 When the journal picks up, we had been in Nepal for almost a month. We had traveled around a little bit and had been in Pokhara with a two-week-mission-trip church group, but mostly had been in Kathmandu. Now we arrived by bus back in Pokhara from Kathmandu, just our small group. I don't think I would ever trek or backpack again without studying the route beforehand, memorizing the position of the peaks we might see so I could identify them when the clouds cleared, and picking out the best day-trip hikes along the way. And constantly referring to a map while en route. But this was my first time in the mountains and I did none of that until I bought a map halfway through. I've identified the peaks now by looking at other pictures on the web. The text has been censored somewhat to protect my teammates, to remove BS that I didn't think anyone would want to read, and occasionally to make it seem less like you were reading my damn diary. I didn't add to it though, except what is in brackets. To return to the main Nepal picture page, click here.
7/6/99 – Tuesday – 7:15  Talked about trekking last night. Today is a practice trek and we leave Saturday for Beni. Talked about mental preparation for trekking. I think I can be prepared, but I also know I need to be at the front of the pack the whole time, or most of it. That could cause problems I guess, but I don’t know why. I think if I want to stay up with Garrett and Dan then I’ll do it, and everyone else can follow. If we all want to stay in front, we’ll be one large pack, but that won’t happen. Need to find a laundry place here, but other than that I’ve frozen my spending. The flight is going to cost $60 in emergency $, and I don’t have much more than that in any money. No more email, at least not regularly. Wish I could get more money, but that wouldn’t solve everything – I’d just spend it. Good thing I got an extra $50 though. I wish we could just take the bus back to Kathmandu and skip the flight. It’s not worth $60 to me to avoid a little 6-hour bus trip. 7:30 7/7/99 – Wednesday – 7:23  On the way up I stayed right behind Dan and Garrett. I liked being there. On the way down I waited for Danielle, so it was us and Heather and Khogen, our Nepali guide. It was ok though to be in the back cuz 1) we were going back, not to someplace, and 2) Danielle is fun to talk to. At the top the clouds cleared and we could see Fishtail pretty well. Took lots of pix. Heather bought a new camera, so she’s picture-happy.   Little sore today. Hips are bruised from the belt, and legs are just plain sore. The way down sucked cuz I like to run down, and we had to go super slow. But we ended up being the first group down, cuz I pushed us a little and cuz we took a short cut. Took boats across the lake to the Boomerang; jumped out and swam a little, but I was too cramped up in my legs to do that very long. Came back, took a shower, and went back to the same restaurant for dinner, cuz they were playing Star Wars. It was a pretty low-quality movie, but still fun to see. 7:54 7/9/99 – Friday – 15:02 At breakfast the next morning we talked about the $60 plane flight back to KTM. I said I didn’t want to go, and I’d talk to Garrett afterwards. We talked, and we’re going to work the money thing out so I can fly. It’s ok w/me, but I’d still rather take the bus, and still need to watch my spending. Went back to see the Tibetans [at a refugee camp] yesterday afternoon. Had a crazy drunk guy following us around causing trouble, but it was good. We’ve been eating brunch and dinner lately, so at 4:45 when Danielle and I were starving we went to buy Pringles and wait and Boomerang for everyone else. So we sat there, ordered Fanta and nan [flat bread with cheese or sliced tomatoes or whatever – awesome] and talked. Then Dan and Garrett pulled up next door in a boat, so Danielle ran over there and told them to go back to the hotel and get everyone else.  We ordered nan for everyone. We had a sort team meeting at the Boardwalk, then split up for “bar ministry.” So... went to Club Amsterdam first. ___ and I played pool. If it would have been ___ instead of ___ I would have ordered alcohol. Damn it! I get my once chance to drink legally, and we have the stupid pledge the whole time we’re here. Sucks! After that we wandered around, eventually to another bar further down the road toward the refugee camp. Played cards there... Went back to hotel at like 10:15 or so. This morning we met at 9, went to the immigration office at 10 and waited there for an hour or more to get trekking permits. Finally got them, one to trek and one to enter the Annapurna Conservation Area.  