Annapurna Circuit Day 3: A blistering pace

I awoke at 5 a.m. hoping to hit the trail early, as usual. First I had to dress the blisters on my feet. One on the inside of my left heel was particularly nasty. As I write this on December 1 it still hasn't completely healed! You don't have to be an experienced hiker to know that having a blister the size of a quarter two days into a three-week hike is not a good thing.

Usually the lodges are buzzing even at this early as hikers wolf down breakfast and porters load up. I was the only one awake, yet another sign of the changes being wrought by the building of the road. I had to wait until 6 a.m. to pay my bill. This is partly my own fault for abandoning my own system. I don't eat breakfast -- please, spare me the lecture -- so I normally pay the bill the night before so I can get up and go. Lesson learned.

My feet were killing me but I was quickly reminded of why I was in Nepal. The intense sunlight and thin air at high altitude produces striking effects of light and shadow on the wacky topography.

A little further on I encountered the startling sight of a poinsettia tree. It was still only October, a little early to be breaking out the Christmas decorations, I thought ...

The scenery in the mountains is spectacular but it's rare to come across bursts of color like this.

A little further on I came to the picturesque village of Tal, seen below on the sandy bend in the river.


This stretch of trail can be dangerous. There's a metal handrail here, a safety feature rarely seen on the trail. But even the railing isn't safe. This section was taken out by a falling boulder.


Just outside Tal I saw some men woodworking. Even though they have power here they don't have power tools. The wood for building is cut and planed by hand.

Nepal is predominantly Hindu but some areas are Buddhist, due to the migrations from Tibet. Some areas are both. The cosmologies are similar -- the Buddha was rasied a Hindu, after all -- so the two religions co-exist easily.

I was surprised to see this, however, on a building just outside Tal.


Further along I came to the worst stretch of trail I have yet encountered in Nepal.


It's a steep and narrow path across loose rock and dirt. It even scared the horses. In the center you can see two trying to go back up the path. I had to crawl through part of it.

I felt bad for the horses. The herders encouraged them to keep moving by throwing rocks at them. By rocks I don't mean skipping stones, I mean chunks the size of grapefruits. Even from this distance I could hear the boys yelling at the horses and the sickening thump as the rocks smacked the horses. It seems harsh, but they have to get the horses up the trail one way or another.

In the bottom left-hand corner was a waterfall which was also tricky to navigate.

The horses on the trail in Nepal are a sad lot. These are not high-strung thoroughbreds, the frisky semi-domesticated horses of Mongolia, or even the sturdy, proud farm horses from back home.

These are beasts of burden, nothing more. They are small but incredibly tough. They are also dull, lifeless creatures. They spend every day carrying heavy, awkward loads through the highest mountain range in the world. They have wounds and scars from the straps and packs chafing their skin. Even when they aren't carrying loads they are sad to behold.


You'll see them in villages at the end of the day, just standing in the path. They're not tied or tethered, but they make no attempt to get away. They just stand there.

I stayed in a guesthouse in Dharapani that was only a few months old. The grounds are lovely, blanketed with flower bushes, mostly marigolds.

Again, you don't see a lot of color like this on the trail.

Most of the hiking I'd done in Nepal was in areas with no electricity. Virtually the entire Annapurna Circuit is on the power grid, although you can tell it's still a relatively new phenomenon. They're still working out the kinks.

For instance, I stopped for the night in a village called Dharapani. My room had a light. They used a CFB, which was good, but look where they put it.


It's over the front window. The bed is against the opposite wall. I still needed to use my headlamp to read before I went to bed.

A western convenience the Nepalese are trying to get the hang of is the concept of a hot shower. To them it apparently means any flow of water that is warmer than freezing. Here is the hot shower from my hotel.

I was a little scared to use it. The owner showed me how to turn it on and said that I could use it for about 10 minutes and then it would be too hot. There's no way to adjust the temperature!

The modern convenience wreaking the most havoc in the region, though, is plastic bottles. I have a purifier, so I'll fill up my water bottle from a tap or stream and treat it.

Officially plastic water bottles are not allowed in the Annapurna region, but I saw them everywhere. If you buy a bottle of water (or soda or beer) you can bet it will not be recycled. Instead it will end up someplace like this.

