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Mark Moxon's Annapurna Circuit Experience (Stage 1)
Initially I was less concerned with getting AMS1 and more
worried about an old friend. On the fourth day into the trek I felt a familiar
stirring in my stomach, got those old eggy-belch blues, and realised that good
old giardia had come back.
I took an extra day loafing around feeling miserable, before
managing to walk up to the village of Chame where the hospital – a rickety old
building rather mysteriously perched on top of a steep hill that would put off
all but the most determined of the sick – gave me a week's course of
metronidazole, the third drug I'd end up using to try to kill off the bastard
(the other two being Secnil and Flagyl).
The metronidazole certainly seemed to work, stopping the
symptoms, but it had the added side effect of knocking me out; metronidazole is
firmly in the 'don't operate machinery' category, and as the week's course
lasted until just over the pass, I spent a lot of the ascent buzzing from
something other than altitude.
We also lost Jakob to a mysterious stomach illness, and heard
plenty of other stories of people getting ill on the trek. For some reason the
Annapurna area is home to a bewildering array of nasty ailments, and this is
why I class the track as difficult: trekking with a dodgy stomach and AMS is a
bloody nightmare. And irrespective of whether you get trekker's stomach or AMS,
the high altitude means you get out of breath after just a few steps and have
to rest a ridiculous amount. It makes the hardcore trekkers quite depressed:
hills they would normally conquer before breakfast take all morning to walk up,
however strong they are at sea level. Man just wasn't meant to fly.
But the trek is well worth all this medical trauma. From the
lush lakeside town of Pokhara you travel along valleys that become increasingly
steep and desolate as the altitude lowers the temperature and the treeline
approaches. Every day the huge peaks of the various ranges lean closer and
closer, looming over tiny settlements where houses are cobbled together out of
yak dung and shaky cement.
On the Track
Sights along the way are uniquely Nepalese. Lines of grey
donkeys wend their way along the thin footpaths, each decorated with garish
bridles and low-toned bells, swiftly followed by wiry men wielding split sticks
and yelling, 'Ho!' A little boy points cow eyes up at us as he points to his
badly cut toe, which we dutifully clean and bandage, suggesting to him in
English that he really should wear some shoes while it heals, a piece of
medical advice that disappears into the language barrier. Further along the
trail is the town of Bagarchap, home to two disasters of recent memory: a
landslide that destroyed the town in November 1995, taking a number of trekkers
and locals with it to whom there are memorials dotted around the town; and my
explosion of giardia. Here the locals are still rebuilding what once must have
been a beautifully picturesque little town, and I spent a recuperative
afternoon riveted to the veranda table watching the women carry huge baskets of
stones on their heads as the men broke up massive boulders into smaller, more
manageable rocks for rebuilding their porch; throughout the whole job the
workers smiled, laughed and joked in a way that's worryingly absent from the
western workplace of today.
And if I thought my backpack was a little too heavy as we
scratched our way up yet another steep mountain path, Nepalese porters kept
plying up and down the track carrying incredible weights in baskets suspended
on their backs by a strap around the forehead, supporting the whole weight with
their neck muscles. I thought the porters in Indonesia were pretty impressive,
but the Nepalese are even more iron willed. The amazing energy of the locals is
most apparent in the hotels and footpaths that form the Annapurna Circuit.
Gaping yawns in the mountains have been filled with row upon row of flat rocks
to form pathways; sheer granite cliffs have been chipped away or blown up to
give a clear passage; stone steps have been set into the mountain sides to ease
the ascents and descents; suspension bridges arc across steep-sided gorges from
towers built from rock and cement. But the hotels are even more amazing, with
their restaurants, dormitories and hot shower systems; although the food is
pretty lame compared to places like Pokhara and Bangkok, it's a refreshing
change to have to live on a potato and porridge diet after such a long
love-hate relationship with rice and noodles.
