11/6. High camp to Manang

“Mountain biker coming down!” yelled a girl to her friend just below and around the corner. I don’t think I’ll EVER get tired of hearing that…and I heard it a lot this day. “Woop, woop!” I shot back while ringing my bell. They giggled and cheered as I zoomed by, face still plastered with same ear to ear smile from yesterday.

After descending the pass, I arrived in Thorang Pfedi today. It is the high camp for people making the final push over Thorang La. It sits at 4800m (15,748 ft). There are 3 hotels here, one of them newer and filled with approximately 100 western trekkers. It’s like a party. Everyone gearing up for the final push. It appears I’m the only one coming down. I met a couple from Austin, also bike packing, but going the traditional direction. I liked them immediately. They too had come from northern India. We shared trail intel and compared humorous memories from our travels along the way.

The sun set behind the peaks at 330pm, plunging the temperature immediately into the lower 30’s. Thus far, none of the places that I’ve been have had any heat source, other than hanging out in the kitchen. After dinner, I was in my sleeping bag, wearing a down jacket, by 6pm, reflecting on the rollercoaster of emotions that today brought. By 4am, there were a hundred head lamps beaming all over the hill side, like fire flies in a Michigan summer. Everyone jockeying for use of the outdoor squatty potties, dangerously frozen over from the night’s usage. Trying to balance and aim on a frozen slope of pee is daunting. I’m going down today and do not plan on doing so until the sun crests the ridge and warms the valley by 25 degrees. This occurs at about 830am. I finally crawl out of my bag at 630am to a ghost town of empty hotel rooms. I walk into the kitchen, which is cold, the cook mistakenly thinking everyone had left 2 hours prior.  I was literally the only person there. We attempted to chat a bit as I hovered over the wood stove that was slowly heating up and cooking my chocolate pancakes. By 830am, it was warming up and the squatty potty was melting a bit, making it slightly less daunting. By 9am I was packed and on my way, preparing myself for 4 days DOWN.

Immediately out of camp, the trail just flows.  However, if you’re not 100% confident in your bike skills it could be a rough day, especially with a fully loaded bike.  The trail clings precariously to the side of the canyon walls. One loose stone could kick your front wheel out and send you careening 200 feet down a rocky embankment into the icy river below. Some parts are barely as wide as my handle bars. “Slow down,” I keep reminding myself. “This is too good.” I don’t want to come down. I don’t want this to end. I am in my place. I am where I’m supposed to be.

Up ahead there is a clang of bells for horses grazing on the hill side.  Further still I’m passed by porters with horses bringing up food stock to the tea houses and hotels. “Namasteeeee!” they call to me. “NAMASTEEEEEEE!!!” I call back more euphorically as I zip on by.

My legs feel like pistons in a V8 engine the lower I go. It is calm. There is peace.  Breathe deep. It won’t last forever, I tell myself. Take a picture both actual and mental of every aspect of this spell binding canyon.

It’s getting warmer. Around a corner hundreds of birds float effortlessly, gracefully in the warm up-drafts of the canyon. “Take it in,” I tell myself. “Breathe. Be.  Quell your desire to eviscerate this amazing descent. Use your brakes more. But keep smiling. You have no place to be.”

Two hours of adrenaline laced, permagrin descending and I arrived in Manang. It’s a known stopping and acclimating spot for trekkers coming up. There are plenty of hotels and to my surprise the first 5 that I stopped at were full.  The 6th one only had a triple room. “How much?” I asked.  “Rs600,” he responded. Feeling desperate, “Fine,” I replied. “Not possible,” the hotel owner responded. “Cannot offer to only 1.” “But I will pay for entire room,” I irritatedly responded. “It’s the same price.” “Not possible,” he nonsensically yet defiantly quipped back. This was becoming comical to me. We went back and forth for a few minutes before I gave up, and chuckled as I walked away. Across the road, I found a basic room. The price? Rs0, if I agreed to eat my meals there. That seemed reasonable, because…well…I gotta eat and I’m sure his dal bhat was the same as anyone else’s. Later that evening, for the first time since I began the circuit, there was heat!  The hotel owner had a wood stove that cranked like July in Arizona. I haven’t eaten dinner without the comfort of my down jacket since I began. After 5 minutes I was peeling layers and gradually scooting further from the stove before finally retreating to the other room to enjoy my dinner while watching football (soccer) with some of the Nepali guides.  There’s magic here. Paralyzing beauty and humbling kindness in Nepal.

11:7 to Manang to Lower Pisang 

Sometimes dead ends are the best ends. I found one of the happiest places I’ve been. It was a dead end path, back into a canyon off the main trail. It was green with a river running through it, surrounded up close by snow capped peaks. Nobody around. I wonder how many people actually come down here? I sat there for 45 minutes, gazing helplessly around at the beauty. Like Jack Johnson sings, “Getting lost is not a waste of time…”

Later on down, I crossed paths with the Yak Attack race and got to cheer them on through their suffering. The Yak Attack race is a 9 day mountain bike stage race, beginning and ending in Besisahar, which is where I’m headed. It climbs up many of the roads and paths that I’m descending before looping around and coming back down. It looks brutal, but at the same time amazing. I saw a girl from Golden, Colorado on the Yeti Beti team that my friends run and made sure I gave her extra loud cheers. She was crushing it and putting a hurt on a lot of the boys.

