Gosaikunda to Tarepati to Golphu Bhanjyang

November 29, 2010

We woke up early and walked up to the ridge above Tarepati. In the east, the long ridge line of the Himalaya stretched on and on, and we tried to figure out which one was Everest. Below, the rolling hills were again blanketed in mist.

Back at the lodge, we ordered breakfast and finished packing our bags. In the dining room, we ate and looked at our maps, predicting what the day might bring. After hiking for eight hours yesterday and hardly sleeping the night before, we're all still a bit tired.

Getting ready to head down the trail, Flo decided to hang back and figure out his trekking plans. He leaves Kathmandu a couple days after us, and the prospect of finishing early isn't too enticing. Although he was going to do the other half of the Helambu circuit, he's not sure; the map shows a road running through most of it.

We gave a round of hugs and said goodbye, and then we started off. The trail from Tarepati follows a ridgeline, and as we descended, we were treated to lovely views of the mountains to the east and Laurebina La to the west.

The hike was lovely, and going mostly downhill, it wasn't too strenuous. Just the same, it took us nearly four and half hours to reach Kutumsang, our lunch spot. Bypassing a number of acceptable lodges for one with a view, we finally arrived at a little place with a courtyard overlooking rice terraces and, in the distance, snowy mountains. We ordered the usual, and the man scurried off to the kitchen.

I don't know if he made those noodle from scratch or if he was growing his greens and carrots from seed, but it took him more than an hour to produce a plate of that which I shall not mention. At one point, about thirty minutes after we had ordered, three porters stumbled out of the kitchen. They looked a little unsteady on their feet, but I thought nothing of it. Sitting cross-legged can do that to people.

While we waited, we read in the sun. Joshua's nose is getting a bit drippy, and his leg is sore from his stumble yesterday, so he's feeling a bit pathetic. For that matter, I'm feel a bit pathetic too. My muscles are still achy, and I've had a bit of a headache all day.

So although we had been worried about finishing our trek early, now we're relieved. After five weeks of trekking, I'm getting tired. The food has become unappetizing, and we feel the need for a little rest. It'll be nice to have a shower, too.

Finally, lunch arrives, and I force it down. Even so, I have left overs, and I hand them over to Joshua. We pay, and then we quickly head back on the trail. It's getting later in the afternoon, and we'd like to arrive in Golphu Bhanjyang before five.

Half an hour down the trail, we see the three porters who had stumbled out of the kitchen while our meal was being prepared. Two of them are sprawled out on the grass, sleeping, and the other one waves at us and then looks at his hand as if he's never seen it before.

The trail continues to descend, and in the late afternoon light, everything looks a bit golden. Rice terraces stripe the hills in front of us, and behind us, our shadows stretch on and on.

Golphu Bhanjyang sits in a saddle of the ridge. It's a lived-in Tamang village, and there are only a couple of lodges in the center. We choose the one with easterly views, and we go inside. It's a bit dark and dingy inside, but there don't appear to be any other prospects.

Unloading our packs, we wander downstairs for tea and cookies, the two things I haven't gotten sick of. We order dinner, too, and while we wait, we play cards. Joshua is again trouncing me handily.

Dinner comes out, and the older son, a young man who goes to University in Kathmandu, comes out to tell us where each of the things on our plate has come from (mostly their garden). I've told him that his English is the best I've heard on our trek, and I think he's excited to practice.

After dinner, I pull out the laptop to write. The mother comes out to watch, and I find my fingers stumbling over the keys. I should be used to it by now, but somehow, the writing doesn't go as smoothly with an audience.

Eventually, it gets a bit colder, and we head upstairs. Tomorrow is our second to last day of the trek, and although we're still enjoying ourselves, I have to admit that I'm looking forward to someplace warm, a double bed, and food that I can stand to write about.

November 28, 2010

In college, Joshua and I went winter camping with a group of our friends. The views were lovely, and I loved walking in our rented snowshoes. It was a good group of people, and I still remember getting in the car afterwards. We turned up Simon and Garfunkel, and we all sang along.

But between arriving and snowshoeing and then leaving, I experienced the longest, coldest night of my life. Laying in wthe cold that night, shivering so badly that we couldn't even dream of sleeping, we vowed to never again go winter camping. When the light goes down around 5 PM, it gets wickedly cold, and there's only so much you can do without a fire in the dark. We turned into our tents and sleeping bags around 7 PM, and then we waited for morning to come, 12 hours later.

So far, we've made good on our promise. We've eschewed winter camping in favor of day trips that bring us back to our well heated and lit bedrooms with soft beds. We get the winter wonderland without any of the pain.

