The Valley Will Crush Your Quads and Not Say Thank You

Woke up this morning to Machhapuchhre and Annapurna South just sitting there in the window like they owned the place. Which, fair enough, they do. I’ve been trying to come up with the right words for what that view is and I keep landing on: it’s not that I can’t describe it, it’s that describing it would make it smaller. So I won’t try too hard.

Late start — breakfast took forever in the way that all tea house breakfasts take forever (this is a feature, not a bug, once you adjust to it), and Pat had to make an emergency pit stop that I will not detail further. Eventually we were moving.

Clear head. Good legs. Ready.

We passed a Nepali wedding on the trail. Just — there it was. Full ceremony, families, color, happening on a mountain path. I walked past it like a very confused tourist, which is accurate.

Good ascent for a while. Good. And then we discovered the trail plunged straight back down into the valley. This is the thing nobody tells you about trekking in Nepal: you’re not just going up. You’re going up and down and up and down, and the descents are quietly destroying your quads while your ego is focused on the elevation gain.

Gregg the Aussie caught up with us on one of the descents and blew our doors off completely. Just walked past us like we were standing still. The man moves like gravity is his personal assistant.

Made it across the river and hit an ascent that was — I want to be precise here — practically vertical. Straight up. We climbed it. At the top: lunch at Kaji’s tea house, which is where we met Helen and Sarah. Helen’s Irish, lives in Chicago, works for Motorola. Sarah’s also Irish, based in Sydney, currently between jobs. They were good company over dal bhat.

Afternoon brought us to the Moonlight Tea House and, blessedly, an actual hot shower. Not a bucket. Hot water. Pressure. I stood in it long enough to be slightly embarrassed about it.

Megitte caught up with us here. Then Helen and Sarah appeared — turns out they were right behind us the whole time. The trail has a way of collecting people.

Kazi showed us tomorrow’s plan over dinner.

I’ll just say: it is going to kick our ass. Kazi said it with the calm of a man who has seen many asses kicked by this mountain. I believe him completely.