Annapurna Circuit Day 5: Pisang at last

Day 5 was the first day I truly enjoyed on this hike. My luck continued with the weather: clear, warm and sunny. The beginning of the hike was a little dicey, as it went along a ledge that had been hacked out of the side of a mountain.

Later the path led through alpine forest, scenery which reminded me somewhat of Yosemite. Most of the lakes I had seen in Nepal were glacial lakes, with water the color of turquoise, so seeing this rather ordinary looking lake was a bit of a surprise.


This is the view looking back.


Sometimes hiking is a chore. There are days when you plodding along through endless switchbacks. Your knees ache. Your lungs burn. You're drenched in sweat. The pack feels like it it's full of anvils. You don't seem to be making any progress. You stop and say out loud, "Why the hell am I doing this to myself?!"

On days like this you remember why you put yourself through all the discomfort. When you look ahead and see this you don't want to stop walking. Ever.

I was heading for the hill in the middle distance and the village of Pisang. In Lower Pisang a long prayer wall is under construction.


The cylinders in the middle have Buddhist inscriptions on them in Nepali or Tibetan. You walk with the wall on your right -- everything in Buddhism is done clockwise -- and spin the cylinders for luck. I'm not a Buddhist, but maybe they'll bring me luck, and even if they don't, hey, it's fun to spin them! Some of the woodwork is detailed and, as noted in a previous post, all done with hand tools.


I headed up the hill to Upper Pisang to find a place to sleep. That's when the magic began. Looming outside my room was Annapurna II, the 15th-highest mountain in the world. At 7,937 meters it's the highest mountain in the world that is not a part of the prestigious club of 8,000-meter peaks. It is, however, more than 26,000 feet high, so to climb it you have to officially enter the Death Zone. I chose to stay in the Getting Kinda Hard to Breathe Zone.

The view looking down on Lower Pisang:

The view looking up the valley, where I would be walking in the morning.

I loved the sign hanging in my room.

The Christian message seems oddly out of place: "Oh Lord, Carry Us Safe Across the Ocean of Life". Which vessel did they choose to illustrate this uplifting message? The Titanic! I chose to see the humor in it and not view it as an ill omen.

However, we did hear a couple true horror stories at dinner that night. A few days previously a hiker had died in Lower Pisang. He was suffering from altitude sickness and was making his way back down the trail. The only thing you can do when the altitude starts to get to you is walk down until you feel better. He didn't make it far enough. Apparently he was determined to keep walking until his condition improved, recuperate and then try again.

This story is even more tragic because on his way back to Pisang he had to walk through Ongre, from which he could have flown back to Pokhara.

At dinner I met an English hiker named Dave who was three weeks into a six-month travel sabbatical. In a previous post I wrote about almost taking the wrong fork in the path because the sign had been knocked down. Dave didn't see it and didn't know he was going the wrong way until he came to a steep section of trail that had recently been swept by a landslide.

He fell.

He said he landed about 50 feet down on his back, with his rucksack to break his fall. If he had rolled over, he said, he would have plunged down the cliff into the river.

I met others who also took the wrong fork and talked about how frightening it was. One girl said when she came to the landslide she sat down and cried because she was so scared to cross. (Her boyfriend corroborated her story.)

Dave's pack burst open and a strap ripped off. After gathering his wits he said it took him over an hour to crawl back up the hill. When he got to the top it was almost dark. He was sore, disoriented and seriously freaked out.

He had his wits about him enough to find a hut, start a fire and curl up in his sleeping bag. The next morning he found his way back to Jagat. He couldn't say enough nice things about how the locals helped and tended to him.

He bought a new pack and decided to keep on hiking. On the upside, he was an instant legend. Not many people knew his name but they all knew about "the guy who fell down the landslide". The last I heard, though, he was in Ongre debating whether or not to continue.