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Pokhara turned out to be a great little city, much more westernized than India... And it felt good: no rickshaws in the clean and uncrowded streets, music I can relate to, food that makes me think of home. It could be a small resort town in Europe. But everything is dirt cheap, and there are many more things to spend money on than in India: a great variety of restaurants (all serving beer unlike in India), a quantity of stores selling trekking equipment — North Face gear, in label only, Nepali made at ridiculously low prices — and the slowest and most expensive Internet yet.
The city is built around Phewa lake, from whose shore you can see the mighty Annapurna Range with a summit at 8091m, or so they tell me: the weather is cloudy and usually there are thunderstorms in the afternoons. But it does look stunning on the postcards. For the first few days we explored the city and its surroundings. We hiked to the World Peace Pagoda overlooking the lake and facing the shy mountain range. We rented bikes and rode to the airport, in the hope of finding aircrafts I'd be allowed to rent. That plan ended with us riding back under pouring rain and Angus catching a cold.
A surprising aspect of Nepal is that the majority of the population is Hindu, while I had assumed that the whole country was Buddhist. While we were in Pokhara, the Shivaratri festival (Shiva's night) took place: it is dedicated to Shiva and consists apparently in the whole population getting high smoking the locally grown marijuana (it's completely legal in Nepal on Shivaratri). Since Shiva has the ability to change poisonous substances into harmless or beneficial elements (and is fond of Marijuana), drug use is seen by sadhus to be an important spiritual practice unto itself, the intoxicating properties being the blessing of Shiva. Not surprisingly the streets were empty and everybody was in bed by 10PM that evening! The only disappointment is that Shivaratri should be experienced in Varanasi or at the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu. I just left Varanasi and will going to Kathmandu soon, but didn't know about this, hence the bad timing.
Finally, after two days of planning we headed out for a five-day trek in the Annapurna Conservation Area. On the morning of our departure Annapurna came briefly out of its blanket of clouds to encourage us. We combined the essential gear needed for the trek into one large and one small backpacks — both Angus', my gear is not as nice. A one-hour taxi ride from Pokhara to Nayapul brought us to the beginning of the trail, at which point Angus had an acute attack of diarrhea. We progressed slowly, along a small stream through terraced hillsides, under cloudy skies. Not the best start for our hike...
Trekking in Nepal is quite easy. There are lodges and restaurants in all the villages we go through, and the trails are well maintained. This is all thanks to the fee we pay to the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP). Unlike in Canada, there is no need to log tent and food supplies making us much more flexible in being able to adapt our itinerary. Also, the ACAP has done a lot of educating amongst the locals, so there is no garbage along the trails, unlike a few years ago.
Nayapul, Birethanti, Tirkhedhungga: 7.1km, for a 600m denivelation taking us to 1530m (Note: these are straight-line distances, not the actual distance walked which can be 2 or 3 times greater on mountain paths). By 3PM we settled in a small lodge and Angus went and rested. As I went to the lodge's restaurant around dinnertime, I saw five teenagers walk-in with rifles: Maoists. Those five were quite shy and ate the food that the hotelkeeper gave them in silence. They were joined later by more and more Maoist guerilla to the point where there were twenty of them in the restaurant, grouped around me and the two of them that spoke English. They were very young: 14–21 in my estimate, each armed with a rifle. Boys and girls, about evenly distributed. They were nice and eager to communicate with me, explaining revolution is our right, and how they want to improve the lot of poor Nepalis.
But I did learn some important facts... The current king is suspected, by the people of Nepal, of having orchestrated the killing of the Royal Family; which explains why no one likes him. This suspicion plays in favour of the Maoist, and no-doubt they maintain it. The Maoist uprising has been going on for the past nine years with very little means: they receive no support from China and all the weapons they have were seized in raids against the Nepalese Police or Military. The troop I met clashes with with Nepal's security forces about once a month, and they feel somewhat protected by the tourists: it prevents the military from attacking indiscriminately. While I did try to take a photo of the group, they refused for obvious security reasons. I felt sad for these kids, who should be in school rather than roaming the mountains of Nepal all day; obviously indoctrinated and manipulated for someone's cause.
After the Maoist rebels wandered off into the night, the lady in charge of the hotel gave me a different side of the story... The villagers in the ACA live from businesses related mostly to tourism and have seen their lot improve since King Mahendra created the ACAP. When the Maoist come into the villages, they demand to be fed, arguing that they are fighting for the Nepali people. But then the Nepali military come in and request information from the villagers, who are thus caught in between. Also, the hotelkeeper told me that none of the kids are local; nobody knows them. Similarly kids from the area are presumably sent to fight somewhere else in the country. It's all very sad, truly. Angus and I did leave a donation at the hotel to cover the dinner of the Maoist.
Day 2, we started from Tirkhedhungga and walked up 3280 stone steps to reach Ulleri, some 420m higher. From there we hiked to Ghorepani through dense temperate rainforest. Ghorepani itself is at 2750m, but there are still plenty of large rhododendron trees (the national tree of Nepal), and we estimate the tree line between 3500 and 4000m. The weather up in Ghorepani is cold and cloudy; there are still patches of snow on the ground. After walking 7.0km and up a denivelation of 1210m Angus is still hanging in there. The crowd at the See You Lodge is friendly, the shower hot and the food excellent. The Raksi, some local moonshine they call wine, is not bad either.
