Annpurna circuit - part 6 : Depression sets in

24th March

Usual routine, get up bloody early, sort your gear out, give Nara the trekking bags to sort out then breakfast.  Then it’s off we go, straight up “Oh Bugger” on a dusty rocky road, as soon as the Suns heat hit you, you felt your energy sap.

About 3 n half hours in we arrived at Chamje and thankfully got out the heat to have lunch and a cool down, unfortunately we couldn’t stay there all day so onward and upward we continued.

By now we had really started to get to know Ratna and Nara, also they had got to know us.  We had settled into more of a pals doing it together than Employer and Employee, it makes the trek more enjoyable for everyone and both my Dad and I much prefer it that way.  This also meant wind ups, jokes and a lot of laughing during all the trek, poor Ratna having his water bottle hidden quite a few times, I even managed to get his hat one day and stood next to him while he was routing though his rucksack and asked him what he had lost this time.  Nara even though he doesn’t speak a lot of English we found communicating with him was not that hard and it was him who suggested putting rocks in Ratna’s rucksack not us, every time Ratna would say how long we had to go and what the route would be like we would then ask Nara to confirm (we suggested that Nara was really a secret manager checking out how the company is running)

The heat never really let up and the steep up and down climbs really started to get to me, my aches began to have aches and then a wave of sadness came over me.  Feeling guilty as I was the one that had slowed the pace right down.

The one distraction we had was on the other side of the valley, where they were building a new road right into the side of the cliffs.  Workers clearing rubble by hand and throwing it over the top with huge thundering sounds, other guys hanging off ropes and using pneumatic drills to break up the rock.  You could spot on the trail rocks that didn’t belong on this side which had been caused when they had blasted the rock and it had flew over.

Then the depression set in again as each step up the slope was harder than the next (the only thing that keeps you going is there is no choice, no taxi’s around), then finally we reached the top and below us in the distance was Tal.  Relief set in and a final last spring in my step, a few photographs, pause to spin the pray wheels at the gate to Tal then go find the lodge.

 While waiting for my dinner I felt so exhausted and my legs really hurt (good news though, my foot had stopped hurting), though did find I had lost partial  feeling in one of my toes on my left foot (still not back to normal either).  I certainly dropped off to sleep quite quick that night.