Day 5 Annapurna Circut

Timang to Chame for lunch and then on to Dhukur Pokhari

It's snowing in Temang, Nepal and it's not supposed to snow here! We've basically been hiking through a high dessert.

Today was a long day.  We ended up hiking 22km making good progress on our loop.  However to hike 300km in 14 days means about 22km per day.  We did it today, but it was easy tramping. Yessi is quite tired and we're just now getting up into the mountains.  So I'm looking at options of how we can truncate the end of our hike if we need to.  This would be a back up plan which affords us the time to safely get over Throng La Pass and still catch our return flight, if necessary.

dbMule and Freestyle trying to stay warm.

This morning we woke up to snow.  I'm told it seldom snows this low, yet here it is.  There was a woman next door in her house, standing on her patio, filming the snow with her phone.  I'm guessing she hadn't seen snow very often in this village.  All of the villagers were packing up their tables and chairs.

dbBrad and Yessi drawing another Heart for Heart On the Trail, a fundraiser I started along the PCT (Pacific Crest Trail, 2650 miles trail from Mexico to Canada)

By the time we finished our breakfast of porridge and rice pudding, there was a dusting of snow covering the ground.  Yessi didn't feel well and certainly it was cold and a bit scary headed into these mountains with snow coming down.  Perhaps the food was bad or perhaps she was nervous but she threw up her breakfast.  She seemed to recover quickly.  She is a tough woman and though I know she was working her body harder than ever before and perhaps more exhausted than I realized, she was driven to keep up and complete the loop and she never wavered on  her commitment.

dbBrad drawing another Freestyle Heart, in Nepal and in the Snow for HeartOnTheTrail.

Yessi modeling her TuTwo gear (poles, Jacket shell, Backpack, hiking poles, gloves and hiking pants) and holding a TuTwo company flag.  A genuine mascot for outdoor adventuring Chinese women and also for TuTwo.

We departed around 8:30 into the snowy landscape.  At this point we were both wearing most of our clothes.  I was wondering how we were going to finish this loop if it's already snowing down this low.  We still have a long way to hike with a lot of elevation gain left.  It made me think what Yessi must be thinking, with no previous experience and a guide (me) who had already walked 4400 km this year.

dbBrad and Yessi along the Annapurna Trail

Once we got moving, the snow wasn't so bad.  Kind of surreal.  We arrived at Chame for lunch.  Chame is a larger town with many amenities and stores.  It's the last opportunity to exchange money, to purchase gear one might need, and to access the internet.  We didn't like it much though as  we were more attracted to the smaller villages that are less commercialized.  With commercialization comes the demise of culture and the advent of corruption.  The bigger the town, the faster the pace and the more aggressive the sales pitch from store owners to hustlers.

This is a construction site where you definitely want to wear a hard hat! I suspect OSHA means nothing in Nepal!

We hiked on as soon as possible.  It was still snowing but there were patches of blue sky here and there revealing 7000 meter mountains in the distance beyond 5000-6000 meter foothills (or are they meter hills!?).  By now there were a couple of inches of snow on the ground which had transformed the terrain into a winter wonderland. As beautiful as it was, the snow reinforced the notion that it was cold outside and now it looked cold outside too.

One of the many temples along the PCT!!
Just kidding, this is in Nepal!

We arrived at Dhukure Pokhari just before dusk and found a nice little spot with a fireplace in the dining room.  The owner was playing cards with friends, which was apparently more important than serving us.  As it turns out, they were and she was very focused on the game.  They all sat, with children at their sides, on mats on the floor by the fireplace.  All the tables were empty, except the one we sat at.

dbBrad and Yessi going under an ornate building. Walking under/through this was magical.  To think it's been here for hundreds if not thousands of years and it was built for absolutely no reason other than to make this spot special, to mark it, and to celebrate this moment along the trail.  I think when we build gates and arbors we're trying to accomplish the same sense of passage, but with far less success.

We took this time to have a shower.  Well, not really a shower since all the water lines were frozen, but we did have warm water in a bucket.  We each had about one gallon of hot water in a outhouse like building with a concrete floor.  There was ice on the floor from residual water earlier in the day.  So we stood, shivering on the ice, in a room that was below freezing, using a towlet and very little water to clean ourselves.  We dried off as quickly as possible and put our clothes on and then went back into the dining room hoping to get warm.  It never happened.

One of the longer prayer wheel structures so frequently found along the trail.

Our dining room for the night with the barrel stove and our allotment of fire wood . I wonder if there are three sticks per person and if there had been 10 people we would have had 30 sticks and been nice and warm.  As it was, we made do with the 6 pieces we had!

Nepalese buildings are made of whatever is available, usually stone.  Though they have glass in the windows, they are far from air tight.   Not even close.  Fire wood is precious and used sparingly. So it's cold.  In a large room with many windows there are lots of drafts.  Even with a small fire, the room holds no heat.  If you want to capitalize on the warmth it's best be very close to the fireplace.

When our host finished her card game, she then turned her focus to us and cooked us one of the best meals we have had yet.  We both liked her quite a bit.  She was kind, worked hard, spoke almost no English but took great care of us.  She even brought us two more sticks (about 24" long and less than 2" in diameter) for the fire.

The fireplace was a simple drum turned on its side, with a door jerry rigged on the front side and a series of pipes and coffee cans making the flu.  Because all the fire wood is gathered where available, often several kilometers from town and because it's all hand chopped with Kukri knifes (machete like) they tend to minimize the cuts and harvest smaller but longer wood.  Thus longer sticks and horizontal  fireplaces.

dbBrad, Freestyle finishing a year of tramping in Nepal.  Having first completed the Te Araroa, then the PCT, Nepal with it's snowy peaks is icing on the cake!

We retired as soon as our meal was over to a corner room with great views.  We could see our breath in the room so we both crawled into our sleeping bags with all our clothes on.  We never did get warm again after our ice bath and Yessi was feeling ill again.  I was beginning to wonder if we were going to be able to complete our loop.

Seeing this donkey in traditional Nepalese garb informs me as to why the busses are so heavily decorated.  It's all part of the culture.

The two of us all too often wondered how to take photos of TuTwo! To-day we took too many perhaps, but we felt we needed to, for TuTwo! 图途（厦门）户外用品有限公司

Here are some of our shots with the TuTwo company flag.  Yessi works for GreenGiant, a shoe company that comped us each a pair of boots.  GreenGiant has a close connection with the retail chain TuTwo that sells outdoor gear.  One of my dreams is to help turn TuTwo into a series of stores resembling Wander on Whidbey and to do product consulting for them.  Parts of this blog and many of our photos will be in their up and coming publications focusing on outdoor adventures and gear.

Yessi 叶婵with TuTwo 图途（厦门）户外用品有限公司flag testing TuTwo outdoor gear.

Yessi Ye of TuTwo 图途（厦门）户外用品有限公司. outdoor gear manufacture and retailer. 從我的 iPhone 傳送

Yessi 叶婵with TuTwo 图途（厦门）户外用品有限公司 flag

dbBrad with TuTwo 图途（厦门）户外用品有限公司flag on top of a monument in Nepal.  Yessi 叶婵and I are here hiking and testing TuTwo and GreenGiant outdoor gear.

TuTwo   叶婵

And the best shot of the Annapurna Circuit trip with dbBrad and Yessi showing amazing 8000m mountains, blue sky, snow on the ground, prayer flags, 叶婵 Tibetan Guide and a TuTwo flag.  All gear pictured from TuTwo 图途（厦门）户外用品有限公司and GreenGiant.


图途简介

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