And, yes, we are still in Nepal!
This seems like a long journal entry, but a lot has happened, so stick with it until the end.
For those of you that haven't been watching the world news lately, Nepal has had quite an eventful week. Last Friday (6/1/01) evening, several members of the royal family, including both the king and queen, were murdered in the royal palace in Kathmandu. This massacre has rocked the tiny country that was already struggling with poverty and politics. For the past week we have witnessed rioting, police firing tear gas, curfews, and a complete shut down of the country. The locals have been very unhappy with the amount of information that has been released about the killings. This lack of communication seemed to be the catalyst for the riots and as a result, the curfews.
Despite the chaos, we have really enjoyed Nepal. After spending a couple of days in Kathmandu we took an 8 hour bus ride to the town of Pokhara. Pokhara is the launching point for many of the treks in the Annapurna Himalayas. The highlight of this journey was actually a major delay. Three hours into the journey, we came upon a land slide that was still sliding. Bill commented to Rob that, "This is probably the most dangerous situation we have been in on this trip", but since Bill is known to exaggerate, no one was concerned. The reason Bill was concerned was that the bus was parked in the middle of the land slide for the 2 hours while we waited for the dozer to do its dozing. And yes rocks were slowly tumbling down the slide. We later found out that the slide happened a week or so prior to our bus ride, but that they are keeping the bull dozers there to clear the land that continues to slide. Fortunately, we made it to Pokhara in one piece and began to gear up for our big trek!
The plan was this: Rob and Chris would do a 10-12 day hike and Bill would do a 4-5 day hike in hopes of getting to India a week earlier. The idea was to stay together for the first two days and then Bill would split off and head back to Pokhara while Chris and Rob headed on up to Annapurna Base Camp (ABC). ABC is the launching point for many of the Mountaineering expeditions including those up the 25,000 ft Annapurna 1, but is also the final destination in the "Annapurna Sanctuary Trek".
Probably the best way to describe the first couple of days of our is...CHALLENGING.
Allow us to explain.
We did not get on the trail the first day until 3pm (Mistake number one). We knew that the monsoon season was beginning in Nepal, but we didn't quite realize that most days would be highlighted by late afternoon downpours. So after a good hour of tough hiking straight up the side of a mountain, we got poured on. No problem, we thought, we'll just head to the first village we find and call it a day. Due to the heavy rains and fog, the visibility was low, and we pretty much missed the first village (Mistake number two). We still had a good hour or two left of light and the rains were starting to subside, so we figured we would head to the next town. We were walking along the rain soaked path and Chris felt a pinch on his leg. He looked down and noticed that his socks were stained with blood. He quickly realized his feet were covered with leeches...Just about the time that he was discovering the leeches, Rob discovered that he too had a couple of tag-along companions. Bill looked down and felt fortunate because he was not donating any blood. After observing the almost comical scene of Rob and Chris dancing around taking off shoes and socks and even dropping pants (see photos), Bill did a quick check inside his socks. To his horror, he had three or four leeches going to town. The next half hour looked like something out of the movie Stand By Me, except it was pouring and there was no safe leech-free place. The leeches move like inch worms on speed, they were very fast and nearly impossible to kill. We ran around frantically flicking the nasty little creatures off our boots and our legs, and searched all our bodies to make sure none were hiding. Luckily we did the through check because Bill had one crawling it's way up his thigh. We had failed to read the small section in our guide book that talks about the leech infested trails during the monsoon season (Mistake number three). Fortunately we were able to rid ourselves of the leeches and get on our way. For the next hour, we had to stop every 15 or 20 paces and flick the newly acquired leeches off. Good times!!!
On the second day, we came across a little kid who had a piece of paper that he wanted us to read. Turns out that the kid wanted money (can you believe that?) for his soccer team. The interesting thing was that we were several days hike from any land that was level enough to play soccer on, but who were we to ask questions. Since we have been asked for money so many times, we usually don't even think twice, so we said "NO!". Then we noticed that he had a sling shot in his back pocket and we decided that we better reconsider. By the way, the kid was about 7 years old and very cute. So Rob says to the little soccer player, "Are you any good with that thing? Can you hit that tree over there?". The tree was about 25 feet away...he aimed, and BAM right in the middle of the tree. So we said "How about that one?" This tree was about 40 feet away and much narrower. Again, he aimed and BAM right in the middle. Then Bill reaches into his pocket...
(Note: for those of you that don't know Bill, he likes to make random low chance bets with people like, "If you can guess how much money I have in my wallet right now you can have it". The funny thing is that Bill has nothing to gain other than the sport of the challenge, but for some reason he persists. One of his more infamous losses was to his roommate in San Diego. They were standing at the checkout counter at the local grocery store he said, "if you can guess the total of the grocery bill with 15 cents, I will buy your groceries". That one cost him $28.15. With a history of losing such bets, Bill was looking to even the score.)
...so Bill reaches into his pocket and pulls out two bills of the local currency. One was a 10 Rupie note (worth 13 cents) and the other was a 100 Rupie note(worth $1.30). With our Video camera rolling, Bill holds up the two notes and tells the kid, "If you can knock my water bottle off that stump that is 75 feet away, I will give you the 100 Rupies, but if you miss you only get 10 Rupies". To put this in perspective, a full day's wages for a working man in the villages less than 75 Rupies. Bill figured that, either way, the kid would get a little money for those soccer jerseys (if there was a team). Out of mercy, Bill said he could have 3 chances. So with out hesitation, the little man takes the first shot and BAMMMMM, he knocked the bottle off. We could not believe our eyes, it was truly one of the magic moments of the trip. We still laugh when we think about it and we cherish the video that turned out to perfectly document the event. We will post a video clip on the site in July.
