Oh, the Places We'll Go

After the urban metropolis of Bangkok and the happening university town of Chiang Mai, we were off to see the quiet side of Thailand. Thanks to our good friend Mark, who spent 8 months living in the region, we got to spend time in a rural village that does not see many Westerners (with one significant exception). You see, the connection goes beyond Mark – his travel buddy Matt stuck around after Mark returned, and ended up marrying Nat, a girl from this little village. So, after a series of emails with Matt, we were connected with Nat’s lovely Thai family that lives in the tiny, rural village of Maetachang.

A couple hours north of Chiang Mai by bus, we were the only passengers to be getting off at the sleepy town of Mae Suai, a short drive from the sleepier Maetachang. We didn’t travel with cell phones and were told the family didn’t speak any English, so we were hoping that the message had been relayed correctly and that someone would be there to meet us. However, there was no need for us to worry as we easily stood out and our host’s grandson, Pong, had no trouble finding us.

The truck ride from Mae Suai to Maetachang

The pretty rural Thai countryside

Pong became our friend and quasi-translator for the next two days. Though raised in the village where we were visiting, he currently attends university at the next big town up the road. He is the only one from his town attending university and he was nice enough to come home from school over the weekend to show us around. His English was very limited but as our Thai was non-existent, we were nothing but grateful and impressed. In fact, even if we did speak Thai, the family we stayed with spoke a local dialect so we still would have had difficulty communicating!

Our hosts were extremely generous and accommodating and though we certainly regretted not being able to ask more questions or properly express our thanks, I hope they were able to tell how much we appreciated them opening their home to us.

We were visiting during a quiet time as far as work in the surrounding rice fields were concerned but we no problem finding fun things to do.

Sarah plays frisbee with Pui

Ted jams with Pong

A guided tour through town and the surrounding hills

Ted gets a REAL Thai massage

Our iPod touch was the hit with the local kids

Pui harvests fresh fruit for us

And delicious is was!

We ate our meals together, gathered around a small table and sitting on low stools to enjoy some wonderfully flavorful soups and stews – always served with lots of rice. We got to explore Maetachang and nearby hills by foot, asking Pong a lot of questions about life in the village and about his time at university. When Pong had to return to school, his adorable young cousin, Pui, stepped in to serve as our guide. Pui was 9-years old and didn’t speak any English, yet he happily picked up where Pong had left off by walking us into the nearby hills and taking us to scenic spots along the river.

Dinner with Nat's family - Sarah, Baht Yee, and Pong

Pui leads us on a hike

Though a short but sweet peek into village life, we were very happy to have visited Maetachang and left wanting to learn more.

Bandipur, Nepal is one of the loveliest little spots we’ve been to on our trip. Along the bus route from Pokhara to Kathmandu (two of Nepal’s most visited cities), it’s super easy to get to but most people don’t save room in their itinerary for it. That is a mistake.

An unparalleled setting, atop a mountain ridge

Downtown Bandipur

View from the Old Inn, our afternoon drink spot

This cute, but very tiny town, is set high on a bluff which, on a clear day, provides jaw-dropping views of several Himalayan mountain ranges. Unfortunately, we were not visiting in the season to appreciate the distant mountain views we heard oh-so-much about! But it was still a gorgeous setting nonetheless.

However, there is more to the town than the views. Though the community was once struggling to get by, it has done an excellent job of investing in itself to attract tourism. The town is full of traditional Newari architecture and with the help of a local tourism operator and some foreign aid, the town has renovated and maintained it’s beautiful buildings, which are both peoples’ homes as well as newly established restaurants and guest houses.

Newari Architecture

Gotta love the English translations of their new signage

Foreign aid manifesting in funny educational signs...

Tourism is so new to this community that the townspeople are genuinely curious about their visitors and are wonderfully helpful and kind. The kids want to play all day long, there were no pushy salespeople to be found (a rarity in this part of the world), and we only saw one “souvenir” shop and one “tour operator” in town. The idea of tourism is so new and so wholesome that we found it such a treat after the week we spent in Western-infused Pokhara.

The kids were the real treat of Bandipur

Games in the street

Though we only had one day in town, we took full advantage of the gorgeous area by doing a day hike to the neighboring village. We saw just one other group of hikers on our walk but dozens of locals from nearby villages and their animals!

