The Annapurna Trek - Taking it Easy (Part Two)

On the fourth day I walked with the slower group and found I broke a lot less of a sweat and listend to more of my mp3. At Chhomrong, where we had lunch, we were able to dump some stuff and so I moved the majority of my stuff to Magnus' bag and in the afternoon I didn't have to carry a rucksack for the first time. It's amazing how much easier it is to move. I was last to where we stayed overnight at Sinuwa as I was walking/encouraging Pippa, who didn't want to be trekking. Still, we made it in perfect time, just befre the rain and got a much-needed hot shower. Also got charged Rs70 for a litre of boiled and filterd water. Rip off, but the water from the tap lookd slightly beyond purification.

Day five didn't start off well. Hari was too ill to carry on and so had to go back down. This wasn't her being pathetic, when she got back to Pokhara (2 days later) they almost had to IV her. It's a credit to her stubbornss that she even got to Sinuwa.

I did, however, get Hari's camea. Hari's SLR camera. Hari's extremely good and no doubt very expensive camera. Hari's amazing camera. As I was walking slowly I had plenty of time to take lots and lots of pictures and I have come to two conclusions; my camera is shit and at some point in the relatively near furture I'm getting an SLR. And it will be worth every penny.

So, I took way too many pictues and had to cross rivers on the way to the lodge. Normallly I wouldn't think twice (as rivers where my childhood summer holidays) but carrying Hari's camera made me slightly more nervous about falling and breaking it. Which, if it had happened would have meant I would have stayed on the mountain and possibly become a hermit or the yeti.

We were staying at Deorali and it was the fist night it was really cold. I meant freezing. Still, battle on and the next day was ABC! The way up to ABC is amazing. It's hard to describe but there are lots of pictres on Hari's camera :)

Only four of us stayed overnight at ABC as space is limited and the next morning out of four two of us had the shits. Not seriously, but enough to make watching the sunrise slightly tainted. Even so, the sunrise was better than Poon Hill. You get a panormaic view of the Annapurna Himalya and it is worth getting up for. By this point, annoyingly, Hari's camera had run out of battery and so my fun had ended and I couldn't take pictures of the mountains, but they were beautiful.

Going down from ABC was fun. Me and Caitlin (other person to foolishly choose pizza) both just kept walking to lunch and then from lunch to the lodge as we wanted to get there. I was actually very lucky as I was mainly ill in the morning and was back to about normal in the evening.

The next couple of days we re-traced our steps to Chhomrong where we went a different way down. We didn't walk up this way as it has a million and three steps instead of half a million and three. Everyone was more cheeful and we got to Naya Pul arond 3pm and then got the bus to Pokhara, where we met up with Ed (who had gone down with Hari) and Hari and realised quite how filthy we were. Luckily Omega (the trekking company) gave us all lovely grey t-shirts the size of my sleeping bag to wear to our farewell dinner. And so one shower and one grey t-shirt later we all headed out in a flurry of grey to say goodbye to the guides.

I loved the Annapurna trek and now want to do the Annapurna Circuit Trek. It was great fun, with great views. True, at times it was difficult, but I didn't struggle as much as most, all credit to them for carrying on. You need a certain mind-set to be able to walk and enjoy it, and I never realised I would ever really enjoy putting one foot in front of the other so much!