Poon Hill Trek, Nepal (Part 1 of 3)

A sassy student, stone steps, mountain views

Poon Hill Trek Day 1: Flight to Pokhara

A bit of a stretch to call today “Trek Day 1” when all we did was get a taxi, go to the airport and get on a plane.

The only thing that got my heart rate up was knowing that we were flying on an airline which had been in the news for a crash about a year ago on the same route we were flying today — Kathmandu to Pokhara. Pokhara International Airport was also recently in the news for being the cause for the Nepalese government’s request that China forgive loans for its construction. On the plus side, our guide A. met us as we came out of the arrivals lounge and took us to our hotel, where we went over our planned itinerary for the trek. We were given a couple of tasks for the evening.

The first was to take passport-sized pictures for our trekking permits. We stopped by a small camera shop on the main commercial drag — mostly restaurants, bars, gear shops — and spent some time chatting with the owner who, like many Nepalese we have met, was very curious about us and our plans in Nepal. As has been our general experience here, people are open to discussing everything, from education and politics to tourism and mountains.

We walked around the Phewa Lake shore for a bit, but unlike what we had often heard — “Oh, the lakeside is beautiful!” — we walked on a dirt trail that was ringed by dusty snack shacks and fish farms (run exclusively by specific caste/ethnic groups, A. told us later) and, in certain sections, by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Maybe we missed the more natural and remote sections of the lake?

The second task was to find dinner.

I was plagued by that malaise which often strikes me, the tyranny of choice. In the end, we chose a small family restaurant whose menu pictures included gigantic chicken schnitzels. What turned out to be better than the fried cutlets was the high schooler who served us and chatted a mile a minute, in a great stream-of-consciousness rant: about Pokhara, his parents’ restaurant, the effects of COVID, the economic situation of Nepal, his sister’s work as a nurse in Australia, his hopes post high school, the useless (his words) Nepalese educational system where everything is theory/memorization instead of practice (“Let me give you an example: the other day our teacher was giving us a lesson on how to swim. He was writing on the board, Step 1, Step 2… which is dumb, because what they should do is just take us to a pool!”), political corruption in the country aided and abetted by the old generation in the country (“We young people just have to wait for the old people to die — maybe than we can change the country!”).

As former teachers, N. and I agreed he was the smart alecky-type of student who would keep teachers on their toes and give them no small amount of grief.

They were secretly our favorite kind.

***

Poon Hill Trek Day 2: Trek to Ulleri

The day started with a rushed breakfast. A. arrived with a van and with B., our support staff — which seems the preferred term to “porter”, although they shorten it to “supporter” and then “porter”, so it all ends up in the same place. According to A., B. was happy our one bag was comparatively light — on his last trip in the Annapurna region, he had carried 55 kilos or 120 pounds.

Once in the van, we drove for about one hour through some very rough, pothole-y roads — is there any other kind in this part of the world? — to Nayapul.

We bid goodbye to our driver and car, and strapped on our backpacks. B. took our duffel and his own small pack, and A. led the way on a road that was actually meant for cars — several passed our little fellowship — but was better negotiated on foot since it was so rocky and washed out in many places.

At the checkpoint in Birethanti, N. magically developed a nosebleed; I don’t ever remember his having one before so that was a scary surprise. Was the altitude (a mere 1,025 meters/3,363 feet) already getting to him? This didn’t seem to bode well.

Brave little four-wheel jeeps kept going up and down the rough road, some carrying tourists for various treks — Poon Hill, ABC, or the Annapurna Circuit — while others carried locals doing local things — seeing relatives, going to markets (I saw one jeep with a live goat on the roof), heading to the city.

At one point we came to a deep and wide channel of water coming down the side of the mountain and there was no way to make it through without getting wet. While we puzzled about how to get to the other side, B. wordlessly peeled off his socks and shoes, so we did the same. The water was cold and clean, but we crossed slowly because of slippery rocks underneath.

On the other side we tried to dry our feet as best as we could, to put our boots back. B, on the other hand, air dried his feet by walking with his load barefoot on the rocky road to the top of the hill. Only then did he put his socks and shoes back on. Respect.

We walked for a good hour when right next to a little bridge and a proper hiking trail, four jeeps stopped and unloaded a veritable convention of, of all things, Korean hikers with gear and bags and support staff.

While we were resting on the first little hamlet at the top of the trail, the first Korean trekker stepped into view with sunglasses and a grin on his face, namaste-ing people, animals and buildings as if he were an over-caffeinated nabob. “Namaste… Heheh… Namaste… Heheh… Namaste…”

At some point, we stopped at a tea house for lunch. Mercifully, the only other guests were a solo traveler and a guide with one support staff. They made for a curious tableaux: three men at a table sitting silently while avoiding eye contact with one another. They were not giving the friendliest of vibes, so we didn’t try to engage in conversation. (At one point N. could not help overhear some snippets — it seems the trekker had hurt himself and was having trouble negotiating the trail.)