Hike to neighboring village - Ramkot

Moving bushes? Or locals harvesting foliage?

Ramkot - the destination of our day hike

Bandipur is perfect just how it is right now. However, the community has gotten a taste of tourism dollars and has big plans for growth. We saw several hotels in the works while we were there. It’s only a matter of time until attitudes and tourist offerings change, but for now, it is an undiscovered jewel of a place that we wish we could freeze in time.

View from our hotel window

Bandipur Vistas

The Himalayas are as awesome and awe-inspiring as we ever could have hoped.  The landscapes that surrounded us for these two weeks of trekking are like nothing we’ve ever experienced.  The Annapurna Massif dwarfed our previous understanding of big mountains.  Our photos don’t come close to capturing the true magnitude of this range, but we got some sweet shots nonetheless.  Check out a slideshow of a few of our favorites from the trek.

After a couple days of downhill walking, beautiful and arid landscapes, and splurging on new and exciting foods that we hadn’t seen along the trail, our time on the Annapurna Circuit came to an end. The village of Jomson is the main hub in the area and it is from here that you organize your transport back to civilization. The options include a $90 flight in a small plane that flies over Annapurna’s tallest peaks and gets you back to Pokhara in about 25 minutes. Or an assortment of 4 different buses and Jeep rides, taking 10+ hours, spread over 2 days that costs closer to $15. Please remember that the ‘roads’ are miserable – nearly all dirt, pot-holed, narrow, at times dangerous – and the transportation is uncomfortable at best.

The hike down to Jomsom

Very different, but equally stunning landscapes on this side of Thorong La Pass

Tiered irrgation in the desert

Vegetables on our pasta - what a novel concept!

For some reason, the guesthouse had an Ohio State t-shirt up. Charles was non-too-pleased

Seems like a pretty easy choice, huh? Unfortunately, when your traveling for a year dropping $180 for a 20-minute activity does not fit in the budget. And so it happened that our friends visiting from the States who were time-short and money-long opted for the plane flight while we and our fellow round-the-world trippers made the trip overland. As a reward for our misery, the village we stopped at overnight had hot springs that we happily soaked in and wicked views of an incredibly unreal peak.

Setting off on our bus journey

We wave goodbye to the flyers, and their new friend

Our bus ride back was rather spacious

Jealous

But we got to do this

And see this!

So take that Charles and Kate! Or rather, we just wish you would have taken us with you.

Our days and days of hiking along the Annapurna Circuit were inching us toward the big pass we had to get over. At 17769 feet (5416m), it’s definitely up there and the highest elevation most of our group members had ever climbed. We spent two nights in the village of Manang shortly before the pass to allow our bodies to acclimatize. We then had another two nights of sleeping at even higher altitude to get our bodies ready for the big day (including a night sleeping at nearly 16,000ft!).

The steep hike up to High Camp

Possibly the highest hotel in the world?

Unparelleled views from up here

In every direction

Prayer flags cover every peak

Though most of our group had mild headaches, and Chucky was fighting nausea, we set off for the pass from our guesthouse just before dawn. The darkness and wind made for a cold morning, but the rising sun bouncing light off the mountain tops and reflecting off the snow made for fantastic scenery.

Pre-dawn departure from High Camp

Pink peaks of sunrise

Sunrise shadows

Smile - we're almost at the top!

It's always a nice day when you're hiking above the clouds

The whole crew charges up the final steps

We arrived, with relative ease, at the top of the pass only a couple of hours later. Hooray for us! We celebrated with Snickers and Oreos while we took dozens of pictures at the prayer-flag-littered-summit-marker.

Bagged it!

Hugs from Shiba! Everybody got one!

Required boy-band photo

Since we were only 231 feet below 18,000 at the pass, the boys scaled an adjacent mountain just to make it up to this arbitrary altitude. The girls, not interested in hiking further uphill just to make it up to a round number, decided to stretch and laugh at the energy-wasting wasting endeavor.

Yup, that's them up there

According to Charles' watch, they made it

Smile, you're at 18k feet!

And then it was time to descend. Little did we know we had hours upon hours of downhill hiking in front of us that would prove to be more painful than anything we experienced going up (and would result in us limping for days). Over 1500 vertical feet down per hour, for 3.5 hours! However, ignorance was bliss and we were too busy celebrating and thinking about our beers at lunch to let such matters distract us at the pass!

