Wish you were here

Annapurna iv, Nepal

After a hot chocolate on top of Thorong La Pass, it was time to start the descent back toward Earth. I'd not suffered much from the altitude - except for breathing. I'd been told that as you drop down again - all the problems associated quickly drop off. With that I put my head down and headed down. After an hour or so, the relatively gradual descent started to get quite steep. The mountain put me on my backside several times as I missed my footing. Nicks ankle was still giving him trouble as it hurt more with downhill steps so we found a new alternative to trekking downhill.

The majority of the group - along with the Aussies, bum-sled there way down many of the paths. When we got to them, there was some form of foot holing - after - they resembled an Olympic bob-sled run. I pity anyone that followed us! After some uncontrollable sledding, we eventually got to morning tea (after 7hours of walking/sledding!). Cokes and biscuits sorted me right out before we headed to the next main town - Muktinath.

From the tea room the trekking was a breeze - through a snow covered brambly field and across a couple of foot bridges we eventually strolled into our town for the night. Knackered - but ultimately satisfied that we had made it across the pass. Even more satisfied that we now finally had our own electricity point with which to charge our iPods & Cameras. Techie note: We'd also been a bit worried as our iPods had stopped functioning once we'd gotten past about 4000 metres. My digi cams screen had also started to display dead pixels up there too - I was relieved that they came back to life when we got lower down.

During the evening, we enjoyed our first beers for 3 days - it's a bit of a no-no to drink whilst at altitiude. Nevertheless - our first Everests went down a treat!

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On the way down from the pass, we'd had a preview of what was to come - a desert style landscape - suitable for the Star Wars Sand People to be roaming around. As we set off from Muktinath, we got better and better view of these. Eventually we were in amongst those views. It seemed a million miles from what we'd passed on the rest of the trek. Awesome.





As we turned a corner, we saw the huge river bed lining the Jomsom valley. Grey and with random rivers colliding we didn't realsie we were heading down towards it to walk the next 8kms!

The walk was a breeze - the valley acted as a wind tunnel all the way to Jomsom where we stopped for lunch. I wished I hadn't! I had a "hamburger" - the first on any menu all trek - it was like an onion/meat biscuit and gave me a dodgy gut for the rest of the afternoon. We arrived in Marpha in good spirits after it had tried to rain a little.

Marpha was playing host to a festival of the dog. We trotted up a silly amount of steps to a monastry to watch the monks do their traditional dance. It was rammed with folks so we headed for the roof where we got some great aerial views of the town and the festivities below.



















Happy Birthday Dad! November 1st.

The trek along the river bed had left me pretty exhausted, and todays trek from Marpha to Ghasa just compunded my tiredness. We left the desert landscape behind us and once again returned to the lush rainforesty feel of the Himalayas.

Something new again this evening, when Chandra and Shiva got together to buy us a Chicken for dinner. Live. For a while. They called us to the back yard to watch our dinner lose it's life and then give a new definition to "running around like a headless chicken". Curry was on the menu that night.

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Yesterdays hard day was difficult to get going after. Luckily, we had a treat awaiting us at the end of the day - Tatopani - the Nepali word for Hot-springs. We pretty much flew there! The path was mainly long and flat with plenty to look at as nature once again returned to us at a reasonable altitiude. Colourful butterfly's keeping you company along the way.

We mosied into Tatopani around midday, quickly washed our stinkiest clothes and set them out to dry on the balcony. Then a quick walk down the river side and two empty hot-pools awaited. I hopped in the first one, it was a good temperature but not exactly hot... so we tried out the 2nd. It was boiling - or I thought so, I couldn't bare the heat - it was like that feeling you get when you get in a hot bath - except the shock factor never went! So I went back in the other one and watched as psychadelic dragonfly's dive-bombed the water.

Pretty soon, the pools had filled up and after 2 hours I decided my pruned fingers and toes had had enough. We met up with Axel & Rose, the Germans we'd met - for a beer at their hotel. They had a great view of the valley. After a superb Chicken Massala (the best meal of the trek) we headed for the local pool hangout where we got progessively merry with Wayne, Jo, Ray, Axel, Rose, Adriene and a few of the guides. A great night... as we left however, one of the huge concrete steps moved as I went to step up it - resulting in a triple bleeder on my left knee with a lovely bruise to see out the trek with. Luckily, I had some Savlon wipes to sort me out (thanks to the Snodland girls!).

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Tatopani as I already said, means hot springs. Ghorepani means "water that's not there anymore". I'm not surpised. We walked uphill for the majority of the day. There were some great forrested areas where I could here woodpeckers making home. As I walked up some of the paths, the birds put on a show and swarmed the area - it was creepy but pretty special at the same time.

The day was a killer and I was absolutely shattered as we crawled up the final steps into the village. Ghorepani was completely blue as they seemed to have discovered blue plastic when they built the place. the day wasn't over as the lodge Chandra had selected was at the very top of town. Eventually we made it to the Snowland Lodge and got a roast Chicken dinner with Chips. It was going great until those pesky Maoists finally made an appearance and demanded 1200 Rupees from us. Mugged.

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Our final day had finally rolled around. However it wasn't that much of a relief since we had to make another pre-sunrise start. Poon Hill is said to give the most amazing views of the trek. We left our hotel and found the previous nights walk had done us some favours - we were already in front of half the villages guests as they made the torchlight ascent to the top.

The sun slowly rose to illuminate the sides of Annapurna South to give some amazing sights despite the frosty start. A watchtower boosted the view by a further 10metres. After taking some pics and appreciating the pano's it was time to get back to our lodge for brekkie.

We hadn't realised how bad 'down' could be. Steps that would've measured around 1½foot a time were pretty common and my knee's took a pounding - my drunken injury not the best thing to have had today as we descended... and descended.

It was an effort moving after lunch, as my joints had packed up - but after some warm ups I got back in to the swing of things appreciating my last walk in Nepal. My iPod made for some awesome moments as more colourful butterfly's littered the path back to Nyapul. Even more amazing were the hoards of grasshoppers that when still measured around 2 inches in length. When they hopped, their concealed bright blue wings were shown.

As we crossed our final steel bridge, we were on the home straight. A final ascent to the first road we'd seen in 2½ weeks and that was it. 320kms.

We got a truck back to Pokhara to spend a night relaxing before we made the trip back to Kathmandu the next day.