It is so unbelievably beautiful here in every way. From the cold, sharp mountains to the kind, warm smiles of the locals and other trekkers. Everyday I’m in a place that is so comfortable that I could stay for a week but every day I arrive someplace new that is just as amazing. Even though this is one of the most famous trekking areas in the world it is still peaceful and remote. I’m sleeping at just over 10k feet now. Coming from 17k, although it is dry here, I can taste the richness of oxygen in the air. I can drink it with a straw. I pass people on their way up, gasping and wheezing and I now have the opportunity to offer words of encouragement and cheer.

My room tonight has a private balcony over looking the river with views of the monastery in Upper Pisang. The lovely couple who run the guest house offered me the first hot shower I’ve had in nearly a week and also a hose to clean my bike. Their kindness and warmth is contagious and all I can do is smile. I just want to stay in the mountains but the childhood curiosity in me wants to see what’s around that next corner. Each day I move on and each day I’m oozing with astonishment by what I find. The winds in this valley really whip up around noon, which is fine by me. Short days mean I just spend more time up here.

11/8 Lower Pisang to Chame

How do you know what you’re capable of if you’ve never gone to the edge, if you’ve never gone deep, emotionally or physically.  That is what I was testing the past 5 days for this payoff.  The mental and physical struggles.  Today was an easy day. Three hours of slowly cruising down hill. I stopped numerous times to talk to people coming up who were maybe only a couple days into their trek.  They were amazed to see me coming down the mountain in disbelief that I had cycled up from the other direction.  They too knew of the challenges going that route. They offered congratulatory words while I returned with encouragement and cheer for what they were about to experience.  I can feel it now. I’m below 10k ft. I’m nearing the end but I don’t want to leave. It’s green again. The razor sharp, snow capped shark teeth that once beckoned me forward with each agonizing pedal stroke are now bidding me slowly, but still too quickly, farewell. They are still there, daunting and magical as ever, but effortlessly slipping away. I am traveling slowly, putting off the inevitable completion of this chapter.  The emotional highs are still there but with each meter drop in altitude and each degree increase in temperature, the end is creeping up. I stopped in Chame today at 1130am, sat and had lunch in the warm sun with 2 women. One was from Vancouver and other from Australia.  I love to exchange stories with other wanderers pushing themselves outside their comfort zone. Daring to live more fully. It feeds me as I hope that my tales feed those that I meet. Before I knew it, 3 hours had slipped by so here is where I’ll sleep tonight. My hotel is very posh. It has 3 windows, clean sheets, sounds of the rushing river below and views of the peaks above…and also my first attached bathroom since I began the circuit. I’m bathed in gratitude as I drift off to sleep.

 

11/9 – 11/10. Chame to Pokhara

After another slow day trying to delay the inevitable, I went for it. I pointed the bike downhill and cycled 5 hours to Besisahar where I hopped a quick micro bus (small van) and arrived in Pokhara. I had made my peace and committed to going home.

Not so fast. There’s still the little episode of the bus ride. I opted for the bus because I was told that the road back to Pokhara joins the road that connects Pokhara to Kathmandu, the main tourist artery in the country. Translation: massive bus traffic. This was indeed a rodeo bus ride on the road from hell. The single lane road twisted and hugged the hill side and had pot holes that could swallow a Fiat. At one point they were 26 people packed in the microbus. People were literally sitting on other’s laps and falling into one another as the bus swayed from side to side around the ever curvy mountain pass The girl behind me was green, looked like death, and continuously leaned over my shoulder to vomit out the window. The bus never hesitated. It was definitely and experiential ride. We arrived in Pokhara, 4 hours later, after dark. I was thrilled to be off the bus, and cruising through the starkly lit busy streets for 30 minutes before arriving to the warm smiles of my hotel that I had departed 11 days prior. The manager was psyched to see me and I got my old room back for $10. After a bottomless, scalding hot water shower, I went to my favorite local kitchen and put on another eating display of dal bhat.

I had left about 20 pounds of gear and other things at the hotel before embarking on the Annapurna Circuit. At no time during the past 10 days did I ever think, “wow I wish I had X”. It is just further reinforcement to me that we just have too much stuff and it feels good to be able to continue to minimize and simplify my life.

Looking back over the past 8 weeks, I am reminded by my friend’s rock concert analogy.  We don’t go to a concert just for the encore. We want to experience the entire show and that show is life. We are the product of our choices and our interactions with others.  The human experience. With each curve of the road that I follow, each hill I climb, I get stronger…not simply physically, but in the pursuit of becoming my best and truest self and the conviction that I am on the right path. Each person that I meet I gain strength, awareness, and perspective from our time spent together…whether it is over many years, over lunch, or just a glance as we pass each other by. It truly is about the journey.