Nomadic Nepal - Annapurna Circuit :)

Nomadic Nepal - ANNAPURNA CIRCUIT :)

"As part home to Mount Everest, Nepal is a country of extremes.

It is one of the most aesthetically and humanly beautiful countries in the world. With its soaring Himalayan mountains, deep valleys and peaceful environment, coupled with its kind, gentle and generous people, it is no wonder that many refer to Nepal as being Shangri La.

Likewise, Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Due to its steep terrain, lack of natural (saleable) resources, and difficult accessibility, it has a per capita Gross National Income of just $200 and 20% of the population lives on less than $1 a day. More than half of the adult population is illiterate, 65% do not have adequate sanitation facilities, and only 2% have a phone, and fewer than 1% are internet users.

The impact on the children. 74 out of every 1000 children die by the age of 5; 39% do not receive education beyond the 5th grade; 31% are engaged in some form of child labour; and approximately 970,000 are street children and orphans".

I just wanted to set some context. This is research that I did after the trek as I was fascinated by a conversation our group had at dinner on our farewell evening, when someone said Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. I decided to find out more about this country, which is incredibly ignorant that I didn't have these facts to hand before I started this journey. Lesson learnt.

I arrived in Kathmandu very tired from India, and very thin from being so sick, but extremely excited to begin the Annapurna Circuit :) I don't think I had any idea at all for what I was actually letting myself in for. I hadn't given thought to anything beyond the physical journey, and even that didn't go past knowing I must remember to stretch my tired muscles each day. I hadn't looked at the map to see what our route was, or how many hours we trekked each day, or how high the actual Thorong-La Pass was! I didn't know much about altitude sickness, or needing to use tablets to purify your water, or have to take tablets daily to assist you with high altitude after a certain height. Thank goodness for Charley having climbed to Mount Everest Base Camp recently and sharing with me all of the above! Don't get me wrong, I had reservations, but was whole heartedly excited! We went shopping to buy all of the equipment and clothing that I would need. I even did a handstand in one mans store I was so excited! Poor guy must have thought I was nuts, but good way to break the handstand in public spaces nerves!

Virtually all of what I had packed was redundant, and I had to buy a warm jacket, socks, gloves, hat, scarves. My walking boots hadn't worn in and stretched enough so I had to make the fatal error of buying new boots right before a 21 day trek....that frustrated me a little as I should know better as a runner!! Ah well, at least the only ones which would fit me perfectly (until they stretched that is, which is to be expected when you purchase "North Fake" in Kathmandu....) were pink!

My backpack contents went into storage, as I packed a new cold weather bag of clothing. Then we moved onto the goodie pack! It seemed important to buy all of our goodies on the ground in Kathmandu, as the price of a snicker for example raises at the same rate as the altitude lol! My bag looked disgusting and I found it super hard to think what this high sugar and high carb level diet would do to my sanity and health as we climbed.  I didn't need to worry, as our bodies quickly adjust to such 'empty calories' - they love it and suck it up and encourage you to eat even more as you get addicted to sugar, and willingly eat more...and leave you picking up the pieces of a sugar addiction when the trek finishes! That was hard, but more on that later.

I could spend hours writing this journal entry and tell you every detail of every single day but I imagine most of you would be fast asleep zzzzzz in a matter of paragraphs. There is a certain level of routine to trekking which I found a little exciting and stifling at the very same time. We would wake every morning at the same time, eat breakfast, walk for a set amount of hours, stop and eat lunch. Walk again and then stop and order dinner for an hour after we had showered. Then we would sit and do our journals or look at the map and work out how far and how high we had climbed that day, sometimes with excitement and sometimes with sheer exhaustion ;) Usually with a beer or two until we reached Manang - our official resting place for two nights to acclimatize for the Thorong-La Pass 3 days later.  By 9pm everyone would be in their room either fast asleep or willing themselves into a deep sleep.  This was our routine.

