Bhirkuna

Das erste Mal, dass ich diesem Buch nicht nur meine Worte stehen. An dieser Stelle und den darauf folgenden Seiten die Zusammenfassung von Henry über den gesamten Trek:

Hi y’all!

I just returned from an absolutely amazing trek! Me and my friend JoJo combined the Mardi Himal trek and the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) trek into one 9 day trek.
We climbed to the Mardi Himal base camp and after descending we crossed a few rivers and started right back up to Annapurna base camp. Until around 3,600 m (11,800 ft) we climbed through gorgeous and extremely foggy forests and from there on its fields of grass and beautiful flowers. Mardi base camp is around 4,500 m (14,763 ft) and ABC is at 4,130 m (13,582 ft).

It is off season now which means there are very few other trekkers on the trails and in the guest houses (and things are cheaper), which is amazing. Enough people to socialize and sometimes play cards with but not enough to clog the trails. We didn’t go with a guide because the trails are mostly well marked and it gave us much more freedom and flexibility. There is also this sort of inside knowledge game where during low season you can ask to get lodging and/ or a hot shower for free if you eat a meal or two at a guest house. Without the cost of a guide or lodging we saved a lot of money overall.
However, there are a few key reasons it is the off season. It is hot, super rainy for parts of the day (there will be full-on monsoon rains for several hours of the day), super foggy much of the time and there are leeches. But the heat is bearable and the rain just means we have to time our trekking for dryer periods of the day (usually mornings) and sometimes walk in wet boots. The fog means we don’t always get great views and have to get lucky to see the amazing mountains (I’ll get to that soon), and the leeches are truly some of the most horrible, vile, unpleasant creatures I have ever had the displeasure to interact with. On the way up and down Mardi Himal there were so so many of these fucking demons. They are disgusting, really durable and have hirudin in their saliva, which is an anticoagulant that causes their bites to bleed for a ridiculously long time… almost all my socks are stained with blood now. They are the real-life version of dementors in that they are the embodiment of misery, they try to suck out your blood/soul and the best way to feel better after they attack you is by eating chocolate.

Life tip: you can get leeches off and kill them with salt or bug spray

The weather changes really fast on the mountains, especially the fog. The valley+sky can be completely clear and in a few minutes can be full of fog with zero visibility. At times it gets so bad you can’t see more than 5 meters in any direction. However, this gives a great opportunity to put the focus on the immediate surroundings of the forest, which are really beautiful and likely ignored if the mountains were always out. A major benefit of being here during this season are all the flowers, fungi and mosses that aren’t growing during the dry season. The fog is also an interesting invitation to look inward and do walking meditations, which I found to be valuable. Plus it made it feel like you are walking in the edge of the world out on the edge of nothingness.Weiterlesen