The decent to Muktinath

And the beers we were waiting for!

What makes hiking in Nepal so unique is the concept of teahouse trekking. Few other places in the world can you set out on 3+ week backpacking trip and not have to camp and make your own food. Many of the trails throughout Nepal connect isolated villages to each other, and as trekking has become more and more popular, many Nepalis have converted their homes or built new guesthouses to accommodate international visitors.

This teahouse was brand new

Some teahouses have pretty spectacular views

A teahouse may sound quite lovely, however, the accommodation is very basic and it was always interesting to see where we’d end up. The quality and charm varied from place to place but in general we were getting a room with a double bed and a shared bath. By ‘bath’, I mean a squat toilet. A couple places had actual showers but most spots involved bucket hot water showers. That is, the teahouse owner heated hot water for us, put it in a bucket and then we used a cup to pour the water over our bodies to rinse off. When we got to high altitudes, the showers stopped for a few days as it was too cold for us to shower and required too much energy/logs for them to boil water at that altitude.

A typical room along the Circuit

The "toilet" left a little something to be desired

But the views didn't!

The food also varied in quality, but certainly not in options provided. Nearly every menu along the 11 day route was strikingly similar – some were completely identical. The major and featured foodstuffs included carbohydrates with a side of carbohydrates: fried noodles, fried rice, curries, potato in many forms (fried, baked, and our favorite, the Swiss rosti), eggs and momos. Momos are essentially dumplings stuffed with meat or veggie and they were our saving grace. Once in awhile a bigger village would have something wonderfully exciting that we hadn’t seen in days – like a sandwich – and we would be overwhelmed by our options and good fortune. But in general, our food selection (or lack thereof) was our running joke throughout meal times because nothing was particularly memorable or even appetizing after awhile. That being said, the food was hot, it was caloric and it was made by someone else so though we laughingly complained, we usually cleared our plates!

Lots of soups

Carb on carb action - Potato rosti with a side of mashed potatoes

Momos!

And of course, Dal Bhat - the Nepali meal of choice twice a day, everyday, for your entire life

But after a long day on the trail, it was somehow all delicious

The Annapurna Circuit is made up of a series of dozens of villages that line the Marsyangdi and Kali Gandaki river valleys. Access to these towns has traditionally been by donkey and foot only, though the construction of the new access road up each valley is slowly changing this way of life. Despite these new developments, hauling supplies to these upper villages is big business in the Annapurna, and thousands of people earn their living moving extremely heavy, awkward loads up steep rocky paths at high altitudes, and doing so in flip flops. We passed (or were passed by) dozens of porters each day, and we were continually awed by the loads they managed to carry. For instance:

An average load

Note the head strap, where most of the load is carried

It's not always the men! These women can carry quite the load

Sometimes, porters would travel in groups

An awkward load

A skinny load, but NO SHOES!!!

This one looks particularly heavy

Creative packing

Haaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy

At one point, I attempted to lift a porter’s load, which is carried largely on the head and neck.

You can do it!

Unsuccessful.  Mad respect for these guys, some of whom are carrying over 150lbs, well more than their own weight.

No, no you can't... Shiba, quit laughing!

After seeing everyone else’s loads, we didn’t feel so bad about the bags we had our porters carrying.

Easy loads!

Other trekkers, not so nice to their porters:

You're supposed to pack your stuff in a backpack, but they'll make any bag work

I was blown away by the amount of manpower we witnessed.  I was also rather surprised not to see more of these animals, which seems like a lot easier way to carry all that weight!

Donkey!

Check out this amazing map created by our trekking partners, Jesse and Dave. Blue Pins are where we slept; Green Pins are places of interest; Forks & Knifes are where we ate, and the Blue Line is where we drove. Each pin has some information and a link to the post about that day. View Annapurna Circuit Trek in a larger map

Dave is a funny guy and a great photographer. Someday, he might be a great trekker as well. Check out his hilarious daily blog posts of our adventure across the Annapurna Circuit. Really, these are all worth reading.

