Nepal - Trekking the Annapurna Circuit

After an exhausting 220-km hike through the Annapurna Circuit, I'm currently resting in Pokhara. I expected the trail to take 18-20 days, as suggested by Lonely Planet and other apparently conservative sources, but happily hustled through the route in 10. The trip was gorgeous and tiring, given the pace I chose. Some highlights:

-Hiked about 80% of the trek with a 28-year old Israeli named Shlomi. He'd been on the road for nearly 7 months, seeing just about every part of Asia (including an Auggie-esque bike trip through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Yunnan Province). Shlomi's "everpresent frugality" helped keep costs low: the guy's one helluva bargainer. An example of one day's costs on the trek (1 USD = 75 Nepali Rupees):

Breakfast (Black tea, chocolate biscuits): 40 rupees
Lunch (Instant Noodles, hot water): 30 rupees
Dinner (Fried rice with veggies): 150 rupees
Room at guesthouse (split with Shlomi): 50 rupees

So I spent about 4 - 6 USD per day. Pretty awesome. Then again, all I was doing was eating, walking, eating, walking, eating, and sleeping. Like Michael Phelps with shoes.

-One uncomfortable night of sleep. On day 6, we stayed in Upped Letdar at 4200m. The weather was particularly bad, though we didn't pay much attention. After a delicious potato-curry dinner next to the kitchen fire, we retired to our rustic room, oblivious to the light rain dancing off the mud-and-wood roof. After fifteen minutes, we noticed a pair of leaks dripping onto the bedroom floor. No problem, we said. We just put our packs on top of our beds and went back to sleep. After fifteen more minutes, more leaks. Though these were positioned above our beds, striking the thick blankets provided by the guesthouse. No problem, we said, and repositioned our beds diagonally to avoid the water. After fifteen more minutes, we heard a plopping sound striking the floor. Using a candle and my handphone to survey the situation, we discovered that the rain had softened the mud-roof, and our room was essentially collapsing (the "mud" was probably mixed with yak manure, meaning that it was quite literally "raining shit"). Our patience tested to the brink, we finally gathered our things, woke up the owners, and piled into the dining room with the rest of the 8-person family for our sleep.

Sadly, we did a poor job of reciprocating this hospitable act, as neither Shlomi nor I remembered to shut the door of the failing bedroom. Come morning, the bedroom's second guests, a pair of cows, had left two large piles of excrement on the floor. Only in Letdar.

-Visited the World's Highest Lake: Took the time to make a two-day side trip to Lake Tilicho, the world's highest at 4919m. The sight was beautiful: half the lake remained frozen from the relentless Nepalese winter, while the other half shone a deep blue. A truly awesome experience, well worth the brutal hike (and shivering night of sleep).

-Thorung La Pass: The pinnacle of the Annapurna circuit was the 5416m high Thorung La Pass, a torrid wind-tunnel through the Thorung mountain-range. Due to bad weather, the visibility was quite poor but it still felt like a great sense of accomplishment to reach an altitude of nearly 18,000 feet. Breathing was akin to inhaling through a crazy-straw.

All in all, the trail was relatively deserted, given that this is the start of "low season," which pretty much means that a monsoon blankets all of Nepal from 5PM until 5AM. Pros: more privacy, more negotiable room costs, less touts. Cons: incredibly wet, stinky socks. Shlomi's were worse: he wore the same pair 8 days straight.

Currently chilling in Pokhara, a touristy lakeside town with plenty of cheap food, odd massages (I paid 80 rupees for a 20 minutes "eyebrow" kneading at a barbershop: no joke) and independent travelers happy to share their experiences and views (legalize marijuana, free Tibet, ban razors and haircuts, etc). Though traveling alone has been exciting, I do miss the four-person globetrotting dynamic: it takes more than just one to Do The Earth.

-Phil

(NOTE: Phil had to post this on my behalf from Singapore because the Chinese government has caught on to our act and blocked access to the blog)

Phil and I split up on Thursday (just a separation, it's only temporary), saying our goodbyes before dawn as he headed to the airport to try and find a way to Nepal. As for me, I took a cab to Chengdu's long-distance bus station and boarded a 6:30 a.m. bus to Danba, 10 hours west of Chengdu. The ride ended up taking 13 hours, for a few reasons: First, the roads are already in horrible shape in this region following the destruction of last May's Great Sichuan Earthquake. In addition, We stopped for an hour on the side of the road when heavy rains made Chengdu's suburban roads undriveable. Then around 3 p.m. we ran into a roadblock near the county of Kangding, and waited for two hours while China Hydroelectric Bureau Number 5 deployed and then detonated dynamite ahead to aid its construction of a dam.

The latter delay reflects a general trend here in Western China, that of the government investing billions of dollars towards infrastructure development to bring the country's economic miracle to those least attached to the idea of a Chinese nation, people like the large groups of Tibetans that live in Yunnan, Gansu and Sichuan Provinces. What Tibetans consider Tibet actually includes a much larger area than what the Chinese Central Government has arbitrarily deemed the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Small towns frontier towns like Danba, which has a large Tibetan population, would fall inside greater Tibet if the Tibetans had their way. More important, for foreigners who want to avoid the ridiculous rules that the Chinese government has placed on foreigners travelling to Lhasa, towns like Danba are a great way to experience Tibetan culture. That's why I went.

