Once back in Pokhara we organised our trekking trip to the Annapurna mountains. We found a fantastic guide, Raj Kumra, and we left on our first day early in the morning.
Our route was: Birethani, Ulleri, Gorephani, Poon Hill, Tadapani, Chomrong, Dovan, Machhapuchre Base Camp and then Annapurna Base Camp. On the way down we went back to Dovan, Chomrong, Jhinu (hot springs), Tolka and then back to Pokhara. The whole trip took us 12 days and I have never walked and climbed so much in my entire life.
On our first day we had to climb more than 3000 steps up to Ulleri. I thought my heart would give up and my lungs would collapse - and the trip had only started. After sitting once again at the side of the 'stone staircase' with a red head and unable to speak, I saw an elderly French couple climbing up the steps in a slow but steady pace. We overtook them a couple of times only to be caught up again when we had to take a rest. I just couldn't believe how this elderly couple outperformed me. I decided to stay behind them and imitate their climbing and suddenly it dawned on me that it was way easier going slowly and taking a step every time I breathed. Thanks to the French, I actually made it up the 3000 steps alive and enjoyed the sunset at a height of 2070m (only).
The next day started sunny and I couldn't wait to get up higher. We climbed eagerly and reached Gorephani quite early. The accomodation was very cosy (I will never forget the Mickey Mouse curtains) and in the evenings they lit a fire in a big barrel in the dining room so that we could dry our wet clothes and get warm. The rooms as such were freezing cold.
We had to get up really early the next morning to climb up to Poon Hill (3193m) in order to see the sunrise on the Annapurna peaks. I had managed to get myself a cold and found it extremly hard to climb up to Poon Hill. In fact, I really suffered and was majorly relieved when I reached the top. All my newly learned climbing technique didn't help since I had already found it hard breathing when I had still been lying in bed. Once down again, we decided to take a days rest so that I could recover and get rid of my sniffing and coughing.
Day 4 took us to Tadapani which meant we had to climb down again. I couldn't believe it. I had just mastered all the stairs and steep climb up and now we descended again towards Tadapani. After hundreds, no thousands of steps, my left knee gave up. It really wasn't happy.
Day 5 we climbed all the way up to Chomrong. Now Chomrong is a special place. It is situated on a mountain and I am sure that the inhabitants of lower Chomrong never meet the inhabitants of upper Chomrong. There are thousands of steps (surely more than up to Ulleri) going through this town. There are no cars because there are no flat bits, only steps.
Everything is transported on mules or on porters' backs. I saw one porter carrying a granny on his back. I suppose it's the only way to transport them, wheel chairs would be useless with all these steps. These guys have an amazing strength. Everything that needs to get up these mountains is carried up. I really felt like a decadent, weak Western person since I was already struggling with my little rucksack.
Going back to Chomrong: basically there is one big set of stairs going all the way from the bottom of the mountain to the top, like a big road, just very steep. When we arrived up there, my knee finally protested vehemently. I could hardly bent it. Fortunately we met a really nice couple from Denmark. The woman was a nurse and she looked at my knee and gave me a bandage. Raj, our guide, organised hot (boiling) salt water and soaked my knee with it. I was told afterwards by an American that that's what they do with horses when they have troubles with their knees. I have to say, it helped - at least a bit! Raj made me some walking sticks out of bamboo which took most of the weight off while walking down. I really needed those sticks, especially leaving Chomrong when I had to climb down all those stairs again in order to get/climb to the next mountain.
Dovan was our next stop and now we weren't far from Annapurna Base Camp (ABC). We had to cross glaciers and wild rivers in order to get to Machhapuchre Base Camp (MBC). Once again, I had to balance on a couple of tree trunks in order to get across rivers with white water rapids. Sometimes I had to hop from stone to stone to get to the other side. Soon Indiana Strein was well trained in risking her life and braving wild waters, dangerous glaciers and landslide areas.
It was all great fun and once I had gotten used to climbing 6-8 hours a day I didn't even notice how far we walked. Only when we got to a couple of memorial stone piles I realised that Annapurna wasn't all that much fun and some people had died there. Of course at that time of the year it was fairly save but in spring the place was plagued by avalanches and landslides.
The way to MBC was amazing. As I said, we had to cross a glacier. This was something totally new and I was impressed by all the ice and how it was slowly moving and melting in the sun. You could hear the cracking of the ice and the water gurgling underneath. We had to do more climbing and I was glad to reach MBC. The view onto the holy mountain Machhapuchre and how it was towering above us was breath-taking. Nobody has ever successfully climbed it, which made it even more impressive. It was freezing cold and within minutes the mountain's snow covered peak and the whole base camp was covered in fog. Our basic accomodation didn't have electricity so we gathered in the dining hall trying to get warm with our legs under the table. The Nepalis keep kerosene heaters underneath the tables and the heavy tablecloth prevents the heat from escaping. So we stuck our legs underneath the table and managed to warm up a bit.
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Every evening we filled Neil's water bottle with boiled water and used it to heat up our sleeping bags like a hot water bottle. The next day when it had gone cold we drank the water. Clever, hey?
So, MBC was freezing cold and we could hardly sleep. The walk to ABC was a fairly easy one and many people didn't bother to stay in MBC, they went straight to ABC. When we got to ABC, there were already a couple of people suffering from AMS (acute mountain sickness). I didn't think it would happen so often but we actually saw a couple of people being carried down because they suffered so badly. Apparently, every year many people die because they climb up to quickly. We wanted to be on the save side and besides staying one night in MBC, adapting to the altitude, we had garlic soup for dinner (they told us it would be good against AMS). The soup was so garlicky that I had to throw up in the middle of the night and the garlic haunted me for days.
We had done it, we stood in the Annapurna Sanctuary, surrounded by the Himalayas (Annapurna 1, Annapurna South, Machhapuchre, Hinchulli and all the other peaks). This was a very amazing sight and definitely worth all the climbing. Everybody was in a good mood having finally reached ABC at a height of 4130m. We watched sunset and sunrise and took loads of photos. Again, there were a lot of memorials for all the climbers that had never returned from the peaks.
The next day our descend started. Somehow going back seemed a lot longer than getting up. I suppose we had reach our target and the challenge was over now. Once again we had to do the Chomrong ordeal of climbing thousands of stairs up and down again. The highlight though was getting to Jhinu with its natural hot springs. Our muscles, bones and my knee really needed it. Neil and I sat in the hot springs for at least 1 hour. For once it was warm and cosy and we desperately needed a bath too.
After 12 days we got back, extremely proud, tired and dirty. I still can't believe I walked all that way and we estimated we must have climbed maybe ten to fifteen thousand stairs up and down again, not to mention all the scrambling. According to our map we had climbed 5600m up and 5600m down again (due to all the ups and downs).
This is definitely something I will tell my grandchildren about and who knows, I might come back to do the whole Annapurna Circuit in 3 weeks. Not without prior training though!
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