December 2, 2010
With dead limbs and through still shut eyes, I registered my husband waking up, quietly gathering a book and the computer, and tip-toeing out the door. I kept sleeping.
A couple hours later, I sat up and took stock. I felt slightly fuzzy, but the rip-roaring headache was gone. I got dressed and went in search of Joshua.
I found him in the guest house restaurant. Sipping a cup of tea and taping business cards and tickets into his journal. He smiled and let me finish the tea. I asked him how long he'd been up and what time it was; it was eight, and he'd been up since six thirty. He's an early bird, and five weeks on trail have formed a habit I suspect he won't shake for some time.
We chat about the day and decide to spend it doing approximately nothing. Joshua wants to eat, and I want to work on my application for the University of Minnesota School of Social Work.
We set off for our favorite German bakery, and once we've ordered, Joshua kicks my butt in a couple hands of Rummy. When breakfast comes, Joshua cracks a crooked smile and confesses, 'this may or may not be my second breakfast today.'
Afterwards, Joshua writes a few e-mails while I work my way through the end of Holy Cow. This book is interesting and entertaining, and yet, it makes me glad that we truncated our second trip to India. Kathmandu is tame by comparison.
From the bakery, we stroll to the bookshop. Joshua trades in our books for Plainsong and Papillon, and we walk to another cafe. Somehow, Joshua is still hungry, so he orders another meal of stuffed tomatoes and naan, and I ordered a large pot of lemongrass tea. Back out on the street, my headache crept up on me again, and as I type, it gets worse and worse. Joshua begins his new book while I try to articulate why I want to be a Social Worker, what I think a Social Worker is, and why I think I would be good at it. I spend a few hours wading through my experiences in New Orleans, because ultimately, this is where my answers lie. In the end, I have something that works, but it's still 700 words short.
With my ripping headache running at full tilt, I close the computer and tell Joshua that I need a change of pace. He agrees, and we walk out the door to run some top-secret errands that you can't know anything about, including two last gifts and a couple little gifts for me. In a shawl shop, I sift through a hundred different shawls while a sweet, rotund Nepali man explains the difference in quality. With a lighter, he burns the fringe of one, snuffs out the melt between his forefinger and thumb, and then motions me to smell. It's rich and earthy, and it smells a bit like burnt dung or wood. This is the sign of a better Pashmina.
Real or not, I'm put off by the price, and I haven't really found something that captures my fancy anyway. Then he pulls out an orangey-red number of middling quality, and I'm ready to bargain. From 950, I drive him down to 700 rupees, and he smiles. He didn't fight that hard, but he tells me that he's sold these pashminas for over 3000 rupees before. 'But you are a teacher, I know,' he says, 'you're young and no make much money.'
It's cold in the street, so before we make our way to another cafe, I browse through some knit hats. Settling on a green one with no puffs or balls or frills, we bargain the man down from 450 to 250. It's still too much, but I'm cold and I don't feel like looking for more. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spy a little knit pin. It's a red rose for 25 rupees. I pin it on my hat, and I have an ensemble for 14 dollars. Not bad.
In Tashi Delek, we sit down in a dark corner and order chips chilly, vegetable pakoda, potato momos, tongba, and a big pot of hot lemon-honey-ginger tea. By now, my headache has evolved into a creature of mythical proportions. I tuck my cool fingers into the cups of my eyes and press hard. Even the candle light hurts.
Though I've told him it won't help, Joshua goes to the shop next store to buy me some extra-strength Ibuprofen. When he comes back, I reluctantly take it. Our food comes, and for the moment, my headache lessens in an appreciation of chilies and fried things. It resumes full stop when I am done.
I try to read, and eventually, I can. Apparently, the drugs did help. We both read for a while, Joshua finishing his fermented millet and me sipping lemon-honey-ginger goodness. When I finish my book, we head to the internet cafe.
December 1, 2010
We wake up on our last morning with sore backs. This was the hardest bed yet, but at least it was a double. I was warm all night because my husband expells heat as if he were a bonfire.
Once we pack up, we head downstairs for pancakes. They arrive on-time, and once we're finished, we head out on the road. At the Shivapuri National Park Office, we pay our 250 rupee entry fee, and then we walk in the direction of Kathmandu.
I have a bone to pick with Lonely Planet. They've served us well, and good knows I've sung their praises, but somehow, the bastards let us down in the last inning. For miles, when there was nothing but a narrow valley and one trail, the descriptions were detailed and precise. We knew when we had to turn, how many guest houses there would be, and which views were where. Now, in the last stretch, the description is simply 'follow the first half of the Helambu trek backwards.'
This wouldn't be a problem if there was only one trail with signs, but it's not. There are side trails everywhere, and only a few have shallow arrows that have been carved in the dirt. After a bit of dithering, we find the right trail and head up.
Before the crest of our last hill, we turn around to look at the stretch of mountains for the last time. This place is beautiful.
On the other side, we begin to make our way down. I get a headache, and we take a couple brakes for me to close my eyes.
After a couple of hours, the sun comes out, and we shed our layers. We keep walking, and eventually, we hit a road and a village. We get a bit lost again, but a man redirects us, and we make our way down a thousand stairs, watching women washing their hair with hoses, families eat dal bhaat in the sun with their hands, and new-born goats test out their wayward limbs.
Near the bottom, Joshua bestows his trekking poles upon a sweaty pair of uphill hikers, and we get lost again.
