What you’ll discover trekking to ABC (Part 2)

Full credit to you, Jarrod, if you read last week’s blog entry and have come back hungry for more.  It was pretty pictures, yes, but they came at a price, and that price was learning too much about your sister’s underwear and general hygiene.  (If you haven’t read last week’s blog on trekking to ABC, you can find the link here)

Anyway, without further ado, let the oversharing continue! Presenting what you’ll discover trekking to ABC, Part 2.

1) You’ll become comfortable with publicly declaring your toileting intentions

The tea houses you stay in, and most of the rest stops for morning tea/lunch/toilet breaks on the trek won’t supply you with loo roll so you have to carry your own at all times in your bag, and make peace with the fact that you have to walk to the WC armed with what you sense you are going to need for the ablution that’s about to unfold. Number 1, number 2, often it’s frankly a roll of the dice…

Sometimes you’ll be at a rest stop and a fellow trekker will pull out their loo roll and delicately tear off two or three tiny squares of paper to take in with them. Two or three squares!!  Are they arming themselves to go to the TOILET or about farewell a lover who’s boarding a 19th century steam liner to go to war, and need something to delicately dab away their tears? Two or three squares.  Do these people actually have functioning genitals??  I’m certainly not taking in two or three squares. In fact, the amount of loo roll I’m usually unfurling would have people wondering whether I’m going to the toilet or cheerleading trials that require pristine white pom poms.

And Jarrod, nothing quite says Out Of My Way– This Is About To Happen quite like someone rummaging in their day pack, rising from the lunch table and a carrying a whole toilet roll across the dining room.

2) You might be in the mountains, but there is always time to shop

As your stocks of toilet roll rapidly deplete, that’s valuable space in your pack my friend, for knitted goods! Fleece lined booties, fleece lined beanies, go nuts 🙂  Plus think of all the conversations you’ll have in the future where someone asks you where you got your beanie and you can respond faux nonchalantly “oh this? It’s from Nepal, I bought it 3000m up a mountain…”

3) There’s always the risk of serious injury

There are some days (alright, at least once every day!) where the going is rough and you’re not sure that you can go on.  Your quads and gluts and calves are screaming at you, and you don’t really care much for the language they’re using. You’re exhausted. You passed the end of your tether about two hours ago when you had to make your third river crossing on slippery rocks, and there is still four hours of more fucking stairs ahead of you.

And you’ll hear a rescue chopper chuf chuf chuf chuf chuf in the distance, and it’ll remind you that somewhere above you, there’s a trekker in way more strife than you. Maybe they’ve fallen and broken a bone. Maybe they’ve got HAPE– High Altitude Pulmonary Edema, and they can barely breathe and they’re coughing up frothy bloody sputum. Maybe they’ve got HACE– High Altitude Cerebral Edema and their brain has swelled with fluid and they’re in critical condition.

And you’ll think…..”that lucky bastard. Imagine not having to walk any more. That would be so sweet….”

4) You’re in Mother Nature’s House now, bitch! Her rules

Are you after a reminder of the fragility of your own existence, that you should make the most of this life, live every day as if it was your last because it could all be taken away from you at any moment? WELL GOOD! NEPAL HAS GOT YOU COVERED.

You’ve got to love walking into an arena casually signposted “Avalanche Risk Area.”

I wonder if the handmade, rough hewn nature of the sign is to soften the blow, so to speak.

We reach a point on this day where the track flattens out for about three hundred metres and it’s bliss. No stairs!  Ever the (unintentional) killjoy, our guide points at two huge rocks on the path– each roughly the size of a Hummer–and in the most indifferent tone imaginable, says “see those two rocks, they weren’t here ten days ago. Landslide.” Always good to be reminded that you don’t need to be climbing to a mountain peak to be at risk, you could just be ambling along, revelling in the joy of a flat stretch and be wiped out by a boulder like Wil-E-Coyote in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

5) Coming Down is the pits

I hate trekking downhill.  I hate it so, so, so, so, so much.  It’s hard on your quads. It’s hard on your knees. It’s hard on your concentration. It’s stressful when it’s over slippery rocks or shaley ground underfoot. And on the day you enjoy sunrise at Annapurna Base Camp, you have 27km of downhill trekking to do in one day.

The.

Worst.

Day.

Ever.

I’m actually convinced at some points that I have died back at ABC and I’m in hell, and hell is just one relentless goddamn downhill stretch after another after another for all of eternity. Rounding a bend hoping for a sweet plateau–NOPE, just another slippery section of downhill.

Basically, come prepared for the fact that psychologically, going up to Annapurna is excitement, anticipation, mystery.

Coming down is tedium, stress, and some pretty average bloody landscapes to boot. We have one day where it’s just hours upon hours of dirt road, with piles of rubble and rocks in the blazing sun. It almost breaks even the most optimistic of the group. Have your devices fully charged, have some music to pep you up or an audio book or podcast to distract you. Just be prepared that it’s really going to suck balls.

6) Smiles are always biggest when you reach your destination

You might almost faint twice on a downhill stretch and burst into unattractive, snotty tears when you get to the first rest stop. You might fight back more tears when you realise you’re only 10% of the way through the day’s trek.  There may be many times where you are utterly convinced that you aren’t going to make it because you physically don’t have anything more left in you… only you don’t have any choice but to grimly put one foot in front of the other, because there is no other way up or out.

It’s amazing though, the second wind you get when you finally sight your destination and know that clean(ish) clothes, tea and hot food await you.

7) You’ll fall in love with sunrises

I’m a person who loves her bed. We’re talking a minimum 3 snooze button hits before I emerge from under the covers. Yes, I could set my alarm for later and just sleep the extra 30 mins but then I wouldn’t be lying in bed and actively relishing BEING in bed.

But in Nepal, you knock on the door and tell me there’s a sunrise I should see? I’m up.

You tell me I need to be up at 4am in the dark to hike an hour and a half to the top of a hill for a sunrise that’s quite lovely? I’m up.

8) You would do it all again

In a heartbeat. It’s one of the most challenging but unforgettable things I have ever done in my life and I’d definitely go back. I may even be googling other Nepal trek options already…. #hooked

But have I sold it to you, Jarrod? When it’s all said and done, having read all the things you’ll discover–trekking ABC: Jarrod, would you go there?