I wouldn't compare hiking in the Himalaya with winter camping. Although some of the lodges have been a bit scrubby, they still offer some protection from the cold, and as long as I'm wearing all of my layers and I nab a blanket, I'm pretty toasty at night. We can sit in the dining room, reading, writing, or if you're Joshua, playing Sudoku and setting a stopwatch to time yourself. Meals are prepared over a fire, and there's no need to carry food or a tent.

That said, I just spent the second longest night of my life.

Although we had been under the impression that high-altitude acclimatisation can last for months or - at the very least - weeks, we walked up to Gosaikunda, expecting to feel just fine. We had spent three nights in Kyanjin Gompa, and we had even hiked up to 5000 meters less than a week ago, feeling none of the effects of AMS.

But when we arrived in Gosaikunda, elevation 4400 meters, I began to feel like shit. As we sat by the lake, my muscles all along my spine, in my hips, and in my neck began to ache. I felt like I had a fever, and my body temperature dropped suddenly, leaving me shivering and shaking with the cold. We went back to the lodge, and after Joshua had bundled me up and given me a couple of ibuprofen, I felt much better.

But that night, after we had eaten and gone to bed, I lay aching and gasping for breath. At some point, hours after I had crawled into my sleeping bag, I began to grow panicked. The muscles all along my back were killing me, and I felt like I couldn't get enough air into my lungs. I tried to gasp for more air, but that just left me feeling weaker. Every time I swallowed, I felt like I had to scramble to make up for the breath I had missed. I was still cold, and through the thin walls with large cracks in the wood planks, I could hear a symphony of snores coming from the other trekkers. I started crying.

Joshua woke up to me sobbing and gasping for air. Getting out of his sleeping bag, he came over to me (guest houses in the Himalaya rarely have double beds - it's like Pleasantville) and sat next to me, telling me to breath slowly and counting my inhales and exhales. I tried to calm down, but the crying and the panic just made it harder to breathe, and I felt like I was drowing on dry land. Joshua crawled under the blankets I had piled on top of me, and squished onto the narrow bed together, he told me it was ok, ok, ok.

My husband was warm, and with his urging, I stopped gasping and fighting for air. I felt calmer with him next to me, and although I still couldn't fall asleep, I could close my eyes.

In the morning, I couldn't remember ever having woken up from sleeping. As far as I could tell, I had been awake the whole night, rasping air into my lungs and shaking with aches and chills. Joshua packed our bags and waited in the dining room for breakfast, while I laid inert, still aching and exhausted.

When breakfast came, I mustered up the energy to hobble into the dining room and force down yet another morning meal of fried Tibetan bread and omlete. The other trekkers slowly trickled into the dining room, and it didn't seem like many of them had slept well, either (although their snores could have fooled me). Flo, our German trekker friend, sat with us for breakfast, and we all decided to trek together. In the description of today's hike, there are a number of ominous warnings. Apparently, an Australian med student set off to cross Laurebina La, and when it started snowing, he turned back to retrace his steps and return to his guest house. Unfortunately, he got lost, and following a stream, he made his way along steep terrain, far below the guest house he had set off from and far above the next village. Eventually, he gave up hope of finding his way out and simply gave up and waited to be rescued. 43 days later, he was rescued, nearly dead from starvation.

If that weren't warning enough, the description also urges trekkers to avoid the high trail from Laurebina La to Tarepati. It's very dangerous, and people have lost their way before.

We finished packing and paid. In the dining room, I stopped to chat with the English couple, and they asked me how we had slept. When I told them that I had a hard time breathing and felt quite sore, they said that high-altitude acclimitisation expires after 3 or 4 days, much less weeks or months, and that my symptoms - struggling for breath and feeling sore from oxygen deprivation - are quite common for AMS. Luckily, although it's a climb to Laurebina La, there's only another 300 meters, and after that, it's a steep descent.

Outside, it was cold. The wind was blowing over the pass, and then sun hadn't quite come out to warm things up. We walked by the lake one last time, waving at the holy man, dressed in practically nothing and meditating. On the other side of the lake, we began to climb past prayer flags and a Shiva fountain, iced over from the cold.

The climb didn't take to long, and after a bit, the trail leveled out, and we could see the Ganesh Himal and Annapurna far behind us on the skyline. Above them, dramatic clouds seemed to be unleashing one hell of a snowstorm. We stopped to take a few last pictures, and then we continued on.

Although Gosaikunda is pretty high in elevation, and the pass to get out, Laurebina La, sits at about 4700 feet, the mountains on either side of the pass aren't quite high enough to accumulate a ton of snow. The landscape here is brown, black, and gold, and there are stones and boulders strewn all over the place, like some moon-scape.