Anyway, kinda tired of being here.... I’m looking forward to looking back on this trip. 15:47 7/10/99 – Saturday – Evening Today, got up at 5:30, annoyed because Jimmy had been up since 4:30 and kept waking me up too. Went to the bus station at 6:00 and took that almost to Baglung (I think). Ate lunch there, then took a Jeep to Beni. It was 12:30 when we got to Beni, so we decided to walk further. At 4:45 we got to Tiplyang, and we have a nice guest house. The trek was hard, but it was easier mentally when I was in the front. Otherwise it’s fun walking with the middle of the pack as long as we can see the leaders in front of us. One time we got slowed way down in the middle. After that I just stuck to the front. 7/11/99 – Sunday – 13:30 Need to take more pictures. Gonna carry my camera in my pocket or something. Some stupid canine followed us for the last hour, and Garrett keeps chasing it out of our guest house. We stay in small villages, but it’s still in the middle of no where. Might go walk around a little. Could feel good without a bag on my back. We had mosquito netting last night. It worked pretty well, a little cage tucked in around the mattress, hanging from the ceiling. No such luck for tonight, but we’re leaving our windows closed to keep the mosquitoes out. Cost Rs. 40 [forty Nepali Rupees] per bed to stay here tonite. We ate a good lunch today in Tatopani – mushroom pizza again :). It was pretty bad imitation of pizza, but on the whole it didn’t taste bad. The sauce was tomato soup, and there wasn’t a whole lot of cheese or mushroom on it. The best is still the Billy Bunter restaurant in Pokhara. I think the mushrooms there combined with Northfield’s crust, sauce and cheese would be the absolute best. Maybe I should rate the pizzas. Nah, don’t think I could remember every place I’ve had it. 14:20 7/12/99 – Monday – Morning  Dan, Jimmy and I wandered off by the Kali Gandaki. We played around for awhile, then decided to push a boulder into the river. It took like 3 hours, but it was fun, and we have pix to prove it. Felt good to be clean yesterday. I just put on my wet and disgusting trekking shirt. Feels like crap. Got a backrub after supper. Felt so good – might have to be a nightly ritual. Hard climb today. Going up like 1100 or 1200 meters. Going to be a suck. But we can handle it. Had plenty of rest. Jimmy still woke me up while it was still dark though. 16:00 7/13/99 – Tuesday – Lunch   It’s been pretty flat, especially since the river is low so we can walk along it. Flora has changed, pine trees and shrubs now. It’s been kinda sunny, but not too hot.  ___ talks incessantly. Been in the middle of the pack most of the time, usually right behind Garrett. Saw a huge mountain [Tukche Peak] right in front of us when we left this morning.    Played cards all night yesterday, never got a backrub =(. 16:00  The guesthouse is really nice – garden, American sit-your-freakin’-ass-down toilet, and a warm shower. There aren’t mosquitoes here, it’s too dry and high. We kinda got out of the gorge, or at least the deep part. It looked like Arizona after that – brown hills spotted with green shrubbery and occasional pine trees. Sunny too, the clouds are lower, but not hot, cuz it’s a high desert. It was a pretty flat walk, and I woulda gone on to Jomsom, but this is cool. We’re here at the same time as a couple of Londoners, with great accents and all – 2 guys. Got a little burned today, but not bad at all. Kinda random thoughts in my journals lately. Oh well. I’m looking forward to a regular routine at school, although this is fun. People pay lots of $ to do this. Of course, I’m flat broke – actually, in debt – also, but who cares? Might go walk around this town and take some pictures. It’s a cool place. Saw another peak (actually 2) [two peaks of Nilgiri] right after lunch.   So beautiful, white, pure, high. This place is beautiful too, but it’s brown, dirty, and low. This is actually the cleanest town I’ve seen, however. Must be cuz it’s dry.  7/14/99 – Wednesday – 7:04  Another clear day today – it’s so beautiful here. Just have to watch out for sunburn. After the meeting we played Spades, with 4 teams of 2, using 3 decks. I left after one hand and came back here and read a little. 8:16 Here are my current thoughts on everyone: [I’ll spare you, the reader, and my teammates.] [Then I listed a bunch of altitudes I think I had