I have broken the Annapurna Circuit experience for me down into two main areas. Firstly the things that I loved the most, and secondly the personal challenges I found along the journey.  It seemed like the easiest way to tackle it lol without bombarding you all with my emotional or physical state on a day by day basis ;)

For me there was also the Handstand 365 challenge to keep me entertained. I was incredibly lucky that everyone found this challenge amusing, and the support was incredible. The handstand pictures became a part of everyones day and noone batted an eyelid when I would stop walking and jump onto my hands while Charley took photos! Mike even took to handing me his climbing gloves - as a 'health and safety' measure to ensure I didn't hurt myself.  I think I can honestly say that I got at least 75% of the people trying either their first or first handstand in years at some point during our 21 days. It kept us smiling :)

For those of you who are interested, I have listed at the end of the blog a day by day account of where we travelled from and the altitude at each location.

Things I loved most about the experience :)

• Every single village we walked through was different. Literally, a totally different feel from place to place. The people looked different also, which made it so fascinating to us to spot the differences.  Of course, everyone smiled :) 

• The landscape here is breathtaking - I could wake up to snow capped mountains every day. We would pass through barley fields, then an hour later feel as though we were in Austria, then a IS National Park then see sheer drop and snow capped mountains again. Huge wow! 

• I loved being so close to nature all the time. We had dogs follow us for miles, wild horses perched on hills creating mini avalanches as we walked past, we had to dodge wild ponies as we peaked a hill and they clambered over, and narrowly avoiding wild horses kick us! We saw goats, dogs, cows, and yaks all the time! Luckily I had eaten my yak burger in Manang before I realized how impressive looking an animal they were, or I may not have enjoyed that protein quite so much ;) Every time we saw calves, puppies, cats or kids we would each stop and play with them.

• The people! Amazing, amazing, amazing. Thailand is called The Land of Smiles, but I genuinely believe they are in for close competition from Nepal. Never have I seen such happy people. 

• The children! Amazeballs! They are so content with flipping stones for entertainment, or clapping games, or skipping, or anything that involves being outside in the fresh air. They smile at everything, so, so cute and adorable. Many a morning or afternoon we would walk past children on their way to school, way home or playing in their villages. They would always bring their hands together and nod boldly and happily a great big "Namaste" and we never got bored of returning the Namaste with as much enthusiasm. Mind you one cheeky girl who was a real minx, grabbed my camera and when I tried to take it back she ran off and then filmed me chasing her....then jumped onto C's lap as if sweetness personified and pulled out a full on photo face pose ;) Oh and the Russian kid...what a brat he was. His mother gave locals sticks to threaten her naughty son with, and he would walk off pouting and come back with a bigger stick to threaten them with and stones...Interesting dynamic.

• Our Porters. They were just wonderful. As young as 20 years old, despite the physical toll of their daily work they always, always smiled and wished us 'Good Morning". Towards the end they had nicknames for C and I. Mine was translated to "Big Sister" and C was "Little Sister". A sign of the respect and warmth they felt for us. It was so nice. When I was sick and had to leave one of the porters carried my bag to the bus and gave me a shy smile and wave and a "Good Luck" which made me grab him and hug him to his surprise. Such nice natures and manners. They also joined in enormously with the handstands! One day when I was practicing on the guest house roof, I heard a round of applause and it was them on the other roof watching me and practicing themselves! 

• Our guides. Hilarious partnership that worked really well. I remember being at 4100m and explaining that C had a nickname for me, and one of the guides saying "oh you need a nickname, we have one..." It turned out they called me "skinny" in an endearing way - they couldn't understand my body shape until one braved asking me if I was an athlete, and they sighed huge sighs of relief when I said I teach yoga and run races. 

• Thorong-La Pass at 5416m was just amazing. The biggest Pass in the World! 200m from it Wade had said "Caroline I have hit a wall..." and I replied with me too, but keep going just around the corner and luckily it was! That was the most amazing experience of the whole trip for me. Every single trekker we had seen in the previous 10 days was there, and there were hugs and tears, high fives and shots of rum and photos galore!  I even managed a handstand unassisted at the congratulations sign!! Handstand 365 challenge became famous also - Porters and their climbers all asked me when they saw me "are you doing yoga up here?" as they've seen me everywhere upside down! When I said yes, they hung around to take photos! Sharing the handstand love <3 There was such support and happiness at the top. Everyone else had climbed to the base 500m from the top of the Pass the night before, which inevitably meant they were too high to sleep and it increased their risk of being affected by high altitude. At the time I had felt great and wanted to carry on climbing with them, but eternally grateful we stayed at 4100m to further acclimatize. We didn't sleep much ourselves but something is better than nothing. That night I wore literally all of my clothes all at once inside a thick sleeping bag, with 3 blankets on top and a scarf, hat, socks and leg warmers!!!  I was extremely jealous of the hot water bottle Wade managed to rent at the top however - did make me laugh that he kept it a secret when he saw the sign from anyone he spoke to so as not to risk losing out on one himself ;) 

