The Annapurna Circus

There's an estimated 30.000 people visiting this area per year, but most of these are just seeing the Kali Gandaki valley, that is the western part of the trek, also called the Apple Pie Trek. This is because it can be done in fairly much comfort, by taking an airplane from Pokhara up to Jomsom, at almost 4000 meters, and walk back down, passing "German bakeries" selling apple pies and similar luxuries several times a day.

Doing the whole circuit means starting at a few hundred meters above sea level, going up the valley dug by the Marsyangdi river, walking from jungle through temperated forest to barren, open land, climbing over one arm of the Himalayas at the Thorung La pass at 5.416 meters, and then following the Kali Gandaki gorge, the worlds deepest canyon (unless there's a newly discovered deeper one in China or something), ending the trip in Pokhara. The whole trek measures around 250 kilometres, and most people use around 3 weeks on the trek. Being a circuit gives it a special appeal. You never go back the same way you came, and when you get down, you've closed a circuit, seen the Annapurnas from all possible angles. Your feet will hurt, but at the same time you will feel better than ever.

We decided to do what most people do, namely do the trek counter-clockwise. The bus took us as far as to Bodwe otar, but we could easily have walked the distance from Dumre to Bodwe Otar just as fast, as the road was virtually non-existent, and the ride was more like a safari through the jungle. Together with other trekkers, we rented beds in someone's home for 40 rupi each. The place was very dirty, but at least it was equipped with mosquito nets, so we decided it probably was a good place for spending the night.

For dinner, the family we stayed with served me my first Daal Bhat, which basically is plain, cooked rice and a lentil soup. This is just about what we ate every day. I'm not really into healthy, basic food, so I ate it and found that I could probably feed on this for some time to come, without really enjoying it. Others claimed this definitely was the best rice meal they had ever had. There's not much of a choice in the mountains anyway, so one might as well like it. Strangely enough there will almost always be beer and some kind of chocolate available, and the point of no Coke certainly never is reached. Some places will have pizza on the "menu", but be careful! Their interpretation of the theme pizza might as well be some kind of soup. Also be careful with the yak cheese. It is fairly expensive, and definitely not a tasty thing.

Sarah was unfortunate enough to use her flashlight on a small alcove just next to her bed and find something that probably was the hugest spider she had ever seen. She didn't sleep to well that night. Judging the room as VERY dirty, I decided to go inside my sleeping bag and stay there, no matter how hot it was. The next morning I could emerge a couple of kilos of liquid lighter and with no fleabites. Others weren't that lucky. I only woke up once through the night, and that was when there was dog barking, followed by a loud kick and then a dog whimpering.

Walking towards Besi Sahar, we kept meeting young men carrying old people around. It seemed pretty absurd, carrying these half deads on your back, but it turned out it was pension payment season, and to be able to collect pension for the elderly, the younger people have to carry the pensionist from their village to an inspector in the lowlands, to show that the old person really is alive. Some people carry their elders a loooong way.

The trek follows ancient trade routes most of the time, and I passed tiny villages every now and then. Everywhere you can buy some tea, cocoa, daal bhat or more or less fresh fruit, most often guavas and apples. Actually, in my honest opinion, probably the best apples in the world are grown in this area, between 2.000 and 3.000 meters. They are huge, red and sweet. *Mmmm*. Getting treats like that at this altitude seems pretty weird to me, coming from an area of a country where we have absolutely nothing growing above 1.500 meters. At one stage, I was walking through this typical fairy tale forest, as seen on the photo here. It was absolutely enchanting. I was a bit startled to discover that *everything* I saw around me was marihuana.

While that was a slightly exciting experience, it was nothing compared to all the places where you would walk peacefully along the path, just to hear something that somehow strangely reminded me a bit about thunder. Most of the time I never found the source of the sound, but other times it literally appeared to me very clearly. The trek took place just after the rain season, and the rivers were big, digging themselves wider and wider all the time. Some places they became so wide that they created landslides up to several hundred meters in width. My preference for walking in solitude suddenly seemed like a good strategy, as a single walker is not as apt to trig a landslide as a group of people are. One has to keep in mind never to stop for a break at places likely to slide into the rivers.

Another thing to keep in mind is not to walk in moist, semi-high vegetation, because here there be tygers! Or leeches, to be exact. They just hang on their straw, bush or whatever, and wait for something living, blood-filled to transfer to. Wearing high quality trousers and boots? No problem. These uhm... suckers, literally, can sneak through a seam or hole of a very small scale, and find human skin to feast on. They can suck blood to an amount of a hundred times their own weight, and although you won't feel them working, you WILL notice it if they burst inside your boot. All of a sudden it will be like wading, except the wet stuff is INSIDE your boot. You will probably want to clean your socks and shoes fairly soon after a burst like that. They're not dangerous, though.

