking at shops, and we went to Wal-mart! Ha! Then we ventured away from the main street to where it was more residential. There we saw some up-scale hotels and markets, as well as agriculture and many of the typical “mini-marts” which all have the same collection of plastic packaged junk-food (though this one also has onions…).

We returned to Sacred Valley for lunch and a break. The weather was great so we ate in the outside dining area and read the Kathmandu Times. Next we went back out in another direction, Nora looked for jeans, and among other things, we saw a school with some interesting slogans painted on the walls.

I also wanted to buy some fruit. At a little hole-in-the-wall produce stand I noticed that they had two types of oranges, some were entirely orange in color and others, slightly smaller, and green and orange colored. I was curious about the difference and wanted to ask, but the woman didn’t speak English. As is often the case, a child in the household did speak English, and so a young girl, about 10 years old, stepped forward to help me. It was sweet of her, and I asked her what the difference was between the two oranges. She confidently held up the larger one and said “this one is orange,” then holding up the other she said “this one is green.” So, I had my answer! I thanked her and bought some of each. Later, when I ate them, I couldn’t detect any difference.

That evening we went to a somewhat fancy restaurant that obviously catered to foreigners, in their food, and also in how they treated the customers – more formally seating us, etc. But the point is… the pizza was truly fine!

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Trekking Day #9

We were up early and down to the dining hall/kitchen before 6:00 am. It was a new building and the kitchen had a new oven, big enough for a man to lean inside it while he cooked. As I was waiting for them to prepare breakfast I looked out the window and the clouds had cleared. We had one last view of the Annapurnas with the rising sun striking their peaks, and it was spectacular!

7:00 am – Leaving Landruk wasn’t too sad, it had been a good trek and were ready to head back to Pokhara. But we still had several miles ahead of us. The terrain was constantly changing now. We saw terraced farmland, crossed a broken down bridge that had been repaired by laying bamboo logs on it, and passed a primitive but working sawmill.

 

7:55 am – Tolka

8:45 am – Bhichuk

9:50 am – Bhichok / Deurali (yep, the third one). Here we left the trekking route for a while and walked on the Jeep road. We weren’t lost, just “powerful bewildered” for a couple miles. Eventually we found the route again and headed for Pothana.

11:05 am – At Pothana we stopped for 10 minutes at the ACAP booth to sign out. Between there and Dhampus we passed through green pasture land that reminded both of us of Oregon.

11:50 am – Dhampus was the last major settlement before the end of our trek, another hour and a quarter of pounding downhill away. We stopped for 10 minutes at the TIMS booth to sign out and take a picture, before pressing on past a blue gate signifying the official boundary of the Annapurna Reserve (Blue is the color of the painted trail markers for the ABC trek.)

1:15 pm – As we neared Phedi we were racing a thunderstorm that was getting closer, louder and more threatening by the minute. We had run into some light rain off and on the day before and earlier this day also, but it wasn’t too bad. Just enough to require rain gear and ponchos. We were glad for the end being sunny, but that was quickly changing. As we worked our way down the final winding stone steps I felt it would be close. These steps were like most we had encountered: randomly anywhere from 3-12″ in height and abundant! They seemed to never end, and going down was as brutal as going up. When we finally saw the roadway below us it had started to sprinkle, and by the time we got to the road the drops were getting larger. We took one quick end-of-trek picture and ran for cover… and it immediately cut loose like never before!

It had been a wonderful trek! God had blessed us with great timing on all of the weather, in particular having clear skies at ABC. We were told that it had been overcast for many days until we got there, and people had come and gone, never having seen the mountains.

After a little obligatory haggling over the cost of the taxi to Pokhara, we got one for 1500NR. (He wanted 2000NR which is what we paid on the way to Nayapul from Pokhara, and that’s twice as far over much worse roads!) Nora was about to beat me though, thinking I might just walk a ways (and it was still pouring) but I had no such intention! It was time to go back to the Sacred Valley Guesthouse, hot showers and flush toilets, and their amazing food! The storm continued throughout the afternoon and we watched it from out room.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Trekking Day #8

The early morning light and sunrise over the valley, with the birds singing wonderfully made a great start to the day. Nora was suffering a bit from some burnt lips and chin from the day before (I’ll spare the pictures). We went down to the deck  outside and had breakfast… with a horse… seriously, he came over and hung out with us!

