Nepalese hospitality helps along the route less travelled
Rugged terrain overcome during journey down Great Himalaya Trail
I was shivering, badly. The frost had gradually covered the fly of my tent, and then crept into the vestibule until finally it covered my sleeping bag. I groaned and rolled over, yet it wasn’t the cold that was bothering me. My headache had picked up in intensity from a mild throb to the equivalent of someone tapping a nail through my skull. I couldn’t deny it anymore — I had altitude sickness.
With only one course of action available, I groggily left my sleeping bag, packed my backpack, stumbled out of my tent and began making a hasty retreat down Kala Patar while Everest loomed over me. I arrived at Gorek shep at 1 a.m., stumbled into the first trekking lodge I encountered and fell asleep on the nearest available floor space, barely unrolling my sleeping bag beforehand.
I was one month into hiking the Great Himalaya Trail (GHT) and I had already succumbed to altitude sickness. Unlike other long-distance backpacking trails, the GHT is more of a concept of travelling from one end of Nepal to the other than an actual trail. My objective was to walk from Everest to Annapurna on the trail.
Getting altitude sickness at the base of Everest was only one challenge in a three-month-long list of them.
Two weeks later, I left the Everest region and started walking off the beaten path through rural Nepal. Navigating became my primary activity, using a map, compass and usually a trial-and-error approach to finding the right trail.
In a single day I could hike down the wrong path, spend hours backtracking it, cross over a half-dozen trails, gingerly climb over a log jam, then crawl through bushes with stinging nettles whacking my face before finding the right trail.
Along the way, I encountered a claustrophobic jungle deemed “impossible to navigate” by locals. After two days of navigating, I emerged from the jungle confines only to find myself greeted with sheer cliffs and a narrow path across it. Crawling and scrambling down the increasingly restricting trail only resulted in me swearing at the top of my lungs before my nerves and sweaty palms failed me.
I backtracked across the cliffs through the claustrophobic jungle and circumnavigated the whole section by walking on the highway.
While retracing my steps through the jungle, I was flagged down by a man who (without speaking a common language) asked me to perform an impromptu operation on his daughter’s infected ear.
Using my first aid kit, multi-tool and feeling totally unqualified, I removed the earring that caused the infection, bandaged and disinfected the ear and gave the girl some biscuits before walking away feeling stunned at what just happened.
Yet my breaking point nearly came on the day when I woke up to my hotel wobbling from an earthquake. Feeling both literally and mentally shaken, my day was made worse when I got lost and tried to correct my mistake by whacking my way through the jungle bush. Immediately, I was swarmed by insects and nearly walked into a poisonous spider’s web.
The numerous challenges on the trail, however, were counterbalanced by the affection and hospitality of the Nepalese people. Locals would flag me down for tea and conversation. Occasionally, families would walk with me on the trail or invite me in for dinner. I would even roll out my sleeping bag on the clay floor of generous families. I was seeing a side of Nepal unfiltered by tourism where hard work, community and generosity permeated every settlement.
The locals even pulled me from disaster one evening as I arrived at Gosunkund Lake. Journeying to the lake was a bitter struggle as I ascended a 4,000-metre pass. Fatigue and diarrhea hampered my progress, but after five hours, I summited the pass and made my way down to Gosunkund Lake.
My visit to the lake would be brief, however. The fatigue I had experienced earlier was actually a symptom of altitude sickness. The other symptoms, including headache, loss of appetite and nausea quickly followed, leaving me lying in a trekking lodge like a sick dog. After quietly suffering for a couple hours, I knew I had to go downhill.
The lodge owners urged me to take a guide, yet I waved them off. I left the lodge, missed the path completely, wandered around in the dark for 10 minutes until the lodge owners called me back and insisted I take a guide. I sheepishly accepted the guide’s services, and together we walked downhill to the next lodge.
After 21/2 months of hiking, my pace began increasing. I was starting to run out of time before my flight would leave. The days became longer as I hiked as far as daylight would allow me. The evenings were filled with me studying maps, trying to find the quickest possible route. I walked along trekking trails, highways, dirt roads, game trails, sandy beaches and aquifers. I even waded across a river at one point.
Arriving at Pokhara, I stripped my bag of all unnecessary equipment and began the final leg of my journey to Annapurna base camp. My first aid kit then consisted of nothing more than duct tape and ibuprofen.
After another week of trekking, I turned a corner and stared in awe. Rugged snow-capped peaks at the entrance of a high mountain basin surrounded me. I had arrived at the sacred Annapurna sanctuary and the beauty of the landscape was amplified by the effort I had put in to make it there.
After three months of pursuing Annapurna, my visit was jubilant, yet brief. After only a one-hour visit at base camp I began making my way back to Pokhara. The rewards I felt during my journey occurred during the process, not the end.
I found that I was more persistent than I originally thought. Yet I was most affected by the hospitality and kindness of the people I encountered on the trail. The people who offered me food and shelter without hesitation have left me with a new level of trust towards strangers that I will take back to Canada.