Natural Gas
by matt
Our route in pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/albumMap?uname=MSLambert&aid=5415672042498190257#map (Isn't Android amazing?)
Tatopani
In a superhuman feat, we walked downhill to the lowest point on our trek, Tatopani. As we descended from Ghoropani, we hit "the road", which was constructed about 3 years ago and gives access to Jomsom from Beni, which is just a jeep or bus transfer away from Pohkara, a decent-sized city. This road meant that the rest of our hike would be on a wide trail, but also introduced us to crazy Tata buses and Mahindra jeeps. All of the downhill hiking was tough on our knees and feet, so we enjoyed our Dal Baht andthe hot springs all that much more.
Jomsom-Beni Road
Kalopani
Whereas Ghoripani and Tatopani mean warm and hot water, Kalopani means dark, murky waters. So naturally, we decided to make it to Jomsom in two days, rather than the traditional three by stopping in Kalopani. This meant that we would do 1400m of elevation in one day, which, if you aren't familiar with the metric system of mountaineering, is crazy.
For this task, we needed energy. Luckily, there was amazing Dal Baht in Ghasa, which is where we stopped for lunch. We ended up eating in a courtyard with a bunch of drunk men playing musical instruments to celebrate a wedding.
Sounding the Good News of Wedding and Delicious Dal Baht
We pressed on through the afternoon and into a new ecosystem, which I will unscientifically dub Coniferous Mountain Forest. Several sketchy shortcuts and bridges later, we emerged onto a sort of glacier-carved valley where we would spend most of the rest of our trek. The views also became a lot more interesting.
That's a Big Mountain in the background
We also noticed that all of the houses turned into stone, which is very plentiful in this valley that is covered in fist-sized rocks. We enjoyed being the only guests in our Kalopani tea house, and the apple pie was amazing.
Jomsom
As part of our quest to reach the mecca (an actual mecca for Hindus, actually) that is Muktinath, we had another long hike, which had very little elevation gain and followed the widest path in the world, which was kindly built by a glacier. The valley floods in the rainy season, but we were able to walk through it with ease, crossing the meandering river every once in a while. A very environmentally friendly bus followed our EXTREME path by fording the river.
Notice the the bus says "Save the Environment" on the top
We arrived in Jomsom to find a city that is just an airport with one runway and a bunch of shops.
Muktinath
In order to complete our pilgrimmage, we needed to hike another 20 km and about 1100m up to the town of Muktinath, which is nestled up against the back side of the Annapurna Range and just after "the highest pass in the world" if you are hiking the Annapurna Circuit. We started early, but had to backtrack a mile or two after finding that the river had flooded the normal trail. As we made our way up the steep mountainside, Nathan decided to take up DC's mantle and hike much too fast in the uphill direction.
Nathan Powering Up the Mountain
All of this hiking wore out our guide, Matt's boots (delamination between midsole and outsole), and Matt, in that order. Nathan managed to get the gps on his iPhone working, so we soon realized how far we were from Muktinath's HACE-inducing 3700m elevation, but we in fact made it in one piece. After chilling on the roof of the hotel, Nathan convinced us to check out the temple, which features water and fire. There were 108 water spouts which people alternatively drink from and streak through.
Water Spouts with Beast Faces
Also, there was a natural gas flame which naturally occured at this location and had been enshrined in a temple that discouraged pictures, so we can't show you how cool it was, but we can tell you that it was amazing. Here's another shot of the temple, with mountains and prayer flags in the background:
Pokhara
After spending the night playing chess and chatting with some Annapurna Circuit trekkers from Australia and the Bay Area, we took a jeep back to Jomsom and chilled out until our early morning flight the next day. The jeep ride was a unique experience and was not photochronicled, but we did take some cool pictures during the flight. Those cool pictures are on Nathan's camera, so theses will have to suffice:
Boarding the Death-Turboprop
We sat on the left side of the plane. It was the right decision.
Safely deplaning, back in 3rd world civilization
For those worried relatives and friends out there, the weather in Pokhara and Jomsom is very bad much of the time, so we were lucky that our flight happened in relative safety. The rest of our travels will take us slowly back to the US, passing through Kathmandu, Bankok, and Tokyo.
The Post Somewhat Smaller than the Himalaya But Still Really Big
by Nathan
We've gone journal style now. Unfortunately we aren't trained journalists, so you'll have to make do with our amateur bumbling. So without further ado:
DAY 1:
Welcome to Nepal!
Welcome to Nepal!
So we're in Nepal now. Our flight here can best be described as uneventful...our arrival, not so much. After we got through passport control and retrieved our bags, a man immediately seized our bags, hoisted them onto a cart and ran away with them through customs. This happened in the space of about 10 seconds. This is only the beginning.
Once outside, we were immediately swarmed by at least 10 guys, all of whom were yelling shades of "hello! Welcome to Nepal! Where are you going! Taxi!" and so on. The choice of "swarmed" here isn't accidental...they followed us in front and back. Again, madness.
Eventually we found our way into a small metered taxi with both a pilot and copilot. While maybe necessary for the rally-style driving required on Kathmandu streets, we soon discovered that the copilot was an agent from a trekking agency riding along to sell us a trek. To make a long story short, after he convinced us that a nationwide strike was planned for Wednesday (the day after we arrived), we ended up using his trekking agency to book the Jomsom trek out of Pokhara. DC will call us pushovers right now...and it didn't feel good, but in our defense all the trekking agencies are the same and we looked them up on the internet first. Since it was what we came for, using this agency worked out in the end (I can say this now, having finished the trek).
