Upwards Over the Mountain

It had been 10-days since our last shower. But now Shira and I feel so lucky to be back in our home away from home, Hotel The Wood Pidgeon in Pokhara, Nepal. We just got back from our trek, and we're a little sun-burnt, quite blistery on the toes, and truly exhausted after having spent the last week and a half walking over and around hills, amongst Himalayan mountains, and inside the forests of Central Nepal.

Before we really understood the reality of trekking, we thought we'd try the 3-week Annapurna Circuit trek, but luckily our nobel guide, Prem, talked us out of it (mainly because in his experience, those that walk the circuit usually have issues with the high altitude ((5400 meters)), and persuaded us to tackle the much more accessible, and visually stunning Annapurna Base Camp trek).

We had heard from travelers in Pokhara before we left that the ABC trek was amazing, and really not that physically demanding, so we were confident going into it... The basic premise of the trek is to walk/hike/trek to the foot of the Annapurana mountain range (4100 meters). To get there it took 4-7 hours of steady walking a day for 6-days. But to just call what we did walking would be a vast understatement. The majority of the movement was drastic upward ascents and downward descents, mostly on stone steps, and forest floors. By the end of our first day, we feared that we were in over our heads, and that we weren't strong enough to make it. On our second day, we had to walk up 4,000 steps, then walk a bunch more to reach our destination. Eventually we learned to take it not really one-step at a time, but more like one hour at a time.

Ok, one more hour and we'll eat a snickers, two more hours and we'll have lunch, four more and we''ll be done for the day..!

By the end of the first day, we were able to see the mountain peaks, and from there, we kept getting closer. Some mornings we'd wake up to a stunningly clear view of the mountains that were so big and pristine and overwhelming, they became almost unbelievable to comprehend. "How are they so huge, I've never seen this before, Is it close enough to touch, How do people actually climb these monsters!?"

The path we walked for the entire time was well worn and established. People have been doing this trek for decades. It's hard to go more than an hour or two without passing a guest house/restaurant that serves everything from dal bat to cheese pizza. Interestingly enough, all guest houses have almost exactly the same menu, and are required to charge a pre-set amount for each item, depending on where they're located. The higher the places are, the more the food/drink/toilet paper/filtered water, etc. will be. The only way for restaurants/guest houses to get items to their doors is for porters or donkeys to bring them up themselves. Apparently, there didn't use to be any type of regulation for how much weight a porter could carry up or down, but now there are. However we wouldn't have had any idea because these guys were carrying MASSIVE loads on their backs. Everything from gigantic cans of kerosene, to cases of beer, to a dozen live chickens!

By the beginning of the third day, my right knee started to give me some real trouble (it might have been a pull), and ten-minutes into the hike I was hobbling along desperately. I wanted to give up and turn back, but Shira wouldn't let me give up! She was able to motivate me through the 5-hour hike with words of praise and confidence. The thing about trekking is, you can't really give up. Once you've walked for a few days, the only way out is to walk. There are no roads for a car to rescue you, so once you're in it, there's really no turning back.

After the grueling limp-fest, we decided to take the next day (my b-day) off. We slept in (till 6:45) and took in the much needed r and r. I was ready to go by the next day, and that's when we finally started to believe that we'd actually make it to the base camp. To pump each other up we'd ominously whisper to one another, "in a few days we're gonna summit." or "The ascent is upon us..." Then we'd see a 65-year old Korean woman move diligently past us, as if the trek was no big thing for her! And then finally we found ourselves, on the sixth day of the trek, moving up and toward the Annapurna Base Camp in sub-freezing temperatures. The final leg of our ascent to was so dramatic and like nothing i've ever felt. For some reason, Shira, Prem and I we're the only ones climbing from the Machhapuchre Base Camp to the Annapurna Base Camp at that particular time in the afternoon. It was just us, heaps of untouched snow, and the mountains surrounding us from all directions. We were too tired and too spread apart to talk, and the solitude was staggering. All we could hear was the chilling wind and our thudding hearts. And then, finally after two-hours of walking uphill in the snow, we had made it!

We were and are so proud that we did this, and both agreed that we haven't ever challenged our bodies like we have for the last 10-days. We agree that it was an incredible trip, unforgettable really. And we agree that we have no desire to ever do it again!

"Don't Forget Me"

This past week, we've been doing a whole lot of nothing, and really enjoying ourselves in the process. Shira and I have both buried ourselves in some great reading (Into Thin Air, Mr. Nice, A Fine Balance, Brooklyn Follies), and have eaten some really excellent pizza (four out of our last seven dinners), while sadly missing Indian food for every meal.

This past weekend we ventured to what we hoped would be Lumbini and then Tansen. Lumbini is the actual place that Gautama Siddhartha (Buddha) was born. And Tansen is a charming hill station, situated b/w our base here in Pokhara, and Lumbini. So from Pokhara, we boarded an early morning bus and drove for about 7-hours until we reached Butwal, a town still about 55 km north of Lumbini. When we asked why we were stopped there, we learned that there was a bus strike in progress, and that we wouldn't be able to bus further south to Lumbini because of it. We wondered why no one thought to tell us this earlier, or why none of the Nepalis really seemed surprised by this. We were told that the only way to get to Lumbini from where we were was a 2000 rupee rickshaw, so instead of that, we got right back on a different bus and headed back north, for about 2-hours to Tansen.