Annapurna Circuit Day 2: Slogger

Day 2 on the Annapurna Circuit was one of the worst hiking days I've ever had. I didn't walk very far on Day 1 but the combination of hiking and the miserable bus ride had me feeling like I'd gone 10 rounds with Manny Pacquaio.

I was up before dawn and on the trail just after sunrise as usual. I'd walked about 30 minutes when I realized I had forgotten my sunglasses. I hid my backpack behind a tree and walked back to the guesthouse. Sure enough, there they were, just sitting on the end table. It was still twilight so I didn't need them, so I hung them around my neck by the cord. When I returned to where my backpack was hidden I discovered that the sunglasses were no longer hanging around my neck.

I walked all the way back down to the guesthouse and back but couldn't find them. This time they were really lost. I had been hiking for two hours and covered the same stretch of trail five times. I had put in a half-day of hiking and gone exactly nowhere. In the space of an hour I had lost the same pair of sunglasses twice. Good ones, too.

The area I was hiking through is part of the Middle Hills region. These hills would be considered mountains in most countries. At this point I couldn't even see the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. The landscape was green, covered with rice terraces where people live and forests where they don't.


I wish I could have enjoyed it more. The weather was spectacular, the scenery was nice and I had the trail to myself for most of the day. On the other side of the hills was the road, on which most of the hikers were traveling by bus or jeep.

The ethical, financial, environmental, etc. effects of the road are debatable. The technical aspects are not. To build a road through the Himalayas would require a massive dedication of money and manpower. Think of the palm island of Dubai or the train to Tibet in China.

Here, however, they're just slowly hacking away at sections of the mountains with backhoes. Here they are trying to build another road through the valley where I was hiking.


A massive landslide has swept away a section of trail. Over the next two days I would have to walk across quite a few landslides. At times it was quite frightening.



As you walk along you'll see villages built in the craziest places. Look at the top of the center hill.


At some point in the past someone said, "Hey, this looks like a great place to start a village!" It's funny until you realize, "Oh shit, I probably have to walk up there..."

Nepal is slightly bigger than Florida and is home to almost 30 million people, or about one and a half times the population of Florida. It is the 41st most populous country. I have a hard time getting my head around this. Florida has big cities like Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.

Kathmandu is by far the largest city in Nepal, with about a million residents. The next biggest city, Pokhara, has less than 200,000. There are only 10 cities with more than 100,000 people. That means that the vast majority of the people, over 25 million, live in tiny mountain villages like these.

Finally I stumbled into the village of Jagat. My room provided a nice vantage point for watching traffic on the trail.


Most of the villages along the trail are like this, guesthouses and shops along a single path.

I took a nap, ate dinner, then went to bed, hoping Day 3 would be better.

Annapurna Circuit Day 1: Frogger

The Annapurna Circuit is the most popular hike in Nepal. I was surprised when I learned this. I assumed most hikers went to Nepal to visit the Everest region. That's why I went the first time. The most obvious reason Annapurna is more popular is the Everest region is more difficult due to the extreme altitude.

The terrain is more varied on the Annapurna hike. In just a few days you hike through lush green forests, snow and the high desert of the Tibetan Plateau. The usual observation made by those who favor Annapurna over Everest is that "The scenery in the Everest region is all the same. It's just mountains."

To me that's like saying "I didn't enjoy that party last night. There were way too many pretty girls."

The circuit isn't really a circuit. It's more like a wishbone with the two pieces joined at the high mountain pass called Thorung La. Most hikers start in the southeast at Besi Sahar and go northwest to the high pass called Thorung La, then down to Naya Pul in the southwest.


The horizontal distance is over 200 miles, but no one ever talks about the distance. The amount of time you spend hiking is dictated more by altitude than distance. You might only hike a few hours and cover a few miles if there is a major increase in altitude.

The trail and the surrounding villages are undergoing vast changes as roads are being built on both sides. On the west side it is possible to travel by jeep from Pokhara all the way to the foot of Thorung La. Two days can be lopped off on the east side. The ramifications of the changes was a subject of much conversation on the trail. I'll delve into the issues in future posts. But first let's hit the trail.