• I taught an impromptu yoga class on our acclimatizing trial hike to 3800m!! Everyone joined in with handstands and the wheel pose! Good times :) 

• The Handstand 365 challenge was easy to keep to while trekking, as everyone very quickly got into it and supported me each day! Every time we saw nice landscape or lots of snow and mountain peaks, someone was guaranteed to say "Caroline, this would be a good handstand pic" :) Huge thank you to everyone for their support!

• We attempted to do yoga stretching after each day, I think after about 5 days that died a death out of sheer exhaustion! Good while it lasted.

• Hostel in Manang. We stopped here to allow our bodies two days to properly acclimatize before we started to move further up. The hostel was amazing, amazing, amazing. There was real food on the menu, not just dahl baht! We all tried Yak Burgers for the first dinner, and there was honestly so much choice on the menu that we sat and planned how many meals we could fit in before we left! Pure luxury food after 9 days of basic, basic food options. 

• Felt fabulous to feel my muscles working again :) Loved the mental and physical challenge, and reminded me so much of marathon and track training. 

• Fields of free growing marijuana during the early days of our trek.

• Tour de Great Himalaya Trail Boys - amazing guys! We met Ben and Chris early into our trip. They were cycling from East Nepal to West Nepal over the course of 6 weeks I believe. To bring awareness to Nepal. They sounded like they had amazing experiences, and it was so refreshing to meet them at a time I really needed to interact with people outside of my immediate group. I find people like that very inspirational :) We saw their sticker for their tour everywhere we went, and it made us smile and think on occasion how the hell did they do this on bicycles?!? 

• Om Ma Ni Padme Hum - a Tibetan chant which was painted on rocks all the way around the Circuit. If ever I was close to getting a tattoo, it was this. It's such a beautiful chant, and essentially without direct translation being available is linked to Buddhism and compassion. 

• There were prayer bells all around the circuit, which you push in the direction you are traveling making sure each spins fully. The idea being that you chant silently or aloud "Om Ma Ni Padme Hum" to intensify the message, and wish for Good Luck and blessings. We all did this each time we saw them - though it did ache your arms on the longer ones lol!! 

• Small World.  I met a guy called Liam outside of our hostel by the prayer bells. M was talking to him and I heard him say yes we have a divemaster and yoga teacher in our group. I asked where he worked and he only worked as DM and yoga teacher in Koh Lanta where I used to live and work, he even worked at Lanta Divers and we swapped stories on all the people we have in common!!! Too funny! His friend Wade joined us for the rest of the trek and crossed the Pass together. Really nice guys. We kept seeing the same faces along the journey and as I said above, was so nice when we all reached 5416m with everyone together and healthy :)

My most challenging parts :(

• There was a lot of time to think, and while I didn't really feel as though I dealt with much compared to expectations in India, it seemed that a lot of stuff came up in Nepal.  I spent a lot of time reflecting on my life, my travel plans, my future life plans, direction of my world. Those sort of things. 

• I struggled with always being in a group. Everyone seemed to want to spend every second of every day together, and I felt the need for some space sometimes, just to be me and be alone and reflect. I found that really tough...

• Homesick for Bermuda and my friends and routine.  Some parts of the trek were hard and whereas I like to talk a lot, I found there were times when I was best to just stick my headphones in and conserve energy!!! I found the music incredibly motivating as it was all my January International Race Weekend music from Bermuda :) Which inevitably given my headspace made me enormously homesick for Bermuda and my friends, and training.  My marathon training helped me when the going got tough. Staying positive even though it hurts. 