When we finally arrived, we couldn't yet see why our Lonely Planet guide gave Tansen such a warm write-up, but as we settled in, the charm of the place started to seep in. Tansen is nothing like Pokhara in that there's only one tourist restaurant there and less than a dozen hostels. The streets are so steep and narrow that cars are seldom seen. The architecture is simple but beautiful and medieval. While there for two days, we only saw two other white people! We took a nice 1-hour hike up to a ridge, past a Hindu temple just north of town, and there we saw for the first time, the snow-capped peaked of the Himalayas (we would have been able to see them by this time in Pokhara, but unfortunately, it hasn't rained here for over 6-months, so the air is dusty and thick).

That night for dinner, we decided to eat at the tiny and dank one-table establishment across from our hostel instead of going to the one tourist restaurant for the second night in a row. Literally every time we've forgone the touristy restaurant for the questionable looking, astoundingly cheap local place, we haven't been disappointed. The Tansanians ? embraced us with so much humor and hospitality that soon after sitting down to our plate of cold, yellow, potato curry and spicy hot pan-fried noodles, the men sitting at our table (the only one!) offered us home brewed Nepali wine (think gin + water), and began good-naturedly making fun of our accents.

And then a young mother, and her two daughters joined in on the fun, and soon after invited Shira to their one-room home a block away to take pictures. They eventually invited her to sleepover there but she graciously declined. Before we left our friends at the hangout to go to sleep, a young Nepali man who I had been talking to at our table gently spanked my butt and quietly said, "Don't forget me...And when you go back home don't tell everyone that people in Nepal are all sad and poor." As we left that night, after having had an experience we won't possibly forget, my perception of Nepalis as a poor and sad people couldn't have been further from what we've experienced so far.

Chicken Soup for the Foreigner's Bowl

Sorry for the long delay since our last update, but here in Nepal, there are only 8-hours of power per day. It's easy to get frustrated with that reality, but then I have to remind myself that I don't live here, and it's not me that's really inconvenienced, but the Nepalis who rely on power for much more than writing a blogpost...

We flew into Kathmandu from Delhi on Friday, and stayed in the capital city until this morning when we took a 7-hour bus ride (only 200 km!) to Nepal's 2nd biggest city, Pokhara. We were received at the bus station by radio friend, Laura's dear friend, Prem. He works here as a trekking/tour guide and looks a little like a young Nepali Elvis. In a bit, Shira and I are going to eat dinner, dhaal bat (a rice, lentil, and vegetable dish that most Nepalis litterally eat for every meal)with Prem and his wife and their baby boy at his apt. And then in a week or two, Prem is gonna take Shira and I on a 17-day trek in the Annapurna region, just outside Pokhara. We'll likely walk the Jomsom and Annapurna Base Camp trails.

In the meantime, we'll enjoy our three-dollar a night hotel room right on the lake and take some day trips/hikes/excursions in the area.

But first, some noteworthy India stuff.

Much of our last days in India were spent in Kodaikanal, as I mentioned in the last post. Towards the end of our stay we met a really fun and sweet American couple at a Tibetan restaurant I couldn't get enough of. The four of us decided to venture out on a long walk to a supposedly gorgeous lookout in an area called Pillars Rock. When we got there though it was so overcast that we couldn't really see anything except the local red-faced monkeys fighting over any scrap of human food/human food container they could get there hands on. After having posed with random Indian families wanting to take a picture with Americans, Shira and I and the couple we were with were talking outside an area where tea and t-shirts were sold. At one point I looked to my left to see an older Indian man standing in our conversation circle, nodding his head in acknowledgement, as if he had been there for the whole time. Naturally, he asked us where we were from, and when he learned we were American, he told us about his son who used to work for GM in Detroit! I was so excited to make the connection, then even more excited when his son came sauntering up with the rest of his family to greet us. The older man was so gracious and told us that it was "his duty to welcome us." Then he bought Shira and I two cups of chai tea and put his arm around me like he was my grandpa.

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India was really amazing and perplexing and idiosyncratic that it's hard to sum up in this post. Spending what seems like a long time (5-weeks) in a foreign place isn't the way to get to know it fully. Instead, my observations and thoughts are fragmented and confused. I knew next to nothing about India before landing there, but now, after having spent some time there, it feels like I know even less in a way. The country is developing so fast and is dealing with so many big issues; its relationship with Pakistan, its crowded cities, its still present caste system, its gender roles, its widening gap between rich and poor, its balancing act between tradition and modernity... To me, these are just concepts that were in small ways illustrated during my time there, but for Indians, they're obviously much more. I think the main thing I learned in India is how important Michigan and Detroit and of course all of you are to me. Shira and I have met so many travelers so far that seem to disavow where they came from. But conversely, we both feel, even more so now, a real pride and commitment to our own roots.