I could write at length about the miserable bus ride to the trailhead but my back gets sore just thinking about it. It took six long hours to get from Pokhara to the bustling town of Besi Sahar.

The trailhead is at the far end of this street. I walked the length of the town. And then back again. I left my camera sitting on the ground. This was to be a recurring theme on the trek. Amazingly it was still there. I didn't lose the camera but I lost an hour even before I hit the trail!

In the background of the photo are the Middle Hills. The altitude in this region is between 700 and 4,000 meters (13,200 feet). In Nepal an altitude of two and a half miles is considered a hill.

There are buses and jeeps in Besi Sahar that take tourists up the trail. You can skip nearly two full days of hiking this way. Bus drivers were hailing me to get aboard but at that point I never wanted to sit on a bus ever gain.

The first day was not fun.

Just past Besi Sahar I walked past a bridge under construction. Jeeps drive through the stream for now, but this can be dicey in the rainy season. The existing bridge can be seen in the background.



The new bridge is being built from concrete, while the original was built from what appeared to be popsicle sticks.

I spent much of the first day dodging jeeps and buses. I did not go to Nepal to play Frogger. I had already done two hikes in Nepal so I knew it would get better, but if this were my first hike I don't know how long I would have continued. One of the many reasons I love Nepal is the clean mountain air, but most of the day I was breathing dust kicked up by passing vehicles.

Motorized vehicles cart tourists and students up and down the road, but this is Nepal, so even here much is carried by people. Further along the trail I came to a river beach where bags were filled with sand for use at construction sites. These bags made their way up the trail on the backs of men, not jeeps.


Dodging traffic on the road definitely sucked some of the romance out of the experience, but the effects were greater than merely spoiling my mood. Hiking in the Annapurna region is called "teahouse trekking" because you rarely have to walk more than an hour before you arrive at the next village, where you can find a teahouse or hotel.

These villages and hotels do not spring up haphazardly. The government decides where the hotels go. In a given village the hotels will have literally the same menu, with standard prices for food and accommodation. This is to discourage haggling and ensure fair competition for all the hotels in a given area.

While the road is a godsend to some villages and some people, for others it's the worst thing that could happen. As the road lengthens the villages along the way are shriveling up as tourists drive past. My first night I stayed in a village called Ngadi. I couldn't decide which of the guesthouses to choose until I saw a table full of pretty young girls at this one.

I took a room. They left.

This is the dining area at dinner time.



One of the joys of teahouse trekking is sitting at the table in the common room during meals and talking with other hikers. I was the only guest in the hotel that night. There are a half-dozen hotels crammed together on a narrow alley. I saw six tourists. It was only once I got well above the road and onto the trail proper that the guesthouses started to fill up.

The fourth shirt

Tomorrow I'll make the six-hour bus trip from Phnom Penh to Saigon. Once I'm back in "my" room with a decent (and free!) internet connection I'll update the blog with pix and stories from my trip from Vietnam to Nepal and back.

I'm also very excited to have a choice in clothing. I brought my medium-sized backpack with me this time, and most of it is full of hiking gear. My "grown-up"clothes consist of a pair of jeans and three polo shirts. Nice shirts, but I'm a bit tired of wearing them every day.

Thorung La

I didn't do the full Annapurna Circuit hike as I had planned, for reasons I'll detail in a future post. I did have 15 days of mind-boggling scenery, absolutely perfect weather, new friends and surprisingly good food.

The literal high point of the trip was Thorung La, which, at 5,416 meters (17,873 feet) may or may not be the highest trekking pass in the world. It was easily the toughest day of hiking I've ever done. To get to the pass we had to ascend 1,000 meters (3,300 feet). Then we had to descend 1,600 meters, which was far harder, since much of the trail was covered with ice. Two days later I would be walking up the mountains in the distance into the Upper Mustang region.

I probably won't get around to writing anything until I return to Vietnam in about two weeks. That will give me time to sort through all the pix.

My new favorite hotel

I was walking around Pokhara, Nepal when I saw this sign.

Maybe it means something else in Nepali?

I want to stay there just to see what it's like. Is the name of the place designed to lower the expectations of visitors? If you complain about the water not being hot enough or the TV not working, do they say, "You're staying in the Mea Culpa, what do you expect?"

