Circling Mt. Annapurna

Circling Mt. Annapurna

 

25^th May to 9^th June 2024

 

 

One of the (pleasanter) outcomes of retirement for me has been the doubling of my trekking quota to twice a year. And, this May/June, I did the Annapurna Circuit – an anti-clockwise round around Mt. Annapurna (at 8,091 m the 10^th highest mountain in the world, known for its high fatality rate) in western Nepal. The trek was memorable for being long and challenging, and for the fact that the trekking group consisted of 9 women (out of 13 – we also had a trek leader, a guide, 3 assistant guides and 6 porters) – my first time with a women-majority group. What was it like?

Picture: Some of us at Thorang La top on 5th June 2024

I have been walking in the hills since 1981 and have seen many changes, the key ones being the gradual encroachment of comfort and convenience into trekking arrangements (early days – carry everything oneself; then – porters or mules for the tents and kitchen stuff, everything else oneself; later – carry just day stuff, everything else on porters or mules; now – a special potty tent) and communication facilities (my key requirement of any trek, that I should not be reachable on a phone, is getting increasingly difficult to meet, and this trek had some people day-trading on stocks along the way – they even managed to lose some money due to the exit polls scam). But nothing had quite prepared me for being with many women on a long expedition. Trekking used to be a male space – attempts by wives and assorted women friends to join my various trekking groups were fobbed off with a blunt ‘we don’t want girls’ until 2014 when I joined my wife for the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra and, 22 years into our marriage, discovered that she could walk. She has since joined me a few times, but you would concur that wives are different from random strange women on a trek.

 

So, who were these random, strange women? They were mostly in their 40s and 50s (with two significant outliers), were mostly professionals into either software or fashion, were all experienced trekkers, and most had spouses who they did not appear to miss in the slightest. All of them had that rare combination of good looks, intelligence, and substance (exceptions to the ‘brains x beauty = k’ axiom) but, lechers be forewarned, being zoomed past on a tiring uphill section by a bunch of middle-aged ladies is not pleasant for the fragile male ego. Some were deeply competitive and quite self-focused, and rule #1 of the trekking bro-code, no one to be left behind, was conspicuous by its absence. Did they have it easy? No – the world was not their toilet (as it was for me), and there were difficulties with altitude (they were popping Diamox left, right and centre) and terrain (including a scary landslide section along the way). Did they whine and moan? A little bit – including referring to our trek leader, as soft-spoken and decent a guy as it gets, as Gabbar Singh because he insisted on a difficult acclimatization hike to Ice Lake on one of our rest days (see schedule below). Our guide got on their wrong side towards the end of the trek (I suspect he was used to dealing with gap-year-backpacking European students, and had little clue how to handle a gaggle of arrived Indian women) and ended up like a rabbit in headlights – I took the poor guy out for beer and a meal in Pokhara, just the two of us, to ease his nerves. Did they take advantage of the fact that they were women? Also, a little bit – for example, by one of them dazzling the assistant guide who was assigned to the tail of the group so that, when she was last, he was glued to her and carrying her haversack but when one of us poor males was last there was no sign or sight of him, we could have been left for dead for all he cared. Was it fun being with them? Absolutely! Evenings were spent all-together in the dining room of whichever teahouse we were overnighting in, with plenty of music, gossip (there was an inordinate interest in each other’s relationship status), debate, games, et al, and I learnt a lot about the female gaze and how to recognize cosmetic surgery. There was also, it has to be said, some amount of khichpich, and I discovered that the joke about a key difference between men and women being that ‘men can forget to invite somebody for dinner, and they can still be friends’ qualifies as a truth said in jest.