converted to feet from the meters on the map. Some of them are a little off,
according to Wikipedia.] 11:00?  Planning on leaving tomorrow for Kagbeni. I hope to trek to Kaisang and back this afternoon, maybe 5 hours. We’re trying to decide whether to go for the Thorung La or not. It’s not much further than Muktinath, but we’re worried about altitude sickness. The med kit we have says you can get sick over 2500 meters, and we’re at 2713 right now. Thorung La is 5416. We want to hit one pass though, whether it’s Thorung La or not, and they’re all pretty close. Mesokanto is a day from here, at 5315. And Thupa would be a day trek from Tukche, at 5250. We’ll see what happens. 7/15/99 – Thursday – 6:10   Everyone at home is gonna be like, “So, you’re in Nepal. Of course there are mountains.” But its so cloudy that it’s a treat to see any of them. We’re splitting up today, not too happy about that. Khogen, Tracy and Danielle are going to Kagbeni, then Muktinath tomorrow. The rest of us (6) are going straight to Muktinath. That gives us an extra day to acclimatize there before we go for the Thorung La. Last night none of us could sleep cuz dogs kept barking, and when I woke up at 12 or 1 I thought I shouldn’t be going to Thorung La, and I was trying to decide. But now I’m not so sure; I was kinda delirious at the time. Really, really wish Danielle and Tracy were coming with us today. I can get bored and irritated really quickly w/o them. I dunno about our intelligence in trying the Thorung La. We’re going in groups of 2, so if someone gets AMS that group goes back. It’s Jimmy and Dan, Jeremy and Heather, and Garrett and I. It’s going to be a hard day. So is today, so we’ll see how we do today. 8:00  15:00  I’m back. Took a shower. Part of it is $. Another part, I’m sure, is that we’re not going to climb any higher than Muktinath. That really disappoints me, even though it just came up a couple days ago. Another part is that we have 3 weeks left, with basically nothing to do. Basically from the day after tomorrow we’re on our way home. We trek down, bus to Pokhara, hang our for a week, fly to KTM, hang out, and fly home. Yesterday I forgot to write about our afternoon trek. I wanted to walk to Kaisang, SE of Jomsom, on the way to the Mesokanto Pass. Jeremy wanted to come with, so we took off. We only had 2 hours, though, cuz lunch came late. So we just decided to walk for an hour and turn around. We walked for 45 mins, got on the wrong trail, and it was dangerous. Shale path on the side of the hill with high winds. Then Jeremy wanted to climb a hill, so we started up. I’ve never been scared so badly in my life. I honestly thought several times I was gonna die there. It was not steep, but it was all shale, and it broke off easily. We climbed up and down in a half hour, then walked back. I bought a book of 100 O Henry stories yesterday. It’s got some good stuff. Staying at the Annapurna Guest House, and it’s pretty nice. Hot showers cost $, but there are attached baths with each room. Lunch took 2 hours, cuz only one girl was working. The rest are in the fields. Some people want to get horses (Rs. 500) or porters (200) for tomorrow’s trek. I think that would be stupid. 7/16/99 – Friday – Morning It’s drizzling here. I thought it didn’t rain up this high, but it’s been cloudy and wet all night. Hope it clears up for the day. It’ll be more comfortable, and we’ll have a better view. 7/17/99 – Saturday – 6:30 7:35   That was tough, but then it leveled out near Khingar and Jarkot. Stopped in Karkot for awhile. I just sat there, the rest got drinks. I’ve kinda sworn off pop for awhile. We were expecting another 2 hours to Muktinath, but it turned out to be 30-45 mins. I think we made good time. We checked into the Hotel North Pole, which actually had 24-hour electricity. We got a double for Danielle and a triple for the rest of us. Before we checked in we went to the checkpoint, and some British guys came up right behind us. They ended up at the North Pole too, so we talked to them a bit. Another 2 Brits came after them. They had all gone over the Thorung La yesterday. We ate lunch, then walked to the monastery, where fire, earth and water come together. It’s a Hindu and Buddhist Mecca. But it actually wasn’t very nice.  