Annapurna mountains and the start of my Caprice out East

I imagine the crowded streets and hawker’s heckles and unfamiliar sights and sounds of busy streets and alleyways of Kathmandu and India would have been much more intimidating had it not been for my Kenyan experience. It was a wonderful opportunity to sojourn to a new adventure and experience new things. I find myself addicted to new things, that I worry I’ll ever be able to stick to one thing or one place ever again. To give the sense of order to my trip, I’ll put it in chronological “order.”

Nepal: As we flew into Kathmandu, we could see some mountains poking up over the landscape just beyond our plane’s wings. I could feel a sense of building anticipation, and I knew that the views from the ground would be even more significant and impressive. We (my peace corps friends Dan and Neil) landed with literally no itinerary. We met a guy in line for our visas, and he had been to Kathmandu a few times and seemed to know what he was doing, so we said we’d share a cab with him. But when we collected our bags and got to the taxi stand, it was clear that, as Peace Corps volunteers, we were willing to sacrifice luxury and ease of convenience to make the most of our trip. By this, I mean he was willing to just give out what he thought was a reasonable taxi fare to get to his hotel, rather than discuss and bargain with the line of taxi drivers. We were not. This was maybe the first time in the real world that I felt proud and conscious of some of the skills I’ve learned as a volunteer. After talking to a few guys after half an hour, we struck a deal and crammed into a taxi that sent us careening into the heart of Kathmandu. Fortunately, we had found a hostel that knew about Peace Corps (Peace Corps Nepal is no longer, but the reputation still stands), and took pity on us budget travellers. We decided to take a day or two to just explore the city and sample some local flavors. Then with the help of the hotel, we organized a trek to Poon Hill to see the Himalayas. The next morning we took a bus to Pokhara, a beautiful city with a mountainous backdrop and a placid lake set against a blue sky sprinkled with prayer flag confetti. We spent the night in Pokhara and set out early the next morning on a four day trek into the “foot hills” to get a better view of the Annapurna range.

Dhon, our guide was a chain-smoking lively fellow of short stature, but still managed to make climbing a thousand meters in half a day seem like a warm up. We trekked for about 4-7 hours a day, breaking for tea and lunch and staying in small tea houses in the villages that were intermittently spread out along the trail up to Poon hill. Again, we strove to get the “real” experience, the inside scoop of Nepalese culture. I’d like to thank the Peace Corps for my distinct distaste for anything touristy. So we spent time to explore each village we came through and instead of eating at the tourist trap expensive restaurants for each meal, we made sure to find a local denizen to sample the local brews and bitings. We drank tomboo, a millet beer, and Raaksi, a distilled millet drink. We sat around an indoor fire and ate smoked buffalo meat, which we are told was a favorite among the lower caste, and which the upper class did not partake. All the while a young girl and her family prepared noodle soup as the children crept closer to the fire with magnetic curiosity. The night before we reached Poon Hill was absolutely freezing. We awoke before sunrise, to make the hour and a half climb to the top of the hill for sunrise. It was so cold I had to put my fingers back into the gloves after a few exposed minutes in order to let them thaw enough to work the camera. The view was humbling. The mountains looked like smoldering volcanoes as the sun crept over the horizon and lit each peak with a beam of morning light. There were over 4 peaks jutting out right in front of me, each over 6,000 meters, some over 8,000. Every minute or two, the panorama changed as the mountains were bathed in more and more light, so I found myself taking the same picture 10 times just because I saw it in a new light.

The descent was icy and tortuous. The snow was mostly a skating rink, but we didn’t mind taking our time, giving us the opportunity to look back over our shoulders at the shrinking range. As we passed through a village, we found ourselves being guided by not Dhon, but a small dog who stuck by our side for the remaining two days down the mountain. He stopped when we stopped, and waited patiently while we rested, making sure that we were still keeping up with him. He hardly made a sound the whole time, but I’m convinced that he is the coolest dog I’ve ever met.

Back in Kathmandu, we spent a day looking at temples in an ancient city of temples called Bhaktapur, which was nice, but a bit showy. It was also Shivaratri, the day to celebrate Shiva, the deity. Kathmandu was flooded with holy men who took spiritual journeys on the road to enlightenment. We went to the epicenter of the festival, which turned out to be thousands of people shoving each other in the streets near a temple which we never actually saw. It was interesting for about 20 minutes, though we didn’t see any holy men in the streets since they were all in the temple reaching for enlightenment. We went to a temple known as the “monkey temple” because it’s swarming with monkeys. We walked around the perimeter of the temple taking time to turn the prayer wheels installed in the walls, and made it to the top of the hill on which the temple is situated in time to see the sun setting over Kathmandu. We spent another few days taking in the surroundings and the culture, and even spent an evening in an Irish bar playing darts.

The next leg of the journey, India, will be posted soon.