We ate a dal bhat — traditional Nepalese meal of rice and curry — and continued on our way.

***

After crossing a couple of cable bridges we came to the point that A. had warned during yesterday’s itinerary overview would be the most challenging part of today’s trek. Well, fine, but somehow we had forgotten the part where the said-challenge would involve steps — 3,300 of them in fact.

We kept crossing the Korean group with their many support staff, two of which were women, and many of which were simply wearing flip-flops to carry these heavy loads dangling from a simple plastic strap on their foreheads. The women passed us, and from below I saw one of them balancing the load with one hand and taking a phone call with the other.

Later than we should have, we remembered we had brought hiking poles, so they helped a bit, but it was hard to enjoy the views or the hike itself when all we did was look up and see yet more steps.

At one point  when it started to sprinkle a bit, we saw members of the Korean group hiking with umbrellas — a very odd sight. At another point when the support staff of the Korean entourage passed us with three traditional straw baskets, my CSI skills led me to the conclusion that the Korean entourage would have Korean BBQ for dinner: I saw tabletop gas grills, a large container of sesame seed oil, bags of rice and, that tell-tail sign, large bunches of fresh green lettuce.

So what else did we see today?

It’s a bit challenging trying to remember everything during the trek from the now relative ease of our tea house. It had been such a long day of steps, goat droppings, and mountain views. We also ran into caravans of donkeys descending from above and continuing on down the mountain steps. This was obviously the way by which all things too heavy for people were taken to and from Ulleri.

Throughout our hike, we sometimes lost sight of B. because he would go ahead instead of trekking at our glacial pace. We would find him at one of the many resting spots — stacked rocks for hikers to rest their load — where he would greet us with a grin and cheerfully follow us, only to quickly overtake us again.

A. shared comments and stories — about the plants or views or people of the mountains. It is impossible to remember all the details of what he shared, but easy to recall the sense of camaraderie on the trail, the stories themselves distracting us from the challenge of the hike.

Easily the most awesome sight today: school kids. At one point, while we were huffing and puffing on the steps, there magically appeared these kids in uniform, with backpacks, wearing plastic sliders. They looked to be in high school and rocked that blasé confidence that only young people can muster. In N.’s words, they hopscotched on the steps like “mountain goats.” Even more incredible, according to A., these students commuted daily on these steps, twice a day, to and from school.

There was a lady cutting up the growth between the rocks on the steps. A. confirmed my suspicions: she was doing trail maintenance, to prevent the plants from dislodging the stone steps.

From a distance we could see lots of different places that showed evidence of landslides, both old and new. And in the context of a larger zoom, the landslides looked truly scary because we could easily imagine that terror of waves of rock and dirt raining down the side of the mountain, taking with them terraced crops, houses and people.

N.’s biggest fear for this hike fortunately did not materialize — he did not get one mosquito bite.

My biggest fear — feathers — did materialize in the form of the many chickens that were kept by the villagers and that I made sure to avoid.

We finally reached the town of Ulleri, climbed the steps of our tea house to our room (and saw that solo trekker we had seen at lunch), and were rewarded for our day’s efforts with a view of the snow-covered tips of Annapurna South and Himchuli. These were just as Himalayan mountain peaks should be — massive, imposing, awe-inspiring.

While admiring the peaks, a couple more things stood out: the tea house was in the process of putting the finishing touches on a new dining room they were building. I dearly hoped they had civil engineers here in the mountains — that new addition looked to be on very high stilts. Another was the little girl who I guessed was the owner’s daughter. She wandered around the grounds doing what every two-year-old would do, toddling about, bouncing one thing or another that caught her attention.

We had dinner — stir fried noodles and momos — and then a shower to wash out the dust of those steps.

One alarming thought: what do people do when they get sick up here? The thought crossed my mind that — as if one can plan these things — it would be a really bad idea to have a heart attack in the mountains.

I got up at midnight and thought to look outside and saw the most brilliant stars I’ve seen in a while — through the windows of our room. I woke up N. point them out, but neither of us could muster the energy to leave our beds.

I had brought a fresh new journal for all these musings, but one small technological advance: after a whole day of trekking, it would have been impossible for me to record all these memories by hand. In a lightbulb moment I started to dictate into a note-taking app. Amazing when tech works for good.

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Kathmandu, Nepal (Part 2 of 3)