A short while later, one vital roll of toilet paper richer, we found ourselves pulling away in a beat-up 20 year old corolla without seatbelts (seatbelts are only necessary in countries with Ralph Nader). The ensuing seven hour ride through the mountains was hellish. Bumpy, winding, dark, loud, dusty, and cold, are the mildest adjectives I can think of. If I had to choose, I would only call it surreal.
Day 2:
THERE ARE NO MOSQUITOES IN THIS COUNTRY! VICTORY IS MINE!!!!!!!
Sorry I got carried away....we had just become tired of all creepy-crawly-bitey bugs in Thailand.
Yes, I've been waiting to make that pun. I would take a bow, but I have to keep dodging the tomatoes.
Also, we're in Pokhara now. The crazy car ride finished around 11:00pm and we crashed in our hotel room. We woke up, ate some breakfast with some creative substitutions (mango instead of orange juice, mint tea instead of coffee, and potato curry instead of hash browns), met our Nepali guide, Prakash, and piled into a taxi to drive to the trailhead!
Did you know that he speaks Nepali, Hindi, Japanese, and English? Neither did we for the first couple days
We drove for an hour or so on the highway* before we got to the first village, Birethati:
*highway here is a bit of an overstatement...any highway with six-inch drop-offs and bovine roadblocks needs some tender loving care.
Anyways, Birethati:
You can measure the distance we went from civilization by the price of coke. Here: 70 rupees, about a dollar.
From that point, we hiked several hours up into a canyon until we arrived at Hile, our stop for the night. Before I put up more pictures, it's worth describing how this whole trekking process works. Trekking is distinct from mountaineering in that there are no technical skills required to do it. We hike every day, generally from around 8:00 am to 2:00 pm, covering a distance anywhere from 10km to 25km, depending on the grade and condition of the trail. We stop at "tea houses," small dinner-and-bed-and-breakfasts run invariably by very nice middle-aged* ladies.
*middle-aged here needs a little context: the lifespan of the average Nepali is around sixty years. This knowledge made us all the more impressed to see wrinkled men and women carrying 50-100 lb loads of firewood up and down mountains.
All the tea houses look something like this...very simple stone and mortar construction. The flowers, while somewhat more transient than the stone buildings, were a nice touch. For reference, 1 coke = 90 rupees.
As a guest at one of these tea houses, you are expected to eat from their restaurant. The menus are very strange: as they have been standardized and price-fixed by the tourism commission, you can get anything from pizza to macaroni to yak curry or dal baht (the standard Nepali dish).
Dal Baht is worth explaining, since we ate it for at least 50% of all our meals.
dal and rice often means a lot more than just Dal and Rice. This is great when you're really hungry and really cheap.
Dal is a watery lentil curry and Baht is rice. Curry and Rice. Simple, yet effective, as pretty much every single one of the 20 million inhabitants of Nepal eat it twice a day. Even though it's a standard meal, the flavors are by no means the same: differing amounts of ginger and other spices make each meal often surprisingly different and tastier than the last. Kind of like a certain artist:
+1 art reference points. Hopefully these points are worth something at some point in life. I remain optimistic.
Anyways, in the continuing interest of describing how the whole trekking thing works, here's a picture of a representative room from our trek. Note: no heating, no sheets, and only one light:
Packing light doesn't mean you can't still make a mess .05 seconds after walking into a room for the first time.
That about finishes up day two. Therefore, sticking with the decidedly boring linear recollection of events, we move begrudgingly on to:
Day 3:
Welcome to Nepal! Part 2. This picture is more representative of why we came to Nepal.
Welcome to Nepal! Part 2. This picture is more representative of why we came to Nepal.
Today we have found the droids we were looking for! The Himalayas!
this was not the droid we were looking for.
On day 3, we hiked from Hile to Ghorepani, a small village in a pass. The hike involved the greatest vertical change we did on the trip, 1400 m or 4600 ft, which is basically the vertical climb of Half Dome in Yosemite. Here we have Matt and Prakash taking a short break:
onward!
Some five hours and two Dal Bahts later, we arrived at Ghorepani:
asomewhat unremarkable town, significant for two reasons: 1. Internet
Reason 2:
HIMALAYA! this is a view of the Annapurna range. the view from our hotel was all kinds of spectacular (thanks DC).
As we discovered around 5am, the real reason that trekkers converge on Ghorepani is to hike a nearby hill, called "Poon Hill," early in the morning to watch the sunrise. The view from the top is around a 270 degree view of the Annapurna range and is reputed to be one of the best views in Nepal. Since I couldn't take a picture of the whole thing and my camera batteries worked in the freezing wind about as well as I did, I have a couple pictures:
sunrise
matt is cold. so is my camera, so it decided to take a really long, lazy exposure in the early morning
i know, this picture needs some photoshopping. i also need a haircut. complaints can be left in the complaint box by the door.
The photo from the beginning of the Day 3 post is also during the sunrise.
Later that day, after we had unfrozen, we hiked down the pass to Torepani, a small town with some hot springs. To tide you over until Matt finishes his post, I have a picture of a chicken, which may or may not be symbolic of the situation of Nepal:
but it is symbolic of what's for dinner. bye!