Please note that since I walked the Annapurna Circuit in 1998, things have changed a lot. There are roads to Muktinath to the west of the pass, and to Bagarchap in the east, and by all accounts this has changed the nature of the trek completely. I've left my writing untouched, for the sake of nostalgia if nothing else, but if you intend to walk the circuit yourself, you should be aware that it will be very different to the trek I describe here. And probably not in a good way...
The Himalayan equivalent of billboard advertising along the eastern Circuit
Nepal freaked me out instantly, in much the same way the cool, silent night air does as you leave the rock concert, ears still ringing. Compared to the hustle and bustle of India, Nepal felt like a quiet backwater: the fact that I had to put my watch forward by exactly fifteen minutes at the border only emphasised the differences between India and the kingdom of mountains to the north.
Even the long bus ride from the Indian border at Sunauli to the mountain town of Pokhara was easy, and the loud horns so ubiquitous in India were conspicuous by their absence. As I recalled the admonition that after India anywhere would appear mundane, I realised that mundane isn't always so bad; after all, sitting in a comfy chair in front of the fire and flicking channels is pretty mundane, but after a long day trekking through the fire and ice of the real world, it's a dream.
The equivalent on the western side
Indeed trekking was my goal in Nepal, and that's why I headed straight for Pokhara instead of Kathmandu. The Annapurna Conservation Area to the north of Pokhara, itself in the western half of Nepal, contains some of the most dramatic trekking on this planet, and I had my sights firmly fixed on the three-week Annapurna Circuit, a circular route that crosses a very high pass, trundles down the deepest gorge in the world, and provides mountain views to stifle breath that's already short in the high altitude of the Himalayas. After beaches, rainforests, deserts, volcanoes and glaciers, it was time for the big cheese.
The Himalayas are, of course, huge, but reading about them is considerably different from experiencing them first hand. On a trek like this there are not only the usual walkers' concerns of blisters, twisted ankles, upset stomachs and sunburn, but also Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), an ailment brought on by high altitude that is fatal if unchecked, and still claims trekkers' lives today. On the surface, the Annapurna Circuit sounds like the biggest challenge of them all.
Marijuana grows naturally along a surprisingly large portion of the Circuit
It isn't all challenge, though, and this is a major part of its appeal. Unlike most of the trekking I'd done up to this point, you don't need to carry food because you stop in villages along the way, staying in the local hotels. This also means you don't need to carry a tent, cooker, fuel or any of the other niceties associated with self-sufficient tramping, leaving the pack pleasantly light and the accommodation comfortable. On a three-week trek this is a godsend: the thought of a pack laden with 21 days of survival gear is enough to make most people's knees spring a leak in sympathy.
It also meant that I had to reappraise my attitude towards tramping. So often I have been on tramps that require serious effort and long days to get to destinations – Taman Negara, Hollyford-Pyke, Gunung Rinjani to name but three – that I've developed a bit of an attitude problem. I like to go fast, to push myself, to get fit, to be first at the destination, and in Annapurna this isn't just a waste of the ambience of the village inns and the beauty of the mountain views, it's foolhardy. One way to avoid AMS is to acclimatise slowly to altitude, so hooning up the peaks is simply dumb. Altitude soon altered my attitude.