I was walking around getting the permits for my hike. I love this town. It's quite warm here during the day, shorts and tshirts weather. Heck, it's night time as I'm writing this and I'm still in a tshirt. But it wasn't a perfect day. There were clouds in the sky.


Don't see them? Look just above the trees. The clouds are below the mountaintops.

Kids will draw the darnedest things

I love Cambodia. It's such an intriguing place. It's exhilarating being in a country bursting with energy after awaking from the bizarre historical nightmare of the Khmer Rouge. Much of the country is desperately poor. You see much that is depressing or even horrifying. Estimates vary but I think it's safe to say that the majority of children do not go to school.

Sit on the beach in Sihanoukville and you will deal with constant stream of people trying to sell you fruit, sunglasses, massages, bracelets, etc. Most of them are children.

It's a lose-lose situation. If you buy from them it only encourages them to skip school or work on the beach. Or I should say, it encourages their parents to make them work on the beach. If you don't buy from them they get in trouble.

Ask the kids why they're not in school and they always have an excuse. If they're on the beach now it means they were in school this morning or will be this afternoon. Undoubtedly some go to school. Undoubtedly some don't.

There are signs on the beach from non-profit organizations and the Cambodian government asking tourists not to buy from kids. The sentiment is noble. The likelihood is nil. I have as much chance of changing the weather as I do of keeping these kids off the beach.

The kids on the beach mock the NGOs who claim to help them. Some of the organizations do great things, but too many of them are simply excuses for tourists to feel better about themselves.

What's a well-meaning tourist to do?

One day I met a new girl on the beach. Not only did her setup look new, she spoke no English. The kids on the beach amaze me with their ability to speak English, since they learn it all from interacting with tourists.

I was with a Khmer friend so even though the little girl spoke no English and I spoke no Khmer I was able to ask her some questions. Her name is Loan, she's 14, and she was indeed new to the beach.

She does go to school, but there was some sort of break. Normally she gets up in the morning, tends to the cows, goes to school, comes home and finishes her chores. Since there was no school she was sent to the beach to earn some money selling grilled squid.


She came by first thing in the morning. We were not hungry. I smiled and said "no, thank you" in both English and Khmer (one of the few phrases I know in the language), but she persisted. I felt sorry for her, because her frustration was obvious. I asked my friend to tell her that she's a pretty young girl and is more likely to make a sale by smiling and being friendly then by pouting.

I started asking her questions (through my friend, who interpreted) and she brightened up a lot. She was quite sweet once we got her talking, and quite pretty when she wasn't pouting. Like many of the people who work the beach, not only did she spend all day walking up and down the sand in the tropical heat, she had to walk miles just to get there.

Look at the rig she's carrying. On one side is a charcoal grill with a quiver of squid skewers sticking out. On the other is a bucket of squid with styrofoam plates, chili sauce, and whatever else she needs.

It's heavy. Carrying one of these rigs properly requires balance. The women who do it every day almost jog with them, using the rhythm of their steps to make the pole bounce on their shoulders, thus taking off some of the strain. Loan, on the other hand, plodded along the beach. Later that day she came back with a horrible burn mark on her leg. She had lost her balance and the grill had fallen against her leg.

Later in the day I bought some squid from her. I wasn't all that hungry but I wanted to help her out and, hey, I do love squid. I bought five. She tried to sell me ten but I just wasn't that hungry. She asked for a dollar. A dollar for five fresh, grilled squid, each about four inches long. I gave her a 10,000 riel note, or $2.5.

I wondered how much time she spent on the beach. Did she work certain hours? Did she work until she made a certain amount of money? She said she stayed on the beach until she sold all her squid. I indicated the dwindling number of skewers on the grill and said it looked like she could go home soon.

She opened up the cooler and showed me dozens of uncooked critters still waiting to be sold. I felt guilty. I thought I was helping her by overpaying her for the five squid but what I should have done was bought 10 or 15 of them.

All of which is very sad. But what struck me the hardest was when I asked her what she was going to do when she finished school. She said she didn't know. I asked her what her dream was. She didn't understand.