We couldn’t find the fire, which was supposed to be a natural gas vent that continuously burned. Then we figured out that the candles behind a window were the eternal flame [as I wrote in the margin a couple days later, this is not true. There really is a small natural gas vent that burns constantly – we just never found it].  Danielle went back to the hotel, then we walked toward the Thorung La. The police checkpoint is no big deal, and I think we could have done the pass with our permits. We checked in, but our permits let us go past that point cuz it’s in the middle of Muktinath. There’s no other checkpoint until the other side of the pass. Jimmy and I climbed a hill, just so we could say we hit 4000 m. (the temple was at 3800 m.) We got back at 16:00 and ordered dinner for 18:30 and breakfast for 7:00. Then we sat here for 2 hours waiting for dinner.   We walked around a little after dark, then talked in Danielle’s room for a while. She was a little nervous so she, Jeremy and I went downstairs and played Spades. Went to bed about 9:30. We all slept ok. Got up at 6, talked to the porter for a while, ate breakfast, Jeremy witnessed to the porter, and now I’m journaling. That’s pretty much all. Feel pretty good about today’s walk down. I like having only 4 people. Wish we were gone longer from the group. I don’t think I’m going to like the trip down, cuz we’ve already been over that ground. Wish we could fly from Jomsom; much rather do that than Pokhara-KTM. 8:02 12:15  We burned down the hill for awhile, but then we got to a river that had swollen since we came up to Kagbeni. Jimmy and Danielle went across with shoes on, and they were wet after that. I kinda fell in once and got all dirty. That kinda slowed us down. But we still got here in 4 hours. The govt. abolished trekking permits 5 days ago, so we could have gone through Thorung La and into Upper Mustang. Sux. [Thorung La, yes; Mustang, no. That area remains closed, though it’s easier to get a permit now.] 7/18/99 – Sunday – 16:00? First we tried the north fork. We got stuck and turned around. Then we tried the south fork, including a trail that seemed to head up to the top, thinking maybe we were at the 2nd fork. Dan got really wet when he did a spin move in the middle of the river. Finally we saw other people, and they pointed us to a trail that led up the ridge between the two forks (turned out we were at the first split). It was a hell of a hill, and it took some balls to climb. I led a lot of the time. We finally got to where we could see a city, and correctly guessed it was Kaisang. We could also see the correct trail on the other side of the huge gorge. The trail we were on only led to a Nepali Army Mountain Training school, which Dan knew was at 13-some thousand feet. The base blocked our trail, so we turned back. It was a good time. We stayed on the bigger, and that gave us a flatter route over the ridge, but we still had the same steep decline. Halfway back we stopped and had snacks, as well as taking pictures in our underwear.  Just as we got done with the pix a guy started up the hill, so we quickly got dressed. Walked back to Jomsom and took a shower. I was kinda disappointed about flying. I really wanted to trek back, and was prepared for it (we still might have to if it’s cloudy for 2 more days). I really wasn’t excited about it, but I wanted to persevere and do it. Wasn’t at all disappointed about today – I wasn’t expecting to make it at all, though it would have been cool. Little sore though, so I probably won’t try to do it tomorrow. Hope the sky clears to the plane can come. 19:33 7/19/99 – Sunday [Actually Monday] – 18:40  Tracy, Dan and Khogen went in the 2nd plane. Was about a 20-30-minute flight, and we got in at 7:55 or so. Staying at a new guesthouse, across the street from Boardwalk. Feel some real tension within the team. Should be the easiest part of our trip, these last *18 days*, but I think this will be the hardest time as a team. We really haven’t dealt with a whole lot [of our issues]. Ate