The fourth night of the trek I spent in a tiny four-house village, Koto, 2.629 meters above sea-level. We were lucky to get there just minutes before the darkness downed on us. This was the closest I got to a Tibetan family on the whole trip. The man in the house celebrated his birthday, not really knowing what number it was, but giving us free shelter anyway. They had a large living-room, with a buddhist altar filled with small artifacts, pictures and incense in the corner. The walls were covered with cutlery and the man's wife made our food on an open fire in the middle of the room. Good food and incredible atmosphere. The hosts were really worried we weren't satisfied, and did everything they could to make us happy. We even had to politely ask them to lower the volume from the cassette player playing "The Magic of Boney-M", which some previous backpacker must have left behind. It was a fairly bizarre thing to encounter up there. But the area is beautiful, Boney-M couldn't make me forget that fact. The shape of the mountains, the trees, bushes and colours and sounds remind me very much of Norway, just above sea-level.

I didn't really get the feeling of being in the mountains before well after passing 3.000 meters. Now my breathing was heavier and my heartbeats quite a bit faster. The weather had been rather cloudy all the way, so by now ALL my clothes were wet, and I was a bit worried that might become a problem, as we were approaching higher altitudes and lower temperatures. Luckily the sun came through just as I came up to a flat part of the hike, near Pisang, and I could wash my clothes and dry them in the sun. I even had a sunbath, up at 3.400 meters, just lying down on the ground in my shorts, and look up at the incredible Annapurna range. Bliss.

When we came to Manang, there was a bit of a drama, as Sarah all of a sudden was hit by a rather serious case of altitude sickness. Appearantly this happens to everyone at a certain altitude, determined genetically. There have been reported cases of fatal altitude sickness down to around 2.000 meters, and I was happy for every meter I gained without getting a headache, the first indication of altitude sickness. After the initial headache, sufferers will experience a swelling up of their fingers, the skeleton and skull will expand, making the blood circulation slower. This results in an intense shivering, uncontrolled crying and nervous reactions, and in the end you turn blue and can eventually die from it. Sarah was smart enough to decide to go back and try to acclimatize, and did so with some assistance. She wasn't able to acclimatize fast enough to keep up with the people she had been walking with, and had to go back to the civilization. I really felt sorry for her.

I had a slight headache myself, but decided it was a cold, as I had other symptoms of that as well. To be sure, I made an acclimatization stop in Manang Shudi. To make sure I wouldn't push myself too hard, I joined some people from the flattest country in the world, the Netherlands, for the rest of the climb. Walking with them I couldn't go to fast, and besides, they were really nice people. #:D) The day wasn't spent resting. The important thing is that you spend two or more nights at the same altitude, as the body seems to adjust to new conditions mainly while you're sleeping. So instead of just staying at the guest house and watch the yaks grazing, I walked up to Pocho gumpa, a small buddhist monastery-like place (a gumpa) built into the mountainside, with two of my new friends

The holy man, a woman and a child were very inviting, and we soon found ourselves inside the gumpa. Hearing we were going over the pass to the Kali Gandaki gorge, the old man told us we needed to be blessed, as it would be a very strenous climb and descent on the other side. He served some suspicious-looking liquid and bread, and after having consumed that he said a blessing for us and poured us some holy water to splash in our faces. He also gave us a red, holy ribbon around our necks, and as long as we were carrying those, everything would be well and we would get over the pass. Great news!

Some people live up at the altitude of around 4.000 meters throughout the year, although most of them spend the winter in lower regions. Those who spend the winter up there, though, eat yak meat to be able to do so. In the last years they have had a problem getting this meat, as yak steak has become a very popular meal among the increasing number of tourists invading Nepal every year. These tourists obviously have more money than the farmers and Tibetan refugees up in the mountains, and the yaks are sold to the highest bidders. Sadly, this means that it can be very difficult for the Nepalis to afford the meat they claim they need to be able to survive the winters in the mountains. It is necessary for them to be there, as they regularly have to shove snow and ice off the buildings. If they don't do this, the buildings will fall down from the weight of the snow. Try eating some holy cows instead of yaks, if you really need meat while in Nepal.

The last two days before the climbing of the pass we walked just 3-4 hours per day. This was both because we wanted to acclimatize our bodies carefully, and because the surroundings were so beautiful now. I am a little bit desillusioned. The mountains haven't been as uhm... mountainous as I had expected, but more like enormous heaps of sand and gravel. The mountains that surround me look like real mountains, though. It is strange standing at 4.000 meters and still be able to look up at these gigantic peaks.

When not walking around outside, the time is spent sitting around large tables inside. The tables are covered with huge carpets which you put your feet under, and red-hot coal is put in a metal bucket and put under the table and the carpet. Apart from resulting in a few molten shoes and a distinct burning rubber smell, it seems like a very good idea.

I didn't meet many Norwegians in Nepal, but I actually happened upon one at almost 4.000 meters. There was this guy standing next to the path, looking very much like a scientist with his large pair of binoculars and general appearance. And he was Norwegian! For some funny reason, the northernmost university in the world, the University of Tromsų, pays this guy a lot of money to spend a few years researching how the blue goat moves to defend itself against the snow leopard. He'd seen a LOT of blue goats but no snow leopards during the three months he'd been up there, taking insane amounts of pictures of the Himalayas, while slowly getting closer to his cand.scient. degree. It's a strange world out there.

I came to the Thorung La Base Camp on October the 3rd, and early the next morning I started on the last vertical kilometer...