• I learnt some things that are going to be key to my life in the future. I NEED exercise to be a big part of my life. I loved feeling my muscles burn. I missed my training regime from Bermuda and training for a big race.  I need to be by an ocean at all times. I felt incredibly odd being in a landlocked country and it didn't sit well with my soul at all :(

• Bad Diet - total carb overload with all the rice, potatoes and dahl that feature in a Nepalese diet. Add to that the endless Snicker bars and grain bars.... I felt so lethargic, and tetchy and tearful and bloated on different occasions which for me confirmed I definitely am better on a paleo style diet.

• Deciding when to listen to body and leave the final days of the Annapurna Circuit early and putting my health first (something that does not come easily to me). I headed to Pokhara as I couldn't regain strength following our ascent to 5416m when a flu achey body/cold type/stomach bug hit me. Tough decision :( 

• Steepest decline in the world! After 4 hours of climbing to 5416m we of course had to come down, and it was a horrendously sharp decline of 1700m over 5 long, long hours! It was tough, mentally and physically and it included a pretty spectacular tumble along the way lol

• Fake sun cream!!! SO bad but so true! Yep a store in Kathmandu sold me Banana Boat which wasn't really real Banana Boat. So off I went climbing up the mountain paths and religiously applying my sun cream as the sun was intense in places. Yet still getting burnt, not just pink but seriously burnt :( My nose peeled at least 3 times and took 14 days to stop looking raw after final layer went. Awful! When we finally realised it was the cream, we compared ingredients on a real bottle and they were totally different. So if you are trekking in Nepal and purchasing items from Kathmandu be warned! 

• Landslide! For real...we had one. We reached a sign just 500m from our resting point at 4100m for the night before Thorong-La Pass and thought the guides were adding dramatic license. They weren't - we realised this as rocks came hurtling down of all sizes at great speed due to some animals further up the mountain. We had to quickly run across the said area as fast as we could. Let me tell you running at 4100m is not something I want to repeat. I felt awful the whole evening after this. Awful! But hey I can now add surviving a landslide to my list of experiences while traveling ;) 

I felt physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the trek, it pushed me in so many ways and the quiet times while we walked really helped me to work through some thoughts and feelings and shift them a little bit in the right direction. It humbled me that my body took to walking such intense distances so quickly without any real pain or effort until the final part when sickness crept in. I feel good with my decision to end the trek when I did, as I am learning to listen to the warning signs my body (and more broadly in life) gives me. And in actual fact leaving the group early gave me some much needed alone time to do some thinking. Some decisions needed to be made about the next steps of my travel journey and this time gave me time to work through how to deal with that and make the changes that were best for my sanity and calm healthy state of mind. It also meant that I had extra time in Pokhara to explore, which I had really hoped for earlier in the trip. So all in all, a win win situation :)

So that was a long entry but I couldn't think how else to break it down! I promise they get shorter from here :) What an experience, the highs, the lows, the scenery, the people, the memories. Immediately after the trek I was too exhausted to even comprehend what I had achieved.  Now there has been time to digest it, I see it as very much a healing process for me and a massive test of endurance. I loved and needed it all, the good bits and the bad. I was exactly where I needed to be to help me on this fantastic journey I am on while I travel. It was an adventure like nothing ever before :)

Namaste xoxoxox

The Journey itself :) 

Day 1 - Night spent in Bandipur
Day 2 - Besi Sahar to Nadi Bazar (760m to 930m)
Day 3 - Nadi Bazar to Chamje (930m to 1430m)
Day 4 - Chamje to Dharapani (1430m to 1860m)
Day 5 - Dharapani to Chame (1860m to 2670m)
Day 6 - Chame to Lower Pisang (2670m to 3200m)
Day 7 - Lower Pisang to Manang (3200m to 3540m)
Day 8 - Manang rest day (3540m)
Day 9 - Manang to Yak Kharka (3540m to 4050m)
Day 10 - Yak Kharka to Thorung Pedi (4050m to 4450m)
Day 11 - Thorong Pedi to Thorong-La Pass (4450m to 5416m) THEN to Muktinath (3760m)
Day 12 - Muktinath to Kagbeni (3760m to 2800m)
Day 13 - Kagbeni to Marpha (2800m to 2670m)
Day 14 - Marpha to Kalapani (2670m to 2530m) - I travelled by bus
Day 15 - Kalapani to Tatopani (2530m to 1190m) - I travelled by car
Day 16 - Tatopani to Pokhara - I left the group here and took the local bus x 2 to reach Pokhara.