lunch at the Billy Bunter and watched the final of the Copa America futbol tourney. Going back in a few mins to see Wild, Wild West. It only came out two weeks ago =). Tracy’s birthday today. Heather got everyone else to go together and buy a disgusting cake. Cake had a buttery substance for frosting. Ate cake and steak at Everest, and I had a terrible cut of meat. I feel our team has grown apart. I finally shaved today. Contemplated trimming it and leaving it on, but decided I didn’t want the tan lines. I think I looked older though. Guitar is back =) but one string broke in storage. Tried to find a shop today, but didn’t see one. Just have to play like that for now. Hate the climate here. Feel grosser after 20 mins here than I did after 2 rough days by Jomsom. Lots of tourists here too. Two of the Brits from Muktinath flew here right after us, and they’re staying by the dam or something. Maybe we’ll run into them. Flying back Sunday now, so we’ll be in KTM longer. 7/21/99 – Wednesday – 9:00 7/22/99 – Thursday – 21:45 7/23/99 – Friday – 22:15  We started out strong – a beautiful cross from the right corner by myself, and Jimmy with the goal. Then one by Garrett. Then they picked it up. I had a better personal game and lots of fun. We lost 7-4 in 2 15-minute halves. Went to supper at Once Upon a Time, and stayed to watch Payback. Danielle didn’t watch, but she sat there and read Newsweek.... Anyway, church tomorrow morning. Don’t wanna go, since I hate Nepali church, being an English speaker myself who can’t sit on the floor for shit. 12 days left. 7/24/99 – Saturday – 9:45  I think I have the basic idea of a story to write. In the unfamiliar streets of Kathmandu, I go shopping for Pringles. I step over the Buddhist shopkeeper; she slaps me [stepping over someone or pointing the sole of one’s foot at them is insulting and degrading]. I apologize; she laughs. I go to sit down on a box; she yells at me for sitting on her idol. I apologize again, buy my Pringles, and say thanks. As I walk out, she uncovers the box and turns it on. “Free Falling” pours out of the speakers. The streets seems more unfamiliar. It has its basis in truth, the lady in Jomsom at the One Stop Shop. She slapped and yelled at Dan and played “Free Falling” when I walked out with Pringles one time. I don’t think the idol and the stereo were the same thing, but they have to be, since that’s the point of the story. Hotel Norbu Linka To the tune of “Hotel California”, lyrics by Jimmy Simpson. On a hot desert pathway Cool wind in my hair Warm smell of Tibetan bread Rising up through the air Up ahead in the distance There’s a huge wall of stairs My legs grew heavy and my heart grew weak As my cheap backpack tears There she stood in the doorway I heard the Nepali yell And I was thinking too myself “What on earth is she trying to sell?” Then she pulled out some cold drinks Cuz it was a hot Jomsom day There were voices down the corridor I thought I heard them say “Welcome to the Hotel Mona Lisa Such a lovely place Such a lovely place There's plenty of room at the Hotel Mona Lisa Any time of year You can find it here” My head is definitely sweating I got my bandana I could sure use a milkshake now Chocolate banana How they quack in the courtyard The strange Nepali “chuck” Part of it is a chicken The other part is a duck So I call to the waiter Dhai, bring me a drink He said, “We haven’t had Pineapple Fanta here Since 1993” And still those mosquitoes are buzzing not far away Wake you in the middle of the night I thought I hear Jeremy say “I wish we were all at the Hotel Norbu Linka What a bad surprise What a bad surprise There’s plenty of room at the Hotel Norbu Linka Any time of year You can find it there” Cockroaches on the ceiling There’s Coke, but there’s no ice And we said “We are all just tourist here Of the Christian type” And in the crowded streets of Thamel They offer you hashish You can stab them with your Ghorka knives But you just can’t kill the beast Last thing I remember We returned to Kathmandu Our cash supply was running a little low So we stayed at someplace new “Relax,” said the bellboy “I’m not one to deceive You can check out any time you like And in one week you’ll leave” |
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Nepal Trek |
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