Highly Elevated 2

Brilliant Dawn, Unforgettable Dusk

The next morning I got up in my freezer even before the crack of dawn, to climb the steep Poon Hill, an hour straight up, to watch the sunrise.

I don’t know what came over me.

The good thing about the steepness of the track was that it didn’t take long for me to warm up.

Looking back at the village as I started the climb.

It was relatively clear. Yay!

What followed was unbelievable.

Thar she blows!

That’s mountaineer and all-round beautiful person Laura on the left, with a bunch of lovely other people we met up there. My Rudolph nose isn’t sunburnt, it was just freezing off, given that it was minus too-many degrees at the time.

More incredible views. So tiresome.

The mountain in the middle is called Dhaulagiri, and it’s the seventh highest mountain in the world, with an elevation of 8167m. Everest is 8849m.

Eventually we headed back down

My cute little guest house, Hotel See You.

After the long descent back to the village, and after brekky, my route climbed again. Yay, as if I hadn’t done enough climbing.

But of course it was spectacular.

Then there was a long descent down a creekline.

A young female Nepalese guide with a couple of Danish woman was carrying this cute girl on their trek. Really.

Skinny track, fat clouds

Nice patch for a patch

This mountain is appropriately named Fishtail, and is the pointy one you can see in a lot of the pics, including those from Pokhara, but from a different angle. It’s real name is Machhapuchhre.

I finally arrived at Tadapani, and the views from my guesthouse were nothing short of unbelievable.

And then the sun set.

Views like this are unforgettable. And these are just pictures. Imagine what it was like to be there. I just felt so blown away, so grateful, to be there while another of nature's brilliant masterpieces was being created before my eyes.

It was yet another reminder to me of my place in the cosmos, just a microscopic speck in a universe so big that it's completely incomprehensible.

But a speck big enough to have an incredibly rich and fulfilled life within it.

Tadapani is a stop on the trek up to the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC), probably the most popular shorter real “trek” in the whole country, real in the sense that it has its challenges, and therefore attracts experienced trekkers.

Coincidentally, there were a bunch of Adelaideans up at Tadapani for the night, and we hung out. They’re all teachers, and have been working in Nepal as part of the New Colombo Plan, an Australian government aid program that pays Australian University students to support people in their field in Asian countries.

I’ve met another two bunches of Aussies involved in that program around these parts, all working in Asia on their Uni breaks. Emma and Suzy are environmental scientists, and have been working to help count the distribution of birds in Nepalese forests. Molly and Ruby are engineering students, and have been working in that field in Hyderabad, in India.

The work stints usually last for four weeks.

It was nice to chat at length to the Adelaide crew about their experiences teaching in schools around the Kathmandu area. They all stayed with local families, which is, of course, an amazing way to experience the local culture. They were all really moved by the connections they made, and so were the communities they worked in. And, of course, the kids. They fell in love with the kids, and vice versa.

The group were on their way to ABC as well, but a number of them had come down with bad bellies, so were looking pretty grey. Poor things. We’ll see how that goes.

Village Life

So each day up here I walk through little villages, the stony paths often go right through farms and right across the front of people’s stone courtyards outside their homes. Every day I get the chance to watch people going about their daily business, nice and close up. I love it, it’s so interesting.

I’ve watched women removing millet chaff, manually grinding wheat into flour, dehusking and drying soya beans, pounding spices, washing, chopping and drying all sorts of foodstuffs, plants and flowers. I’ve seen them working the fields, planting and harvesting, washing clothes and dishes, cooking on open fires or gas camping stoves.

Many of the tracks I’ve taken on both hikes have been lesser-known ones, so I’ve really seen authentic village life, free from tourism.

The villages here are incredibly self sufficient. People live simply. They grow their own rice and millet, and all of their own vegies and fruit, everyone has chooks, some have horses, buffaloes or cows, sheep or goats.

They make their own spirits, a type of millet wine called rakshi, which is quite nice, sort of a very earthy-flavoured weak vodka. Everything’s organic, of course. There’s lots of animal shit to go around.

When I stay at the guesthouses I always eat local dishes, even though many of them also offer Western foods these days.

Common fare here is what they call dal bhat, which is basically rice, dal, a potato or some other veg curry dish, steamed spinach, and lots of little chutneys, pickles and sauces. The great thing about it is that I know they’ve grown everything themselves, it’s all organic, and, importantly, it’s re-fillable. You eat till you’re full.

The sauces are really delicious, one in particular, made from chilli, garlic, onion and mint, is a killer, in more ways than one.

Since I’ve been hiking quite long distances every day, and because it’s all so bloody steep, my body’s really working out up here, so I’m really famished by dinnertime. I’ve been eating pretty much two full plates of dal bhat every dinner.

I also have a big breakfast, but generally don’t feel like lunch or snacks.

Thickening Air

Yesterday’s walk took me to my highest altitude for this hike, about 3200m, and for the next couple of days I generally descended, although the super steep and seemingly neverending descent also required some long steep climbs back up as well. That’s what ya get in these parts.

My body definitely felt the decrease in altitude. It's easier to breathe. My body feels thicker, somehow, especially my feet.

Brekky view

Icy path

Berries in the sun

Incredibly steep terracing

This girl accompanied me for a few hours. She was so sweet.

Negotiating one of a number of landslides en route.

Stone roofs

Hilltop temple

Horses at work

From the temple hilltop the track was an absolutely killer descent of about 700m. That may not seem like much, but when it’s completely steep and straight down, at the end of a day of other huge ascents and descents, it just jellifies your legs.

A vulture overhead, waiting for me to die

Stock gate

Now that’s what you call a swing bridge. It was scary.

The view from halfway across

It’s a long long way down

Phew, I made it.

Believe it or not, but there was a tatopani, a hot spring, only about a 20 minute walk from my guesthouse! What an amazing resurrective balm for a dead body.

The spring was right alongside this river, pouring out of the side of the hill. The locals have roughly piped it, and built some pools so you can chill in the hot water.

See the pools in the bottom left of the pic. There were a few of us, recovering from death.

Drying soya beans at my homestay.

http://buymeacoffee.com/krolesh9

Go to Part 3