Picture: With my buddy S2 on Ice Lake, 30th May 2024

And the men? Also interesting, also arrived! My roommate was a serving infantry colonel who had done time in South Sudan and Alaska and had commanded his battalion in Siachen, and he laughed off my remark about his presence on the trek being akin to a gigolo having sex for pleasure by saying that, forget about this, he spends his leaves trekking alpine style (wherein you travel alone, carry everything you need, and live off the land). My quota of football discussion was had with a 14-year-old boy who was using this trek to train for a climb in Russia and who was the fastest walker in the group – he also correctly predicted Real Madrid’s win in the Champions League final. And the management professor who was trekking with his 13-year-old daughter (one of the outliers of the previous para), we discovered that we knew each other well without ever having met because we shared an alma mater and had many common friends. All of them were experienced trekkers and very good fun.

 

The trek itself was long and tough. We saw the value of our acclimatization detours, when we got really screwed, only later. For example, the day spent going to Ice Lake (an unremarkable body of water but reaching there involved a one-kilometre gain in altitude from Manang) and back prepared us for similar altitude gains in subsequent sections of the trek. The two days spent going to Tilli Cho Lake (a trekking destination on its own and now #3 on my list of beautiful high-altitude lakes after Bandh-e-Amir in Afghanistan and Tso Moriri in Ladakh) took us to 5,000 meters for the first time – again, great preparation for the Thorang La crossing. I had difficulty on the way to Tilli Cho and had even turned back for the base camp, and I am grateful that our trek leader came down and motivated me upwards and onwards.

Picture: The group at Tilli Cho Lake on 2nd June 2024

Possibly because of these detours, and possibly because of the great weather that accompanied us through the trek, I managed to enjoy rather than endure the dreaded Thorang La section that took us across the pass and into Mustang district of western Nepal. And I am grateful for that, because there was much to appreciate about this section – it was sublime rather than beautiful (for the uninitiated – beautiful objects are smooth, polished, comparatively small, whereas sublime objects are vast, rugged, powerful, magnificent; they are ideas of a different nature, with beauty being founded on pleasure and sublimity being founded on pain) in a way that is difficult to describe.

Picture: Thorang La - is it beautiful, or is it sublime??

Did I make friends? I would like to think so. Strangely, I had the most in common with S1 the 13-year-old – we were both read-aholics (she had read, for example, ‘Animal Farm’) and aspiring novelists with a liking for scatological jokes of a genre that my sons found funny when they were aged about 10. And I spent the most time on the trek with my buddy S2 who, despite her own fatigue, would try to see to my comfort in different ways (all of them appropriate, may I sadly add). And the others – A, whose husband, the lucky so-and-so, went to the same school as me; R1, the other 60 plus in the group and a testament to focus and determination; D1 and D2, who I almost didn’t recognize in Pokhara because they had glammed up; the tall and beautiful R2 who stood outside the dhaba at one of our bus breaks and had all the truck-wallahs stopping and turning, who in a candid moment mentioned that she had just completed a mid-career M.Tech from BITS, done while working full-time and parenting a teenager; V who had struggled all along until Thorang La, when she zipped up the pass along with our lead guide and ensured that what should have been a composite group ended up like a smear of water that stretched too long; and H, the professor of design with whom one could have an enlightened discussion on sustainable sourcing and the problems of ensuring compliance with the fifth tier of one's supply chain. I worry, however, that they saw an Ajit on the trek that is different from the real me, the boring and football-obsessed sociophobe.

Picture: Winding down in glamorous company at Pokhara on 6th June 2024

 

What else happened? I was fat-shamed by a horse. It was the day of the Tilli Cho detour, when I struggled with altitude and took a long time returning to the base camp. The others had already begun the journey back to Siri Karkha, and I was advised to take a horse else I would not reach by sunset on this landslide-prone route. I complied reluctantly and nervously – I have never used a horse and know that, while horses are unlikely to fall into the depths below on these narrow slippery pathways, the same cannot be said of the riders (and I’ve paid less for a Delhi to Mumbai air ticket on a full-service airline, which is a similar duration of journey). The horse-wallah looked at me in the way people look at a fatty making his way down the aisle of a plane towards the empty seat next to them, but he got me on the horse and moving while mentioning that I was too heavy every 5 minutes. I was about to tell him to go and do something anatomically impossible with himself, I was capable of walking through the night if I had to, when I noticed that the horse was stopping every ten steps and requiring cajoling to move forward. I initially thought that it feared the possibility of falling rocks, and then noticed that it was taking long, deep, tired breaths when it stopped, in the manner of someone carrying too much weight, communicating to its owner something along the lines of ‘WTF, get this fat lump off my back’. Never again!!

