We were up early for a good breakfast and away up the hill towards Lumle (pronounced like Lumley with a Northern English accent). We made good time and stopped for a cuppa at Khanre in the company of a lad from Hong Kong. He did not seem concerned that he would become a Chinese citizen in 1997 and bid us visit Hong Kong and China.
We continued along the ridge high above the valley to our left and negotiated a “donkey jam” on a stretch of waterfall. We lost sight of Machapuchare, the fish tail mountain, fairly early on in our trek, but this morning we saw it in all it’s glory against a blue sky.
The fish tail mountain is at the end of a long spur ridge, coming south out of the main backbone of the Annapurna massif, which forms the eastern boundary of the Annapurna Sanctuary. Its double summit resembles the tail of a fish, hence the name meaning "fish's tail" in Nepalese. It is also nicknamed the "Matterhorn of Nepal".
The peak is about 25 kilometres (16 miles) north of the provincial headquarter of Pokhara and is 6,993 m (22,943 feet) high. It is believed that Machapuchare has never been climbed to its summit. The only confirmed attempt was in 1957 by a British team led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Roberts, although there have been reports of a New Zealand climber, Bill Denz, making a successful yet illegal attempt to the summit in the early 1980s, maybe while we were there! The mountain is said to be "sacred", but in what form, or to whom, is somewhat unclear according to Wikipedia.
We rambled on at a slow but steady pace and were already ahead of our schedule when we reached Chandrakot at 11:30 hrs., where we paused for mint tea and biscuits. So far we had met two Australians who we had seen in India and we were pleased to discover less soaps (slang: naïve, servile, obsequious, cringing, fawning, suave; unctuous; oily persons) on the trail as we got further away from Pokhara.
We sampled some Chhangi beer, which tasted like ropey cider, before making a steep descent down to the river. Chhaang, chang or sometimes referred to as Himalayan Beer is an intriguing drink, to say the least. A milky white drink with flecks of floating white chunks throughout. Sometimes referred to as Nepali beer, chang is a fermented rice beverage, making it similar in appearance, taste and production method to unfiltered varieties of Japanese sake. According to legends, chhaang is also popular with the Yeti, who often raid isolated mountain villages to drink it (see www.intoxicatedabroad.com).
We followed a donkey train down the rutted steps. The herder whistled and shouted, whipping the rear donkey as the heavily laden procession balked at the downhill gradient. At the bottom we stopped at a tea shack while the donkeys were unloaded.
A European bird with a headband said “hello” for the fourth time today and began to reel off her life story. Luckily her mates began to continue and she had to leave us and follow hastily to catch them up. We continued down to a primitive bridge across the river and discovered that we were at Birethanti, our projected stop for the night, and it was only 14:00 hrs.
Birethanti is a small village set at the foot of the Modi Khola Valley at around 1,100 metres. The village is one of the main stops on the Annapurna Circuit treks. We booked into the “Trekking Hotel”, where it cost only 4 Nepalese Rupees for a double room, and settled down for a meal to kill time.
Our host took little notice of our order but assured us that he had it in his head. While we waited we took photographs of the primitive bridge and the raging mountain river. This trek was becoming a ramble – Good Lord! The Hounslow Swagmen would murder this “6-day circuit” in 4 days without turning a hair.
We polished off lunch and hit the town to discover nothing other than to avoid the nasty oranges on sale. They looked good but were impossible to peel and tasted like lemons. I made a hash of one and gave the other two to some kids playing by the river.
We cleaned our teeth in the river before realising that it was the community latrine. We polished off a vegetable omelette with Tibetan bread. we aided our digestion with a syrupy bottle of changi (rice beer), which was reminiscent of bad cider and Airfix glue, and the consistency of slimy dilute wallpaper paste.
From the restaurant we returned to another on the outskirts of town where they sold Raksi (rice wine), a more refined and more alcoholic version of changi. An American girl who was reading “The Snow Leopard” (The Snow Leopard is a 1978 book by Peter Matthiessen. It is an account of his two-month search for the snow leopard with naturalist George Schaller in the Dolpo region on the Tibetan Plateau in the Himalayas.) recommended that we drank it warm like saki and found herself included in the round of drinks.
She said that she found the book “a bit too arty” and we ended up having an excellent chat that covered the nastiness and lack of organisation, manners, sexual equality, and honesty of India.
We culminated in a conversation about China, which she recommended we visit (2nd time today) based on extensive travels she had made there herself. Her previously ordered supper arrived, and her husband appeared, breaking the spell.
We returned to our hotel for another snack before turning in. I got up once in the night for a piss, which involved going outside, and was amazed by the intensity of the moon and the clarity of the stars.
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