8:00 am – We left Sinuwa later than usual (not in a hurry to be back?). In less then half an hour we were in lower Sinua, looking down into a deep valley where we would cross a bridge and start up the long trek from lower to upper Chomrong.

9:15 am – Lower Chomrong starts out with a slight uphill through terraced fields, then it has some serious stair climbing!

9:50 am – Upper Chomrong has many shops and bakeries. We stopped at one, bought another loaf of whole wheat bread for 300NR, bought something to eat as a treat and had a 25 minute lunch break on the balcony. The view overlooking the valley with the wind blowing and the mountains in the distance was fantastic! You can see in the picture just how steep and deep these valleys were. After leaving here, just before Jhinu Danda, we passed to Nepali men, one carrying a huge water heater tank on his back, up the hill, and the other man was the “spotter,” keeping him from toppling down the hill if he stumbled.

11:15  am – Jhinu Danda is famous for its hot springs, though we didn’t visit them on our way though. It’s one of the most brightly painted places we saw.

12:35 pm – New Bridge is just a tiny place, and from there we followed the river, and I’m not sure we ever saw this “new bridge.” It was very lush along the river as we crossed it back and forth, up smaller hills, back down another, cross over, repeat… At one point we were sitting at the end of a bridge we had just crossed and we heard quite a commotion – suddenly a bunch of kids came running out of the forest at full speed across the bridge toward us, laughing and having a great time. They were racing, it appeared. On girl took a tumble and skinned herself up in the process. They were ok though, and headed on up the path.

1:50 pm – Landruk was out final night on the trek. It’s much lower down and is a lot different, because it has a ROAD to it! Many people “cheat” a hire a Jeep to/from there. The road allows them to bring in many more things without having to literally carry it on their backs or a mule. We could see the settlements across the valley as well, and the trekking route coming down from the right merging with the road coming up from the left. It was also easy to see how the valleys were not as steep there.

We had one strange encounter that evening. Four or five women who were beginning a trek together had checked in to the guesthouse, and one of them was asking around whether any might have some thyroid medicine with them. Apparently she had forgotten or lost hers. The idea that she would be willing to take someone’s medicine, panhandled off of them, and hope for the best seemed really strange to me. There was a bit of a language barrier, but I tried to encourage her that it wasn’t worth the risk ans she should do whatever it took to do it right. It ended up that the guesthouse manager’s dad was coming from Pokhara the next day and would try to find some to bring to her. Really?! Well, they seemed generally ill-prepared, and the guesthouse was run pretty loosely in our opinion, so it all kind of fit together. I wonder how it worked out for them…

Monday, April 20, 2015

Trekking Day #7

5:30 am – We got up early to watch the sunrise. It was, of course, spectacular as light poured around the peaks slowly adding color to the gray morning. As we stood out there in our light vests I struck up a conversation with a man who used to live in the US. He now lives in Europe, I believe, and he commented that we weren’t dressed very warmly – he thought. About that time he asked where we were from, and when I said the Oregon coast in the US he immediately said “That explains it!” He had been to our part of the country and one of his memories was that we ran around without much on in bad weather.

7:15 am – We left ABC and headed down to MBC.

8:05 am – The trek down to MBC took 2 hours on the way up, but only 50 minutes on the way down. Below that we dropped into the shadows of the Modi valley again, until the sun rose higher in the sky. On the way we passed some slide and avalanche areas before Deurali.

 

9:20 am – We reached Deurali and took a 20 minute “rest” break, but it was more stalling than anything.

10:30 am – Himalaya was next, but we kept on going down, passing through beautiful scenery, both large and small.

11:30 am – Dovan and another 20 minute “rest.” The Nepalis are masters at stonework. They make stairs, pavement, houses, even roofs out of it.

12:35 pm –  After passing through Bamboo the clouds came in. We kept our pace and set our goal as Sinuwa for the night.

1:50 pm – Sinuwa (the “real” one) was our first stop on the way down. What had taken over two days to ascend had only taken one to descend – in keeping with the twice-as-fast-down trend. Our room there was different from the others. It was all wood rather than stone, or stone and wood, and the wood was finished natural rather than pointed or unfinished. It looked like mahogany paneling and had ship-like look. It was cool and dreary outside, but the morning has some beauty in store for us.