Actually, the impressive thing about the food isn't so much
the taste, it's the fact that so many ingredients have to be carried in. There
are no roads around the area, and yet hotels manage to feed up to 70 hungry
mouths at a time, which might not make that potato soup the most thrilling
culinary experience in the cosmos, but it does deserve a round of applause. I
still fantasized about steak and beer and had to make do with a lot less, but
it had to be better than the awful crud I normally cook for myself on the
trail. Another interesting result of the porters carrying everything in is that
prices go up as you get further away from Pokhara. That Mars bar you paid Rs40
for in Kathmandu is Rs80 just before the pass; a cup of hot lemon from the last
tea house before the pass, shivering well above the snowline, will set you back
a princely Rs40 compared to Rs5 down at more atmospheric restaurants; plain
rice rockets from Rs10 to Rs50, because it's so heavy to carry; even Coke, the
universal price index, leaps from Rs15 to Rs60, which sounds outrageous until
you consider how far it's had to travel.
This price change seems to mirror the trip itself; the pass
is such a momentous occasion that the Circuit naturally falls into the days
before the pass, and the days after the pass. As you approach the pass the
prices go up, the temperature goes down, the trees shrink and eventually
disappear, the snow gets closer, the air gets thinner and the landscape gets
bleaker and bleaker. By the time you reach the first acclimatisation town,
Manang at 3535m (11597 ft), life is getting harder: mild AMS, which affects
most people at this stage, creates an ache at the base of the neck, makes
breathing more difficult and walking up the street a serious exercise, and the
temperature at night means sleeping is that much more unpleasant.
I found that a major portion of my AMS paranoia was taken up
with a serious increase in cynicism: I began to have a major problem with
walkers who weren't in my small list of Excellent People (though, of course, I
kept this to myself). The silly Canadian whose Calgary accent made my eyes roll
to the ceiling and my air-starved lungs let out an exasperated sigh; the
know-it-all Englishman who came up with useless idiocies such as, 'I've had
giardia three times and all I do is miss a meal and it goes away,' and who
earned the nickname Jesus from the other walkers, a sarcastic comment on his
seeming omniscience; the Squeaky American who reminded me of that pathetic
character in Police Academy; the girls from North Carolina who didn't know the
rules of chess ('Tell me y'all, how many of these liddle pahwns do y'all start
with, now?') and who had an incredible lack of knowledge when it came to
accents of the rest of the world ('Are y'all Australian?' 'No, ve are from
Germany'); the doped-out American college student who kept exclaiming how cool
the Diamox hit was, buzzin' fingertips 'n' all, man; the insane Rasputin clone
from Switzerland with his zany sense of humour2; they all made me think of a
particularly far out episode of the Twilight Zone.
But there was one thing that bound all of us together,
weirdoes and cynics alike, and that was the continuing group psychosis. As
mentioned, AMS was by far the most popular subject, but other obsessions
cropped up with increasing regularity: the height of the current town (in
dispute because every map has a different figure on it); the times for walking
a certain portion of the track (also at variance, depending on your source);
the quality of the food; the pros and cons of Ibuprofen as an
anti-inflammatory; the advantages of a genuine Gore-Tex jacket over a fake one
from Kathmandu; the amazing price of a pot of coffee in that last village; the
best way to treat blisters; and so on and so on. You can approach anyone on the
Annapurna Circuit and enter into an instant conversation on aches, pains,
drugs, food and gradients, but try to delve too deeply into politics or
finances and you'll soon find yourself drifting back to the subjects of aches,
pains, drugs, food and, let's not forget, gradients...
The local culture, tainted though it obviously is, changes
markedly through the different regions too. From the touristy lower regions of
the east side and the rugged wind-ravaged desolation of the northern reaches to
the holiday-home mentality of the Jomsom track on the west of the pass, it's
possible to peer into a way of life that is as authentic as Schrödinger's cat:
your very investigation changes things. The monasteries dotted around the
valleys dispense Buddhist and Hindu blessings to walkers, be they Indian sadhus
or Australian accountants, and although the gompas are undeniably authentic,
their collections of dusty Dalai Lama pictures and meditating Buddha statues
ensure a continuous tourist trade, fired up by the antics of Richard Gere and a
continuing mysticism surrounding Tibet.
