How to Condense Three Weeks Into a Cube

The Annapurna circuit was memorable and wonderful. It's a grand shame that I won't have time to trek Everest, but I think it'd be better to do Everest with all the trimmings and fixings next year. Hiking in from Jiri, doing Kala Pattar and Gokyo Ri viewpoints on Everest (linked with an alpine pass) and hiking onward through the plains to Hile. That would take 30 days in itself, I think.

It was spooky, at the end of the trek, to look at a map of Nepal - the whole country of Nepal - and trace out the path I walked. It's a substantial circle against the map. The trek itself was around 200 km, and to crunch the altitude numbers, I started at 800m altitude - rising to 5400m at the windswept Throng La pass - before descending back to 1000m. Add in the ups and downs along the trail, and there was probably 6000m of ascent on this trek. It's good to go for a "long walk".

Some memories:

• There wasn't enough room inside the local bus that took us from Besi Sahar to the trailhead, so the day's Israelis, their Nepali porters/guide and I all rode on top of the bus and wedged ourselves in. Every time the bus lurched and pitched alarmingly to one side, we would collectively groan pray and curse in our native tongues. I learned some solid Hebrew curses that day, but they didn't stick in my memory. Or maybe they sit dormant in my memory, waiting to be retrieved on the next rollercoaster ride...
• Going to a "fete" a French guy threw for his porters, hearing their songs (the songs were like a pitched battle between the men and the women, with them both singing the chorus but aiming the verses at the other sex) and dancing (my "fighting-moonwalk-thing," as the guide called it, impressed the local crowd)
• Picking berries and eating them (after repeated assurances they weren't poisonous)
• Talking about literature with a drunk Nepali English teacher. He asked me to write "I will never forget our intellectual and philosophical conversations" in his book, and as soon as I did he started asking about how to get a Green Card....
• Maoist posters everywhere, and a Maoist dancing programme on the television. Speaking of strange Nepali media, this weird alt-rockabilly Nepali band I saw a music video for....
  
• I met an American climber, Ben Clark, in Manang where he was hiking the Circuit with his girlfriend. He was a top level mountaineer (he climbed Everest when he was 23,) and he had loads of interesting things to say about climbing, luck and initiative.
  http://www.k2news.com/everestnews/benclark.htm
• After we reached 3500m, we could safely only ascend 500m a day as we approached the pass. This led to some very short days, and some serious teadrinking and chessplaying in the afternoons. I played what I think was stylistically the game of my life against this Italian airline pilot with an altimeter in his watch.
  
• Strange dreams sleeping at 4800m. It's a known fact that high altitude induces strange dreams and uneasy sleeps in almost all people. I dreamt that I was a giant tree with only one leaf, a vision which cries out to be psychoanalyzed by a professional...
• The slow crawl to the pass at 5400m, where the motion was "step-breathe-step-breathe". After several false summits, it was a glorious, glorious thing to be on top.
  
• Chipping into French conversations pretending that I speak French well.
• Sneaking down to the Hot Springs at tatopani (tato = hot, pani = water in nepali) in the middle of the night and soaking in the water with a flawless, spellbinding view of the stars. It's nights like those that I live for.
  

Now I'm in Kathmandu, trying to figure out what to do next. I don't mind pausing to think about it, as I'm the favourite patron of a couple used bookstores and am rapidly conquering my reading list. I'm reading Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley right now. The remaining two and a half weeks until I return to Canada is a weird block of time to have, too short to do the major treks, too long to just hang around Kathmandu.

I'm excited to go home. Travelling solo is spiritually and socially worth it, but it gets tiring having to meet a new set of people every few days. I've met a number of friends who I think will stick for years, but when they continue with their travel plans (or go home,) I have to meet another set of new people... and the process is hard on an introvert. It'll be nice to be in Calgary again where people have a good cumulative understanding of me.

"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."
-Stephen Dedalus, Ulysses