On Top of the World #2

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The next part of our journey involved a several day long ascent which would culminate in crossing a mountain pass. The pass, called Thorung La, was a whopping 17,872 feet (5416 meters for all you Canadians out there…which brings up another point…why aren’t we on the metric system?) Anyway, the reason its important to go up slowly is that there is a real danger of altitude sickness – fluid leaking from the blood vessles into the brain and lungs which causes you to “drown” in a matter of hours. This is very easily preventable by taking it slow so we took our time meandering through medieval looking stone villages.

Most villages had a local temple, a “gompa”, which was filled spectacular frescoes, artwork and musical instruments. They were technically Buddhist, but one could tell from the artwork that there was a lot of Hindu influence.

The village of Manang, the biggest town on this side of the pass. According to Lonely Planet “Manang knows what trekkers dream about in their sleeping bags at night and they have it all”. They weren’t kidding. The first thing to greet our weary eyes was a shop window stuffed with all kinds of fresh pasteries. We were in heaven. We were also happily reunited with our friends Chris and Jessica who we had lost shortly after my boots.

There are two kinds of trekkers on the trail, those who have porters and those who don’t (a porter is someone who carries all your stuff for you). We were in the latter category, but we were astonished to come across a troupe from the British army who had 1 porter for every 2 men. Glad they’re not defending my country! They kind of became the running joke of the trail since all they seemed to have brought was booze and cricket equipment.

As we ascended it got colder and colder and we were thankful that we had invested in down jackets and sleeping bags even though it seemed silly at the time in blistering hot Kathmandu. It was all fog and rain and we held out crossing the pass for a few days in hopes of getting some sun so we could see those amazing views. Alas it was not to be and so when we couldn’t wait any longer, we crossed the pass in the snow.

The most difficult part was not actually crossing the pass, it was going down the other side, 5100 ft., 3 hours, straight down. We ended up in the town of Muktinath where there was a fabulous hotel that served pizza! Muktinath is one of the holiest cities in Nepal and pilgrims come from all over to visit and bathe in the 108 cow head water spouts. I collected some “holy water” in my water bottle and asked Patrick “if I purify this water is it still holy?” There is also an interesting phenomenon in that area which is a perpetual flame that burns off of natural gas.

This side of the pass was very different than the other side because it had a road. Although it was much more convenient and you didn’t have to hire people to carry supplies in, it lost something of the personal feel. We were also constantly being pushed off the trail by jeeps and we resented that.

There were a few rewards on this side: one was a town called Tatopani which had a major hotsprings, another was a pack of Langur monkeys and the best was a place called Poon Hill. To get to Poon Hill you had to make the biggest climb of the whole trek – 5600 ft. – but we finally had sun! We got an amazing panorama of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges. We were so happy that we had finally gotten to see our mountains that we decided to end on a high note and make that our last day.