Date: Friday, June 22, 2012
Location: Ghyaru
Elevation: 3670m
We're 1/4 through the trek! Today was EPIC. Before I get to that, a highlight from yesterday that I forgot: at a police checkpoint 45 minutes before Chame. two girls, aged about three, came up to us with their hands held open. Not knowing if they were begging or not, P and I started slapping their hands in a high-five or 'hot hands' way. They were very amused by this game. After a minute or two I turned my hands over to have them hit me and it turned into a one-sided game of hot-hands. They ran off soon, but as we left the village I saw the cuties standing on a wall and snagged a few last high fives before walking off. It feels good to make kids laugh. Note: Peter is making me record this moment.
Today it was raining at 5:30am, so I hit snooze on the travel alarm clock until 6:15, when it lightened to a mist and we weren't too groggy-eyed. Learning from our own mistake yesterday, we ordered breakfast from the teahouse and got ready while it was cooking. We took an alternate high route in lieu of the road for a while until it joined again with the road. I was glad to have avoided the rocks but peeved that we climbed up just to come back down. There were a couple of suspension bridges, which I love, and from one side of the river we looked across and saw men carving a road out of a sheer rock mountain/cliff, like a horizontal gouge parallel to the river.
The trail kept going up and up and up. So much so that Peter found both of us walking sticks to help with the never-ending ascents. We decided that I'm a tortoise and P a hare when climbing because he just powers up and up and stops to catch his breath. I, however, just put one foot in front of the other and trudge along.
After lunch we took a wrong turn and followed the trail to Lower Pisang for a while before realizing we needed to turn back to be on the upper trail to Upper Pisang. Why this route? There are significantly better views by not being at the bottom of the valley. Also, now that we're at 3600+ meters, we'll acclimate better to the thin air. It's said that anyone who took the high road never had problems with AMS/HAPE/HACE while crossing the pass.
I felt really sleepy for the entire trek after lunch but pushed through. The hike went downhill after Upper Pisang, leaving us wondering where the altitude gain would occur. We rounded a mountainside and saw our destination... on top of the mountain at which we were at the bottom. It looked like a grueling straight climb up. P and I calculated that it was about a 400m ascent on uncountable switchbacks that took me, the last person up, about an hour and a half. Beat that, Tiger Leaping Gorge!
We had great views down two cavernous valleys that end at two mountainsides. They should have been Annapurna II and IV but we only saw the bottom half of them under the clouds. Halfway up this mountain, I turned around and got the faintest glimpse of II through the clouds and it was magnificently large. Epic. Ginormous. It looms unimaginably large. Gods could live there. My jaw dropped for the first time ever to see such grandeur. And it was only a glimpse. The clouds soon moved in and covered the peek we had. It started sprinkling and I continued on my way. I can't wait for more sights like that.
Now we're at a teahouse on the exposed side of a mountain freezing ourselves to sleep. It's finally getting cold and will be like this or worse for the next week. We drank yak tea, listened to some jazz, I couldn't stop laughing at the boys' imitation at milking yaks, and now Peter is dutch ovening the room. It's going to be an interesting night with them.
Location: Ghyaru
Elevation: 3670m
We're 1/4 through the trek! Today was EPIC. Before I get to that, a highlight from yesterday that I forgot: at a police checkpoint 45 minutes before Chame. two girls, aged about three, came up to us with their hands held open. Not knowing if they were begging or not, P and I started slapping their hands in a high-five or 'hot hands' way. They were very amused by this game. After a minute or two I turned my hands over to have them hit me and it turned into a one-sided game of hot-hands. They ran off soon, but as we left the village I saw the cuties standing on a wall and snagged a few last high fives before walking off. It feels good to make kids laugh. Note: Peter is making me record this moment.
Today it was raining at 5:30am, so I hit snooze on the travel alarm clock until 6:15, when it lightened to a mist and we weren't too groggy-eyed. Learning from our own mistake yesterday, we ordered breakfast from the teahouse and got ready while it was cooking. We took an alternate high route in lieu of the road for a while until it joined again with the road. I was glad to have avoided the rocks but peeved that we climbed up just to come back down. There were a couple of suspension bridges, which I love, and from one side of the river we looked across and saw men carving a road out of a sheer rock mountain/cliff, like a horizontal gouge parallel to the river.
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| the village is in the upper right - you can see its white temple |
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| two valleys, no mountains |
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