Wandering around next to a rushing river that quenches the thirst of Kathmandu, I swear and curse Lonely Planet. I just want a shower and a decent meal. A chance to get off of my feet and nurse my aching head would be nice too.
We eventually find our way, and for the last 30 minutes of our trek, we greet a hundred women carrying heavy loads up the stairs. The grin and sing-song Namaste.
When we hit Sundarijal, it's a sudden transportation to a place with cars and horns, shops with Lays potato chips and cable TV. A bus hustler hustles us, and we end up paying 200 rupees more than the local price. I sit in the front seat, close my eyes, and don't care.
The hour long busride into Kathmandu is tame compared to any other. We start and stop and let people on and off. I doze. Joshua and I split a Snickers bar.
In Ratna bus station, near the Annapurna Permit Office, we disembark and walk back through Kathmandu to Thamel and Packnajol. At the Tibet Peace Guest House, we snag one of the last double rooms and retrieve our bags from the dark, dusty storage room.
I take a hot shower. There's a smelly dookie in the toilet right next to me, but otherwise, the shower's hot, and the water never runs out. Soaped and shaved, I'm a happy woman.
Back in the room, I help trim the goatee you'll never see. We both agree it's no great loss. Joshua quotes Shakespeare, 'I want a man who can grow a beard, but doesn't.' I agree.
Once Joshua is clean and fresh-faced (and cute!), we head out on the town. In a little cafe, we order two pizzas and a beer, and when it comes, we chow down. Opening my computer, we flip through pictures and make slideshows of the best ones. It's nice, and it feels like we're closing out our journey with good memories.
Afterwards, we go to an internet cafe and catch up on e-mails. I research Masters of Social Work programs and discover that although Augsburg and St. Thomas offer degrees, they're much more expensive than the University of Minnesota. It takes me nearly two hours to search through their websites and find their tuition rates, and by the end, I'm deeply frustrated. I don't know if I can respect an institution that isn't upfront about their costs. The University of Minnesota proudly displays their price under one of their first headings, and they have far more opportunities for scholarships. It seems I'm destined to be a gopher, after all.
My headache finally gets the best of me, and we walk back to the guest house so I can put a shawl over my eyes and fall asleep. The room is warm, and Joshua lays next to me. It's good to be back in Kathmandu.
November 30, 2010
For breakfast, we eat pancakes. It's still early in the morning when we set off, and we're in hats and mittens to ward off the chill.
Up above the village, we stop for a wee and to admire the view. From here, we can see a panorama stretching from the Annapurna to the Khumbu, and it's spectacular. It's an uninterrupted Himalaya horizon.
The day is full of climbs and descents, and although we gain another 1000 meters, we descend 1000, too. In Chipling Bazaar, we see a cute little guest house and wish that we could stay. It has a dining room of windows and orange trim.
On the other side, we enter rice terraces and guess which path is ours. Luckily, we choose the right ones, and we see a couple of trekkers heading in the opposite direction. They stop, puff, and ask us how much further to the next village. We mercilessly tell them it's a long way up.
It gets warmer, so we shed our layers. The sky is blue, and the terraces are bright green, even after harvest. Baby goats sleep and gallop through the grasses near the trails, and tall stands of bamboo provide shade at regular intervals. It's a beautiful day.
In a little village nestled between two hills, we stop for lunch. With little more than a table and a couple of benches sticking out into the road, it's not much. The woman who takes our order repeats it back slowly with emphatic gestures. We nod our head, not quite sure what will arrive on our plates.
As we play cards, the woman chats to her neighbors as she peels potatoes. We suspect our meal may a long time coming, but thankfully, there's someone else in the kitchen, and our food arrives within the half hour.
After we eat, we pay and head back on trail. We cross a road and both a bus hustler and sadhu offer us things we don't want. We continue on, and when we turn off on a badly washed out dirt path, we're followed by a yellow dog with a sneezing problem.
The path climbs and climbs. The air cools, and behind us, we can see the path we've traveled, and behind that, the Himalaya stretch from one end of the horizon to the other.
Before we know it, we've arrived in Chisopani, an odd hobble of guest houses on a 4WD/ATV track. Most of the tall, cement lodges look the same, and we settle on one the color of bubble gum, with a room on the fourth floor, a glorious balcony, and plenty of windows. It even has an attached bathroom. The only drawback is that it reminded us of the set from Children of God, the one where Armageddon has come and no more children are born. It's like a circus hall of mirrors, except there are no mirrors. Tarps hang from mysterious doorways, and there's a water drainage problem. It smells of mold.
We hole up in our room and read, watching the sunlight play across the mountain tops and drinking tea with coconut cookies. At dinner time, we wander downstairs for a mediocre encore of dal bhat. Flipping through pictures on my computer, we accumulate an audience. Afterwards, we dart through the spooky stairs and corridors to our room, where we safely lock ourselves in.
Even though I've been battling a headache and general achiness all day, I read until late. Like a good hubby, Joshua cracks his eyelid, squints against the glare of a bare light bulb, and asks me if I shouldn't go to bed. I snarl and get squirrelly, and then I apologize. He's right. I turn off the lights, but I can't sleep. I poke Joshua, and we stay up even later talking. We finally fall asleep with my face pressed up against his warm back. I'm the luckiest person in the world to be doing all of this with my best friend.
Showing posts with label Golphu Bhanjyang. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Golphu Bhanjyang. Show all posts
Thursday, December 2, 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)