Annapurna Trail: Day 1

At 06:30am, I was started into wakefulness from a pleasant dream about paying for some parking at a multi-story by a bleating alarm clock.

Dragging myself out of bed, dressing, packing and was down for breakfast. Breakfast was a strange mix. Fried potatoes, sausage, tiny pancakes and some odd looking local fish porridge. I focused on the sausage (protein) and potatoes (carbs) for the energy I would need.

At 8am, we loaded ourselves into the bus and headed off for the two hours to Nayapool, our starting point of the trek.

After about an hour of bouncing along the roads, once we’d managed to make it out of Kathmandu, we got our first proper glance at the Himalayas. They are, in a word, breathtaking.

We stopped for a chance to take a photo and my approach was a little different than the others on the bus, as it involved a tripod, HDR and a couple of different lenses. It was a great sport, because we also had the Annapurna river stretched out in front of us.

For lunch, after a few more painful hours on the bus, we stopped at the Green Highway Restaurant.

The food was buffet and decent, with a quirky setting. There were little pagodas for different tour groups, and a tree made prettier with eggshells on the branches, as well as a bush hemmed in with buried beer bottles.

Having arrived at our destination, we made the final preparations, and started hiking the trail. Even at this early stage, the scenery was amazing, though was had to make our way through a large village before, to me at least, a rope bridge marked the true start of the journey.

The light and colour were amazing and so I stopped frequently for both photos and HDR photos which require a little more of a setup.

After about an hour we stopped for a drink and to regroup before heading off again. This became a regular thing for us, and I quickly realised that if you were towards the front you actually got more time to recover because you rested whilst everyone else arrived and then everyone got five or ten minutes together.

I regularly ended up towards the back of the group however because I would stop to take photographs with my tripod, and those few minutes of setup and shoot were enough to keep me behind.

The delay was worth it however.

I found a few times that I was missing my walkabout lens, especially when people went by that I’d like to capture, but I that wasn’t using my 70-200mm at all.

Another hour or so of trekking and we reached the lunch point. The “Lodge of Syaulbazaar to Rimche” The food was good and well needed. There was also a dangerous looking spider with a large web right by the bathroom, waiting for someone unawares.

The trekking had been fairly easy to this point and  think we'd all become over-confident. The next section, four hours in duration, was very steep, very hard and I was very aware of the extra weight I was carrying...

Stopping became more and more frequent. Rest stops rather than photo breaks and I help up the rear of the main group on our way to Ghandruk.

We finally arrived at 17:20, after a long and arduous climb. The most difficult part of that was every time the trail bent, there was another flight of stairs looming above us, with no end in sight. When we reached and then passed through a village at about five pm, we knew desperation and weariness.

On seeing the Tea Room where we would be staying, I walked down the path feeling bone tired. I dropped my bag by the table, sunk into a seat and ordered a cold, cold beer. Before it even arrived however I got a second wind. Without all that extra weight, I felt suddenly light and full of energy.

I strolled down a few steps to setup my camera on a tripod to enjoy the sunset and my beer.

Sunset done, a very, very necessary shower and change of clothes occurred, and I felt something of a new man. Though a small achievement compared to climbing Everest, I felt quite proud of my climb and that even with the extra weight I had kept up. We sat around waiting for dinner and chatting for quite a while, so I decided to amuse myself with shooting the moon again.

As soon as my kit was out the moon was hidden behind a cloud and I had half an hour to wait for it to emmerge.

Once it did, I got started and gave a few pointers to any of the other interested trekkers, we spent a nice period shooting the sky.

Whilst all this excitement was going on, the toddler who lives at the Tea House decided he objected to my camera and resolved to punch me a few times.... Everyone is a critic!

We assembled for dinner and ordered our breakfast and went back outside. At this point, the move had fully illuminated Annapurna  II and parts of the valley and with some creative use of the flash on someone elses camera being used with a long exposure on my tripod mounted camera I got some great pictures which are hard to believe are done at night.

After that, my creativity took me and I wandered off to do a little painting with light. I created an image, using my torch and a 30second exposure, which has the flag and wall of the teahouse illuminated, with the mountain in the background. It is an interested image.