I was blessed in two gompas, once in Braga on the east side
of the pass, and once in Muktinath just after the pass, and although it was a
fascinating insight into the surreal nature of the eastern religions – idolatry
meets nihilism – it felt like I was encroaching on territory reserved for true
believers. As the mumbling monk in Braga chanted mantras that sounded more like
the contented sighs of an old man sitting by the fire, the prayer wheels
whirled and the incense smouldered, but did the wisdom of Lord Buddha fill me
with foreknowledge of the passage through the pass, for which I was receiving
blessing? And did the whirling dances of the Hindu priest in Muktinath make the
whole experience of puja any less theatrical? Of course not: I watched,
listened, washed myself in the 108 taps round the temple (a guarantee of going
to heaven, by the way), received the forehead markings and ate the crystalline
sugar, and left with pictures rather than puja. Even the eternal flame of
Muktinath turned out to be a scientific event: natural gas escapes through a
vent that's always lit, not so much a Light that Never Goes Out as a Gas Bill
that Never Gets Charged.
Over the Top
For crossing the pass I teamed up with Bob and Sheldon: the
Canadian girls had forged on a day ahead, but we wanted to take our time
acclimatising and stayed longer at lower altitudes. Jakob had already fallen by
the wayside, but apart from that we'd managed to make a good team, and as such
we'd been bouncing the paranoia off each other like a prism magnifying
sunlight. By the time the altitude reached the point of AMS, I was riding high
on a wave of hypochondria.
We'd done our acclimatisation walks, where you walk 200m or
so higher than the place where you will sleep, thus aiding the metabolic
changes that need to take place in acclimatisation (such as lowering body acid
levels, which means excessive urination as the acids are flushed out; an
expansion of lung volume and a deepening of lung capacity; and a loss of
appetite followed by slight nausea). But nothing prepared me for the sheer
panic of altitude that made my last night on the east side a nightmare to
remember.
It is simply freezing up there on the side of the pass.
Sunlight helps, but as soon as the sun dips below the horizon the temperature
shoots below freezing. Snowfall is not uncommon, and winds whistling through
the cracks are a common feature. AMS, by this stage, has become a familiar
friend, the slow pale throb of white noise at the back of your head, a migraine
in the making, threatening to turn into something more serious at any time;
appetite has all but disappeared, and every meal time is a struggle against
instinct; simply walking up a short flight of stairs is an exercise in
breathing steadily and resting frequently; and dehydration from the diuretic
effect of acclimatisation takes its toll, especially late at night as the
symptoms get worse. On my last night before the pass, up at around 4400m in
Thorung Phedi, I slipped into sheer misery.
Tossing and turning, fully clothed and stuffed into my
sleeping bag, I froze my way through a dreamscape of confused and contradictory
images. In glorious Technicolor I dreamed I had severe AMS and had to be taken
down to the next town on the back of a donkey while the headache split my skull
and I was copiously sick, despite my low food intake. I woke up in the nearest
approximation to a cold sweat that you can have in sub-zero temperatures, and
spent the rest of the short night dreading the crossing and dreaming of home.
We set off at 5.40am, Sheldon, Bob and I shuffling slowly
through the snow onto the roof of the world. We had all popped a Diamox pill,
the recommended prophylactic and treatment for AMS, and I assume it helped: we
all managed to get over the top without incident (if you ignore the severe
shortages of breath, a nasty headache in my case and a general malaise caused
by high altitude exertion) and although the views of the top of the range and
the surrounding landscapes were unique and unlike anything I've ever
experienced – the silence on a snow-smothered summit is eerie, to say the least
– the effort was severe. Was it worth it?
Of course it was. I learned what it is like to exist in an
environment that makes every rule of existence seem like a vindictive
headmaster's revenge. Breathing is constantly laboured, mealtime becomes a
psychological trauma, the head aches in cycles from dawn to dusk, sleep
patterns are ravaged, toiletry functions become more insistently regular than
after the five-beer mark, and conversation becomes truly one-track: AMS, AMS,
AMS. Then there are the ailments of snow blindness (you have to wear sunglasses
constantly to avoid becoming blind, literally), windburn (lips and nose
beware), sunburn (the sun is distressingly close up there), muscle strain (from
carrying a bloody pack up to 5416m) and trekker's knee (from the long, long descent).
But nearly everyone makes it, and the sense of achievement is totally different
from exploring rainforests or trudging deserts. When I finally collapsed in
Muktinath on the west side of the path, I swore I'd never do anything like that
again. I probably lied.
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