After Chame we enter in the conifer realm, mountains are even more step, night are cold and I have to pee every 45 minutes. We are above 2500 m.a.s.l and it is hard to ignore it.
Paths smell good pine resin, and houses look like Norway-chalet. In the kitchen, our hostess, the lodge owner, cooks and warms herself with here wood-stove.
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Nepali are charming people. Ther are quit shy, and you often see them sit around a cup … for dice. They trade then small bills with big shouts of voice. Nevertheless more than 20 000 tourist pass every year, so some Nepali are blase and indifferent.
We arrive next day to Pisang, feeling nauseous and sleepy. We are now above 3 000m, and the length of our walking days are not limited by our tiredness or by the time, but by altitude : we cannot sleep at more than 300 meters above the previous night. And the nearest hospital is several days-walk away.
Sometimes the cover of clouds breaks of and we see a glorious sight of the iced peaks of the Annapurnas, for few minutes. They are preposterously close and big.
Manang is the big village of the surroundings, with an air strip! Needless to say that this strip is unusable during most of the Monsoon, because the landing in a valley between sharp 7000+ peaks is so dangerous than perfect weather is mandatory.
Truth is the Annapurnas are supposed to shadow this part from rain, but it often drizzles.
We stopped a day in Manang for acclimatization. It is compulsory : vivid dreams and nightly hallucinations, and tiredness remind it us in the morning.
So we go for a day trip to Milarepas cave. Milarepa was an hermit of the 13 century, he led a life of meditation and austerity which led him to wisdom. The cave in which he lived (at more than 4 200 m!) is now a pilgrimage. The road to it is full of sacred Chorten (Buddhist monument commemorating Buddha’s life) , praying wheels and flags … A camp of pilgrims sing and pray for his statue, a rhythmic and bewitching sound.
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As in a lot of sacred place in Nepal, ravens live peacefully and are respected.
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Manang is also the last important stop before the more desert landscapes above. Life is tough for scrub trees which survives, mosses and hairy plants give some colors to the surroundings.
A few houses in the remote surroundings : this is Lethar. Even in the middle of summer the ambient temperature is low, and as I stubbornly want to clean, I take the worst shower of my life : a bucket of water, ambient temperature, which steams when it touches my body. After this I stay one hour in my sleeping bag to re-warm.
The path is now very narrow and often blocked by landslide.
La piste est maintenant très étroite et régulièrement interrompue par des les glissements de terrains qui sont omniprésents.
Are we going to finish this trek alive, passing the highest pass of the world?
Superbes photos !!
J’adore le look de rémi 🙂
C’est pas gentil de se moquer!
Les autres randonneurs sont couverts de goretex et autre, nous on a juste nos habits habituels de voyage, et… le vrai-faux matos acheté a Katmandou!