Arriving at the highest point of the pass, we scrambled up to some prayer flags for a couple of photos and a view of the mountains beyond Gosaikunda. Apparently, on a clear day, you can see the Khombu mountains far in the distance with Everest among them. Today wasn't particularly clear, but we could see a long line of Himalayan ranges to the east. None of them rose up over the others and into the ether, like I imagined Everest would do. In fact, we couldn't tell for certain which one was the famed hill.

The view was spectacular, though. Low, misty clouds sat in the valleys, and the piedmont of the Himalaya stretched out into a sea of more clouds. There was no horizon, just a ridge of snowy mountains with slumbering hills rising up out of the mists in front of them. Everything was a shade of blue.

Flo got out his ukullele and strummed a bit. We took his photo for posterity and proof, and then we snapped a few shots of the mountains before us and behind us. Freezing cold, we quickly scrambled back down. On the way, both Joshua and I fell.

It was sort of funny, because just a split second after I fell, Joshua fell. I skinned my hand, but Joshua was going a bit faster than me, and he cut his shin and bruised his thigh pretty well. Luckily, Flo had some anti-septic and a bandaid easily accessible, and while he patched himself up, I went up with the Dutch guy and his guide to snap a few photos of them on the pass.

Once Joshua was bandaged, we picked our way down the pass. On the other side, the wind died down a bit, and we were finally able to remove some of our thicker layers. A couple other trekkers were making their way up, and judging by their weary looks of exhaustion and desperate inquiries (how much farther?), they were feeling the altitude, too.

After a couple of hours of hiking down, we came across Phedi, a trekker camp composed of two lodges. It was already noon, so we took off our packs and sat down in the sunshine. We ordered the usual, and I'm now so bored of the usual that I don't even want to write it down. From here on out, I never want to see the words 'dal bhat, chowmein, fried rice, noodle soup, tibetan bread or fried potatoes' again, much less eat them.

Anyway, we ordered food, and then we sat in the sun. Flo took out his ukellele and serenaded us while we played a hand of Rummy, and the Dutch guy, Patrick, and his guide, Madan, showed up. Flo's music playing drew a bit of a crowd, and we all enjoyed his flamenco-inspired strumming.

We talked about the yogi by the lake, and Patrick said that he had given him a little baggie of weed and some rolling papers before they had left. Flo asked Madan if he had ever heard of the Buddha Boy. Apparently, there's a young boy in the south of Nepal who fasted for five months, meditating. A documentary he had seen had speculated that the boy's body somehow processed sunlight for energy.

Madan didn't seem too impressed with the Buddha Boy. He'd heard of him, yes, but he also knew that the Buddha Boy and his followers took money from the public; he thought they were more of a tourist attraction than anything else. He was more interested in the yogi at Gosaikunda. To meditate for months in a place that's so cold is truly remarkable, and on top of that, the yogi didn't take money, only the occasional food (or weed) item.

The food came, and we ate it. Saying goodbye to Patrick and Madan, we began our walk to Gopte. The trail from Phedi to Gopte makes its way along a mountainside, and although we had just made our way over a pass, there was quite a bit of up and down. We walked for a couple of hours, but when we got to Gopte, we decided to continue on to Tarepati. Although it was getting late, the lodges at Gopte weren't very attractive, and the lodges of Tarepati, sitting high up on a ridge, looked much more attractive.

Thankfully, the trail to Tarepati didn't descend too much before it made another sizeable ascent, and we arrived just before 5 PM, with the shadows growing long and the light casting shades of pink and blue on the clouds and mountains below. We chose the guest house with a smoking chimney - drawn by the prospect of a warm fire in the dining room.

Urkin, the proprietor of Tashi Delek Hotel, is a handsome Sherpa. He invited us in and told us that our rooms were free if we ate his food. We never had the intention of doing anything else. Quickly shedding our packs, we bundled up and sat around the fire. Joshua ordered dinner, and I sat reading Holy Cow, with my stocking feet facing the flames.

Dinner came, and we ate it. Actually, I tried to eat it, but I seem to have lost all taste for the foods with the names I shall not mention. Plus, I was freaking exhausted. It was all I could do to lift the spoon to my mouth, and eventually, even that was too much. Urkin looked a little sad that I didn't want seconds, but I couldn't finish my firsts.

After dinner, I sat slumped over the table. I asked Joshua if it was too early to go to bed, and he said that it was. I tried to stay up for another hour, reading my book and listening to Flo and his ukellele.

Finally, Joshua relented, and we turned into bed. All day, the muscles all around my ribs and diaphragm had ached from my gasping fits the night before, and the back of my neck and spine still throbbed. I was worried that I might lie in bed like the night before, miserable and in pain, but thankfully, I warmed up right away and was asleep even earlier than that.