Picture: Discussing life with S1 - or were we cracking jokes??

 

I would like to conclude with a word of thanks to Col. Romil, our trek leader, an Everest-er himself and the CEO of Boots and Crampons (the company organizing the trek). It was my fourth trek with him, and it has always been a learning experience – most especially the way he combines the nitty gritty of leading a trek or a climb with the management of a company that has multiple expeditions in multiple locations on multiple continents at any point of time (he returned to Delhi on 9^th June and was off to Alaska to climb Mt. Denali on the 10^th) . I still haven’t figured out when he sleeps. But then, as somebody said, there is a reason for the word ‘special’ in the army’s special forces that he was part of. I am already looking forward to our next one together. With the same people?? Sign me up forthwith.

Picture: Back in Kathmandu, all scrubbed up and with our certificates

The Schedule:

Date	Activity	Comments
25th May	Delhi to Kathmandu
26th May	In Kathmandu – meeting other members of the team, equipment checks, briefings, etc.	I find that I don’t have a down jacket and a headlamp as per requirement, else am adequately equipped – will use my parka and normal torch anyway, so no purchases required.
27th May	0700 to mid-afternoon – Kathmandu to Besishahar (760 m) by bus   Mid-afternoon to 2100 hours – Besishahar to Chame (2,670 m) by 4*4 jeep	A long bus ride on the road west out of Kathmandu towards Pokhara, and then north at Ghansikhuwa to Besishahar. The jeeps moved at an average of 10 km per hour on these mountain roads, so the 60 km journey to Chame took 6 long hours.
28th May	Chame to Pisang (3,190 m)	S2 got hold of a guitar during our return from the acclimatization climb (a most interesting piece of negotiation with the guitar’s owner that was an education to witness), and we had a music session in the dining room.
29th May	Pisang to Manang (3,540 m)	A very nice hotel at Manang – attached toilets with western-style potties – heaven!
30th May	In Manang   Day trip to Ice Lake (about 4,500 m)	First day of getting really screwed – a 1-km net gain of height – a long uphill and an even more difficult downhill. I was by far the last to reach Manang in the evening. Was grateful that the hotel sent a motorcycle to spare me the last 3 km walk
31st May	Manang to Siri Karkha (4,080 m)	A relatively easy day.
1st June	Siri Karkha to Tilicho Base (4,200 m)	Again, uneventful!
2nd June	Tilicho Base to Tilicho Lake (4,919 m). Back to Tilicho Base and onward to Siri Karkha	A long, tough day. I had difficulties with the altitude and almost turned back to the base camp. I used a horse for the first time ever for the journey from the base camp to Siri Karkha.
3rd June	Siri Karkha – Yak Karkha – Ledar (4,250 m)	Quite easy after the previous day.
4th June	Ledar – Thorong Base – Thorong High Point	Seriously cold weather at High Point – a terrible night for the prostrate to act up (which it did).
5th June	Thorong High Point – Thorong La (5,416 m) – Muktinath (3,800 m)	Started at 0400 hours along with the ‘lalloo party’ (the studs started at 0500). Reached the La before being overtaken (for a change). Had my usual difficulty on downhills to Muktinath.
6th June	Muktinath – Jomsom – Tatopani – Pokhara by bus	Dinner with S2 and D1 at The Harbour, Pokhara – I was the envy of the local blades.
7th June	In Pokhara – sat in the hotel room, completed the book I was carrying ‘let my people go surfing’ by Yvon Chouinard about the Patagonia story.	Beer and dinner with Lakpa Rinji at Thakali Kitchen, Pokhara.
8th June	Pokhara to Kathmandu by air	Lunch and the afternoon at Annie and Suresh’s
9th June	Kathmandu to New Delhi by air	Back to the furnace.