Day 3, we got up at 5AM. Angus is not feeling any better, but we hiked to the top of Poon Hill at 3200m to see the sun rise over the Annapurna (8091m) and Dhaulagiri (8172m) ranges. The sight was breathtaking with the colour of the mountains changing every few minutes. After a hearty breakfast we heard of a coming general strike in throughout the country: 5 days starting on Feb 25. The strike is in support of the Maoist, supposedly, since they threatened to destroy any business that would open during the period. It should start on the day we will end our trek and return to Pokhara — thus leaving us stranded there for 5 days. Under the circumstances, we decided to spend the day in Ghorepani: the hotel is nice, the food is good and Angus can use the rest. We are also planning on extending the trek by one more day to visit the hot springs in Jhinu.
The afternoon was spent relaxing in the lodge, and I sampled a lot of the food available from the kitchen, including yak cheese — not unlike Swiss Emmental. Around 5PM the Maoist rebels walked through town without stopping; I assume it's the same troop I ran into in Tirkhedhungga two days prior. During dinner, we met a group of four Nepali girls around 18 who are going to attend a volleyball tournament in a village further down the trail. They were friendly and invited us to go to the local disco with them. This came in as quite a surprise since we thought that Ghorepani was just another tiny village along the trail... It turned out that the village is not as small as we were given to see, and that the disco night was to take place in the high-school as part of the Shivaratri festival which goes on for much longer in the small mountain villages than it does in Pokhara. Unfortunately, the earlier passage of the Maoist through town seemed to have scared the locals and they decided to cancel the festivities for the night — no disco.
Day 4, while Angus slept in I decided to go back to Poon Hill to see the sun rise over the Annapurna range once again. Unfortunately after the 400m (vertical) climb to the top of the hill, the sun came out in cloud, and there was nothing to see. While I was disappointed, a lot of the hikers up there that morning were even more so; they didn't get a chance to see the sunrise the previous morning. By 9AM Angus and I set out on the trail. He feels much better after a day of rest and we went a good pace. The trail heads up to a peak at 3200m and by then, around 11AM, we caught very good views of Annapurna South (7219m) and Hiunchuli (6441m).
By 1PM we reached the village of Tadapani, in the midst of a huge forest of rhododendrons, our goal for the day. Since Angus is feeling much better we maintained a much more sustained pace than anticipated and decided to continue on for a few hours. The trail from Tadapani goes down 760m to the bottom of the Kyumnu river valley and up the other side to the village of Ghurjung. The tally for the day was a straight-line distance of 10.9km, with widely varying denivelations: we walked a total of 1300m uphill and descended 1900m, for a final altitude of 2070m in Ghurjung. We were exhausted by the time we reached the lodge kept by Hima and her parents. The lodge is not so much in a village as just propped on the hillside along the trail. We had a great and copious dinner before going to bed that night.
Day 5, during breakfast we realized that money had ran out faster than we expected and decided that we needed to get back to Pokhara on the evening of the next day — one day sooner than the revised itinerary we came up with in Ghorepani. As we discussed possible destinations for the day, we felt the ground rumble and Hima showed us a great plume of dust, explaining that this was a landslide further along the trail. We would have to hike up the mountain to go over the sliding terrain, and she explained where we'd find the path. It turned out that the landslide had been going on for a week and we got great sights of it that day, huge rocks tumbling down into the river several hundred meters below. It was truly impressive.
From the alternate trail we used, we caught great sights of Machhapuchhre (fish-tail mountain, 6997m); and finally reached the hot springs in Jhinu a little after lunch. Soaking my sore muscles into the hot water felt great but we had to press on to the village of Landruk that day, a few hours ahead. We hiked through a great many terraces where wheat was grown, and in one village came upon a family slaughtering a goat. They invited us to take part in their meal; unfortunately our money situation forced us to press on towards the road. We reached Landruk just before sunset, after walking 9km straight-line, climbing 800m and descending almost 1200m; another exhausting day. We were greeted by the best shower on the trail and a very nice family father who showed us photos of his children while we drank raksi.
Day 6, we left Landruk early to get to the road as early as possible, since we have heard no confirmation on the state of the general strike. We hiked through dense rhododendron forests and reached the road by 1PM. Strike is confirmed, no vehicles to get us back to town. There's another 16km to walk to Pokhara and we need to reach it before nightfall because our financial resources won't allow us another night in a hotel until we hit a bank machine. It was a long walk, somewhat surrealistic since there were no vehicles on the road and everyone else was also walking. By the time we reached Pokhara, exhausted, we had walked over 35km, including some 500m uphill and 1300m downhill. The greatest deception at the end of this long day is that we decided to splurge on a nice hotel only to realize that we couldn't get a hot shower. Some renegotiation of the hotel fee ensued, since we didn't have the strength to move hotels, but that didn't make up for the frustration.
As I took care of the blisters on my feet that evening I was thinking that even though Nepal is quite small, ultimately perceived size is relative to the speed at which you can travel. In most of the western world, 10 hours of traveling will take you 1000km down the road. In Nepal, 10 hours of driving took us 100km from Sunauli to Pokhara, 10 hours of walking took us 35km from Landruk to Pokhara. The perceived size of Nepal is comparable to that of Canada.
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