• Actually, Yes. The Return of the Super Trek.
• Actually, Not. Freezing the Water Does Not Purify it (Annapurna Circuit, Day One)
• Actually, Not. Those Are Not Spices in My Curry. (Annapurna Circuit, Day Two)
• Actually, Yes. That is a Huge Steel Plate on My Back (Annapurna Circuit, Day Three)
• Actually, Not. We’ll pass on the optional afternoon hike in the middle of a 90 mile trek (Annapurna Circuit, Day Four)
• Actually, Yes. Mexican Food in Nepal? Same Same but Different (Annapurna Circuit, Day Five)
• Actually, Not. There’s No Resting on a Rest Day. (Annapurna Circuit, Day Six)
• Actually, Yes. It’s Freezing Up Here! (Annapurna Circuit, Day Seven)
• Actually, Yes. You Can Get Altitude Sickness When Hiking at 16,000 Feet (Annapurna Circuit, Day Eight)
• Actually, Yes. We Made It! (Annapurna Circuit Day Nine)
• Actually, Yes. The Pilgrims Are Stopping For Apple Brandy (Annapurna Circuit, Day Ten)
• Actually Yes. The Woman on My Lap is Car Sick. (Annapurna Circuit, Day Eleven)
• Actually Yes. They Can Carry Six Times Their Own Weight
• Actually Yes. This is the Last Post About the Annapurna Circuit (Annapurna Circuit Wrap-Up)

Our next 10 days involved nearly one hundred miles of beautiful, glorious mountain scenery. The weather was fantastic, our group was so much fun, our guide was amazing, and the variety of landscapes and trail was a treat. We walked through charming villages (and exchanged dozens of namastes with the adorable children), past hundreds of local porters transporting goods on their backs from village to village, over roaring rivers of glacial melt, along the sides of cliff edges, up steep switchbacks, down into picture-perfect valleys, and through all of this the Annapurnas continually graced us with their presence.

Gorgeous, or what?

Namaste!

Wicked peaks like we've never seen!

Lots of glaciers means turquoise glacial lakes

Our idyllic trip was made even easier and better with the help of our guide and porters. Each couple had a porter carrying their bag of gear so we were only schlepping our day pack on our backs. Our guide Shiba was exceptional and we learned a lot from him while having lot of fun. He took care of everything from picking our accommodation each night, helping us to order food, teaching us some Nepali words, filling our water bottles, taking our pictures and answering our millions of questions (How high is that peak? Tell me again which mountain is Annapurna IV? When will this uphill be over?). At the same time he was taking care of us, he also knew how to sit back and relax and hang out. He was a rockstar guide and we would happily recommend him to anyone who is headed to Nepal to do some trekking – Look him up! (email: trekkingnepal2001@yahoo.com)

Shiba!

Our porters, Sunkar, Mila, and Krishna

Shiba and the crew

There are a lot of different hikes to do in Nepal – Everest Base Camp being the most popular – but we opted for the famous Annapurna Circuit. What was once a true ~21 day circuit has been shortened significantly by the creation of a road part way around the range. Though the road is a huge bummer for tourism and outdoor enthusiasts, you can’t fault the local people for wanting to have access to their town. We tourists like the idea of being out in the middle of nowhere for a few days, however, if you live there and your child is sick and there is no road access to get them help – that changes your perspective a little bit. The road has cut the trail down to a 10 day trek, and in a few years, only 4 days of walking will be off the dusty road. We were glad we got to do this hike when we did, and if you want to trek the Annapurna Circuit, you’d better get here soon.

Really? You're putting a road in there?!?

So after all my bitching about said road, we took full advantage of it to access what would be our trailhead. After a bus ride in excruciatingly small seats, we arrived in Besi Sahar. Some people start hiking from here, but our guide (and soon to be best friend) Shiba recommended we go a little bit further by Jeep. So that is how the six of us, Shiba, our three porters, and half a dozen other locals found themselves crammed into a Jeep that shouldn’t hold more than 10. It was half hilarious-half miserable. The ‘new’ road that we drove on was the bumpiest, dustiest, never-been-grated dirt road that we have driven on, which made our trip that much more exciting/uncomfortable.

Bus from Pokhara to Besi Sahar

We soon came to realize that this bus was actually empty by Nepali standards

The Jeep seemed like a welcomed escape from the crowded bus

Until we realized that 16 people would be riding within, with a few extras on the roof

When we finally arrived at our destination, we were anxious and ready to get some walking in that day. A couple hours later and the discomfort and chaos of the transportation-filled morning was behind us. We were officially on the circuit and amongst the Himalayan mountains – life was good and getting better by the step.

The first steps of the trek