As mentioned, the trek we chose to do was the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek, which takes you through little small villages in the scenic Annapurna mountains. Each night we stayed in little tea houses in the villages which were run by local families. Chris and Rob averaged 7 hours a day and reached ABC (14000 ft) on the fifth day which was a couple of days ahead of schedule. They were that macho. The views from the base camp were spectacular. The camp is surrounded by an incredible panoramic view of snow capped mountains. Eight of the top ten highest mountains in the world are here in Nepal, and it was amazing to be standing right in the middle of them. It was also quite an interesting feeling knowing that it is a 4 day hike to any sort of civilization (i.e. medical attention).
Chris and Rob hiked down the mountain with two bar tenders from Atlanta, Rob and Kevin, that had quit there jobs to travel around the world for the year. It just seems like the thing to do these days. Being bar tenders, they were up on current events and sports history which made for some good conversation on the way down. Our speedy descent enabled us to compress the usual 11-12 day hike into a 8 days. Rob (thebigman) and Kevin were both very sore by the time they reached the bottom. After a much needed day of recovery in Pokhara, they headed on a local bus back to the pleasant city of Kathmandu.
"Meanwhile, back at the hall of justice..." (come on that is a Super Friends quote). Back in Kathmandu, Bill had secured his India visa and had a flight booked for the next day. The next day just happened to be the day of the Royal Family Massacre. Bill was staying at a hotel that was 4 blocks from the Palace where the whole thing went down. He came out into the streets of Kathmandu at about 9am to find everything was closed and people were running full speed down the street. It was reminiscent of the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona Spain. After asking around, Bill was told that the police were chasing people. It was not until 30 minutes later that Bill found out about the massacre. Turns out that the people running were rioting at the palace and truly being chased by the police.
In Pokhara, Chris and Rob had heard the tragic news. The only real change that it had on that city was that most of the shops and restaurants, including our favorite Maya Café, were closed. They expected to see much of the same in Kathmandu..... The morning after they returned to Kathmandu, Chris and Rob went to the Indian Embassy to drop off their passports for entrance visas. On the way back to the hotel, they noticed several groups of soldiers in full camouflage toting fully automatic rifles standing on the street corners. They didn't think much of it because Nepal is a 3rd world country and seeing fully armed soldiers has become a common site. As they rounded the corner to walk down the street that leads to the palace, they noticed some barricades going up and a demonstration of people walking down the street. Little did they know that this scene would be the onset of 2 full days of rioting and marital law. Since Bill's flight was cancelled, he was able to meet back up the guys. The Crew was reunited.
We high-tailed it back to our hotel and spent most of the next three days cooped up due to curfews. We did however take a walk out in the street every so often to observe the frenzy and get a whiff of the tear gas rolling down the street. An American friend that we met at our hotel, moved in for a much closer look. He was taking pictures in the middle of the crowd of rioters when the police launched a tear gas canister into the crowd and charged. The people all retreated except for our friend who just stood still. The next thing he knew the police ran right past him chasing down the rioters. He spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures and observing from the police side of the lines. It's like he had an invisible tourist force field.
Since Rob and Chris had their passports at the Indian embassy, they could not leave the country. Bill had everything he needed except one thing...the plane did not show up at the airport because of the curfew. It was at the airport that the Associated Press (AP) gave bill the 10 seconds of fame he has been looking for his entire life (See AP photo). Bill also got to be escorted by the US embassy to his hotel where Rob and Chris got a good chuckle about his return.
Over the past couple of days things have slowly returned to normal. Not wanting to take any chances, we moved our flight to India up several days, but then pushed the flight back out to Sunday because Rob suffered some bad food poisoning and was running a 103.5 degree fever. We figured the wonderful India air probably wouldn't be the best thing for him. So barring any unforeseen circumstances we should be safely in Delhi, India on Sunday morning.
We all agreed that Nepal is a country that we will be returning to at some point later in life. It is truly a wonderful country and should be put on everyone's list. It is even a great place for those whom are not into trekking.
Random Nepal fact: Nepal has a very strange time zone. It is 15 minutes off of the Indian time zone directly beneath it. Go and wow your friends with that morsel of random knowledge.
We will be spending 36 hours in India which will give us approximately 0.000144 seconds to see each of the 900 million people there (go ahead do the math). We would have liked to have had more time, but some circumstances mentioned above did not permit it. Since we are going to be there for such a brief time and since India is notorious for making travelers sick, we will be bringing in our own food and oxygen. We are kidding about the oxygen, but not the food. We will really only have time to see Delhi and the Taj Mahal and then it is on to Turkey!
We are very excited about the fact that Mike Mckenna will be joining us in Turkey for several weeks. For those of you who don't remember, Mike was supposed to be on the entire trip, but was forced to step out at the last minute. We have really missed his since of humor and his general size (he is the same size as Rob). It will be great to have him along.
The other person that will be joining us is Chirs' friend James O'Rourke who joined us for Mt. Kilimanjaro at the beginning of the trip. He is great fun to have around and we are all looking forward to his return. We are hoping that his face does not puff up like it did on Kili....it was scary!
We can't believe how quickly this trip is concluding. Rob and Bill will be back in the states in Early July and Chris will be returning a week or two later.
Stay tuned for the final travel journal and then each of the guys will write an essay on the topic of: "What I gained from my experience around the world"
Off to India...The Crew