I asked her if she dreamed of being a nurse or a teacher. She just shrugged and said ottay. No.

Even now, two months later, it still breaks my heart to think this girl, who is very nearly done with school and will soon be of marrying age, has never even dared to imagine a better future.

I'll buy fruit from the kids but that's it. I bought fruit from Lin. As I ate she picked up my book and started reading.


At least she looked like she was reading. The book is "The Confusion" by Neal Stephenson, which even I struggled with!

I tell them right up front I'm not going to buy anything. For some reason they still sit and talk to me and visit me every day. Maybe they appreciate my honesty. Maybe they appreciate that I ask for and remember their names. Who knows. Whatever the reason, at times I'll have 10 or 12 kids hanging out around my sunbed.

Here, right behind where I'm sitting, a crowd of them watches as a ladyboy gives a manicure to Phoan, one of my "tour guides" from the waterfall.


The kids love playing tic-tac-toe in the sand. One day it started raining suddenly. I ducked under cover and played games with some of the kids until the storm passed. One of the little boys didn't have any paper so he improvised a game board.


While I won't buy from them I will buy for them. Late in the afternoon women selling noodles, eggs, etc. come down the beach. If there are kids around my bed when one of them comes by I'll buy them all a bowl a noodles. Paying 25 cents a pop to feed a bunch of kids is money well spent in my book.


One of my regular visitors was Mai Lin, a tiny little rough-and-tumble girl who just cracks me up.


Everything she does is funny. She would come by, take my sunglasses off me and put them on herself. Or push me aside so she could lie down next to me and take a nap. She wasn't afraid to make herself at home.


I wondered how much if any real impact a tourist like me could have on these kids. They talk to hundreds of foreigners every day. Do they even care? Or is it all just a game for them? I found out from Mai Lin.

One day she sat down in the sand next to me and started quietly crying. I asked her what is wrong. Because she's such a tomboy I thought maybe she had bumped her head roughhousing.

One of her friends said that Mai Lin had befriended a young German girl who been on the beach for the past few days. That day the German girl wasn't there. Another tourist told them that the German girl had left Sihanoukville. Mai Lin was crying because the German girl left without saying goodbye. It was all I could do to keep from crying myself!

This little girl speaks very little English. She would just come and sit by me quietly, just to rest, I think. One day I was listening to my iPod. I put the earphones on her.


She sat there like this for over an hour, calmly listening to music. Then she took off the earphones, waved and walked away.

I love playing with kids and roughhousing with them. I'm always struck at how much they respond to the slightest bit of genuine kindness. You can't fool a kid. They know if you care or not.

Normally I don't mind having kids crawling all over me like a jungle gym. But Cambodia is different. As I mentioned in a previous post, Cambodia is where the really sick sex tourists go. If having sex with kids is your thing then Cambodia is probably on your travel agenda. The government is cracking down, but the country is still fairly lawless in a lot of ways.

In Sihanoukville I avoid physical contact with the kids. I don't want to give them or anyone else the wrong idea. So when my buddy Srey Na wants to give me a big hug, as much as I'd like to reciprocate, I don't.

One problem with the people selling stuff on the beach is that there's too many of them. There are dozens of people each selling fruit, sunglasses, massages, scarves, etc. etc. I try to tell the kids to find something new to sell. If your friend is making money selling bracelets then you should sell something else!

One day I was talking to a Canadian couple on the beach. They started making sand castles. The kids were fascinated. Could it be they've never seen one? So they started making sand castles.

Most of the kids eventually wandered but a little boy and girl stayed around and drew in the sand. Some of the drawings were pretty impressive. The little boy did pretty accurate renderings of the tattoos on my legs.

He made one really impressive drawing that really freaked out the Canadian couple and me. Unfortunately a wave wiped it out before I could take a picture. It was a pretty detailed drawing of planes crashing into the World Trade Center. He may have been alive on 9/11 but I don't know how he could have any memory of it. Who knows why he chose to draw it in the beach sand.

Other drawings were of happier subjects.

How can you not love a kid who does this. In her second language!

I stayed there for about two hours watching and encouraging them. I tried to tell them that if they made sand castles or made drawings in the sand people would give them money. I gave them each a buck to drive home the point.

I do what I can.