A hurdled trek
(part 4)

The night is dark and cold at 3.721 metres. At seven thirty a.m. it is exactly zero degrees Celsius in our room. Our breath produces tiny clouds in the air; an early Himalayan weasel walks on the snow wall about a metre and a half high in front of our room, looking for something edible.

I stay in bed, I have no record aspirations and my vulnerable knees ask for some rest. Gert, Sylvia, Mirjam and Peter reluctantly get out of their warm burrows; their inexplicable urge to finish the job is unstoppable. The sky is crystal clear, outside it freezes ten degrees Celsius, and white snow peaks look down at the small brightly coloured human dots from thousands of metres in the air. The path is icy hard now and slippery, every step demands one hundred percent of concentration. Gert and Sylvia lead the way; Mir and Peter follow at some distance.

After having slid and stumbled for over a kilometre Mirjam decides to call it a day; the difference in speed between her and the other three is unbridgeable. This way she cannot enjoy the magnificent views.

The avalanche danger, most eminent under the bright sun, forces the remaining three dare devils to walk fast. After two hours of doddering about in a fierce pace they reach the summit: Annapurna Base Camp. The route today differs from previous years because of the heavy snow fall the last weeks. At ABC the lodges are empty, only a handful of tourists were able and dared to reach it. The snow reaches far above the roofs of the three metres high stone buildings. After a short stroll, with magnificent views of Annapurna I and her glacier, the three swiftly return to MBC, where Mirjam, I and five warm apple rolls wait for them.

Now the race against the clock truly commences: left, right, in front and behind us we hear and see avalanches come down, mainly small ones, but only one single big one suffices to overwhelm a couple of western hikers for eternity. We thump the heels of our boots into the smelting snow in order to avoid sliding and at Mirjam’s initiative visualise a protective tunnel around us, to protect us against the tons of crashing snow and ice masses from above. We hear the avalanches, like exploding dynamite, but always far away from where we are. Surviving isn’t difficult; you only have to believe…

The snow becomes softer and softer and one after the other we slip and slide down, but our high speed, driven by the urge to survive, brings us to Deorali in no time at all. Actually, we were twice as fast as the set time for the distance.

From here on we’re safe; we eat, drink and rest. Sheets of fog and clouds float towards us from the valley and the clear skies and panoramic views are history. In thick clouds we descend, the snow is gone; forests of oak trees, rhododendron, bamboo and dark green shrubs swallow us. The landscape during the descent changes into slippery climbs, smooth tree roots and river gullies. We stop in the familiar village of Himalaya and are amazed by two elderly Belgian men, who seem to have died some time ago. They do not speak at all, not to us and not to each other. Very unbelgian, maybe the lack of Belgian beer explains their behaviour.

The more we descend, the more the prices of food and drinks go down as well, something nobody objects to. In Sinuwa we meet an elderly lady for the second time, but this time the little ten-days-old dog she was feeding milk a few days ago is missing. Its mother was eaten by a wild tiger; we ask her what happened to the pub. Her arm gesture tells us more than we want to know: the little dog has been thrown over the mountain ridge; taking care of it was too much trouble. Life is a problem in the Hindu-kingdom, death isn’t.

We walk in a tight pace. Despite this we are overtaken by a number of running porters who almost literally throw themselves off the mountain. In Chhomrong we spend the night in the Excellent View Top Lodge, which really deserves its name. Three Canadian women also have returned from trekking through ice and snow: their white skin is sun burned and bright red, except for where their sunglasses were fixed and actually still are.
At night Peter and Mirjam try to catch bats with their cameras. After flying and catching their prey they attach themselves to the ceiling in the hallway, to fly away in fear when the cameras flash in their faces. Eventually Peter’s and Mirjam’s patience is rewarded with some nice pictures.

The eighth hiking day we walk to Tadapani, towards our last target: the viewpoint of Poon Hill. The heat in the morning changes into heavy downpours in the afternoon, when we master the long mount through Tadapani’s fairy tale forest amidst the thousands of flowering rhododendron trees with their bright red flowers. Mir takes a false step and Peter and I take turns in carrying her backpack next to our own, until she has had sufficient time to recover and insists on carrying the extra weight herself again.

The next morning the weather hasn’t improved at all and we decide to cross off Poon Hill, which probably only offers a view of clouds and fog at the moment. Mir buys her ninth bracelet and then we leave for the longest descent this week. The silence of the fairy tale forest is ‘disturbed’ by the screeching of some exotic grey-white langur monkeys, while a group of Japanese pensioners chases us. After five hours of suppressing painful knees we arrive at the first point reachable by jeeps, and there is actually one of those cars standing there. Rain and cold influence our decision making and with a smile and shaking bodies we have ourselves transported by car the last kilometres to Pokhara. There is just one final obstacle: a rickety wooden bridge over a fast flowing ice river. In panic Sylvia jumps out of the car, shouting:
“No, no, this is scary, I get out!”
“And what about those avalanches, only a day ago?”

In Pokhara it’s dry and warm. The rum contains just sufficient alcohol to warm our bodies which are numb with cold, the shower does the rest. Hiking is fantastic, but well… for a cyclist cycling remains number one.

That’s probably why cycling is the verb of freedom.