Danba proper fits the description of other towns in minority areas of China: It's pretty boring and soulless, mainly because Beijing has done its best to dilute and marginalize the Tibetan heritage here in favor of the conformity of a bland Chinese town. The nicest and newest building here is the government's Public Security Bureau. The people out here are among the poorest people in a nation with the world's largest wealth gap, and the construction of electric dams, power lines and other efforts to develop the region represent an attempt by the Chinese government to rein in the disgruntled masses of the west. Chinese business has reached Danba as the government has tried to prop it up as a tourist destination for the Han Chinese (The Han Chinese, one of China's 56 different ethnic groups, make up more than 90 percent of the population). Tibetan culture still thrives out here, you just have to venture outside of Danba to find it. Luckily, a man named Ah Ba offered me a ride from the bus station to my hostel and a friendship was born. Ah Ba, a Tibetan, hails from the nearby mountain village of Suo Po. Ah Ba explained that Suo Po not only offers a glimpse of real tibetan culture, but it also can lay claim to containing the world's only 13-angled watchtower. Believe it.

Stone watchtowers up to 40 meters tall, built by the locals around 1000 years ago, line the hills around Danba. Some of the watchtowers have four angles (or points), some five, and a couple even have eight. Most tourists can pay an entrance fee to take a tour and see some of them. But only one watchtower has 13 angles, according to Ah ba, and you don't need a ticket to see it. Daring Ah Ba to prove it to me, I arranged for him to pick me up early the next morning and take me to his village.

Ah Ba showed up outside my hostel door in his beat-up VW sedan at 7 a.m. and we began the rocky drive on a winding dirt road into the hills above Danba. Ah Ba explained to me that the Tibetan people who live in this area might resent the disruption brought on by the influx of Han Chinese influence from the east - especially the introduction of power lines - but things here have still remained peaceful. Protests in March 2008 between Tibetans and Han Chinese in Lhasa spread to other parts of Western China, but not here.

On the way up the hill, I also learned a little more about Ah Ba. He's 43 years old and a chain smoker, like virtually every other adult male in China. He has a wife and his 17 year-old son attends high school in the nearby county of Kangding. He lived in Chengdu for about 6 years, but didn't like itwhere he bought his wheels and drove it all the way back here to make a living as a driver. Ah Ba said he makes 2000 RMB (about US$300) a month, in-line with the average monthly wage nationwide but pretty good for these parts. Other than a visit to Kunming in neighboring Yunnan Province, he's never left Sichuan.

After about an hour Ah Ba pulled the car over and pointed me up a path, saying if I followed that path for about an hour I would reach the watchtower. He said he would accompany me if his lungs would allow it, which they wouldn't, so I was on my own. The walk up began along a stream rolling down the river underneath a forest canopy, but the path eventually emerged above the trees and wound its way up a sprawling hillside grassland. With the tower not yet in my view, I ran into a few Tibetan peasants who showed me the way.

Eventually I saw it. The 13-angled watchtower reached up into the sky, high up on the mountain above the village of Suo Po. It overlooked the whole valley and the dozens of other inferior watchtowers scattered below. Words can't do it justice, but I'll try. I sat in the watchtower for about an hour, peering out into the distance and (poorly) imagining myself as a guard 1000 years ago on the lookout for mongolians or whatever other pests were feared to be invading from the north or east. Talk about having the high ground. Despite its odd construction, I don't know if Ah Ba was right about this being the only 13-angled watchtower in the world. Either way, it was worth taking Ah Ba up on his offer and seeing it for myself.

I made the 13 hour journey back to Chengdu today (with another long stop so China Hydroelectric could blow up some more dynamite). I'll spend the night here and then take the 19-hour train to Kunming tomorrow afternoon. I had planned to fly before losing my wallet this week (see Phil's latest post), so now I have to conserve my remaining cash and give up the sleeper bed in favor of the hard seat. I'll let you know how it goes.

(Pictures to come. - Phil)

If I had another chance, I'd Cheng-du it all over again...

As I prepare to leave China tomorrow enroute to Nepal, I thought I would cover some of the highlights of my 2+ weeks here.

Beijing:
- Purchased a host of fake clothing at the Pearl Market. It turns out that wearing Lacoste and Polo shirts is actually recession proof. (Each shirt cost about 12 USD).
-Camped out on the Great Wall. Our local guide, Aseem Nambiar, offered to help organize an overnight trip to the Great Wall in exchange for us picking up a foot-long Italian B.M.T. from Subway for him. Fair trade.

After a 60-minute public busride and a heavily negotiated private car trip, we arrived at Jinshanling, a portion of the Great Wall. We set up shop in an old guard tower just before dark, and did what the guards 600 years ago always did: we ate Subway sandwiches, using our battery-operated headlamps for lighting.

Later into the night, we passed around a bottle of Bai Jiu - literally "white liquor", a Chinese-made concoction of ethanol, baby tears, and Satan's urine, which made our poker game much more entertaining (we used peanuts for playing chips, and Aseem's Bruce Lee playing cards, each of which had some blurfled English quote - "Bruce roundhouse kick inspires for all pretty girl"). Under the stars, with the wall all to ourselves, we all fell into a firm, Bai Jiu-induced sleep.

At 4:45AM, we packed up our sleeping bags, gathered our empty bottles and sandwich wrappers, scratched our bug bites and began the 10km hike towards the Simatai entrance. The sunrise struggled to break through the Chinese pollution, but it didn't matter, we practically had the entire wall to ourselves. (I say "practically" because we did come across two other tourists who had opted to stay overnight, in a different tower. We found them naked in their sleeping bags, facing a camcorder and a giant photo-studio light. Gotta love home movies...)

By 8AM we arrived in Simatai, happy to avoid the flock of daily tourists, and once again negotiated a ride back home.


Shanghai:
- Visited a gym for the first time in over a month. I used one of Scott's friend's membership cards to enter Physical Fitness.

-Celebrated Scott's birthday prematurely at an awesome nightclub, right on the Bund, with a view of the Shanghai skyline. I met a bunch of really cool people doing really cool things in China, thankful that our generation is so worldly and adventurous.

Chengdu:

There are Cheng-do's, and there are Cheng-don'ts:
Cheng-do:

-Pandas! Went to the Chengdu Panda Research Base, where I got to witness over 30 pandas living in captivity. I envy their daily regiment of eating and sleeping. I think I could do it with more style (seriously, doesn't bamboo get boring eventually?).

Cheng-do:

-Celebrated Scott's REAL birthday. In search of the famous Spicy Sichuan Hot Pot, we considered ourselves blessed when a local Huo Guo joint offered both the cuisine AND 1 Kuai beers (1 kuai = 15 cents). Upon sitting down, Scott informed the restaurant owner that today was his 23rd birthday. Immediately she ran to the refrigerator and returned with three beer bottles and took a seat at our table, kicking off what would turn out to be a long - and frugal - night of drinking. Following our initial gan bei (literally "empty cup", it's the Chinese version of "cheers"), the owner had a waitress blast "Happy Birthday", in both English and Chinese, on the restaurant's PA system. As luck would have it, another patron was celebrating her birthday too!

We continued to drink Green Dragon Beer (hey, for 15 cents you can't be picky) and sweat from our food, while the Owner explained a bit about herself:

1) Her restaurant had suffered because of america's poor economic policy-making
2) She had served in the Chinese army for 15 years, based in Lhasa
3) She was best friends with China's national badminton coach (who we spoke to on her phone)


Thirty minutes into dinner, the restaurant patron adjacent to us returned from outside with an 8-inch birthday cake. With little explanation, she lit five candles, sang Happy Birthday to Scott, and promptly sat down, failing to remove her gaze from Scott (her daughter arrived at the restaurant soon thereafter). After blowing out the candles, Scott received yet another surprise when the Owner dug a spoon into the cake, reached across the table, and SMEARED frosting all over Scott's beard. I guess there are some Chinese customs we have yet to learn or understand.

Cheng-don't:

Sixteen Green Dragon Beers later, we settled the bill, and in an inebriated state, hopped into the cab, already reminiscing about how we loved Chengdu. Scott, in a subconscious effort to give something back to Chengdu, left his wallet in the front seat. In the final moments of the night, I can proudly say I saw Scott run down Xing Huixi Lu barefoot, screaming for the cab (and his personal effects) to stay.

They did say it would be tough to leave Chengdu.

I am off for Nepal tomorrow morning. Zaijian, Zhongguo.

Phil's Gastronomic Adventure #6: Seoul, Korea

The Location: Seoul Fish Market

The Dish: Live Octopus

The Ingredients: ummm....live octopus?

Thanks to the mass production of guidebooks and travel channels, eating live octopus in Korea has lost some of its mystery.  But let's face it: it still sounds gross.  After a tour of the DMZ, we headed to the Seoul Fish Market and came across a lady selling small octopi out of a plastic washing basin filled with water. Making a gesture to our mouth with our hands indicating "can we eat that?", the old fishmongress with rubber gloves and boots happily nodded. We shelled out 4,000 inflated Korean Won (about US$3) for a pair of the tentacled creatures.  

We brought the pair in a clear plastic bag to the second floor of the market, where a japanese-korean restaurant accepted our raw ingredients and offered to "prepare" them for us. Two minutes later, the chef delivered a plate of furiously wriggling tentacle pieces.  We dug in, watching the pieces cling on for dear after-life to our chopsticks.  Each bite was an adventure, the suckers latching on to my tongue or the roof of my mouth. We chewed ferociously to put them down, surprised at how good live octopus actually tastes. Like calamari, but with feelings.