Friday, January 15, 2010

Nepal Day 6: Himalaya


23 Dec 2009

Well, our 6th day was a painful day.  For the first few days, I always had my camera hanging around my neck, so that I can take photos as and when opportunity arises, but then on this 6th day, I decided to just keep my camera in my bag.  The road is too dusty for my camera. 
Look at those black specks on my photo.  They are all dust particles!  I dared not to use any small aperture because the dust particles were so prominent!

The 6th is also a very long day.  In the previous days, usually we arrived at our guest house at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but today, we arrived at our destination, Himalaya, at close to 5pm!  The weather was bad.  After 3pm, the weather became very foggy.  The mountains were covered in heavy fog.  Along the trek, we could hear very loud noise of running water, but we couldn't see anything.  The visibility was only about 100 meters at best.  It was scary to walk in the fog! 

 
That was how the weather looked at around 3pm.  After that it was worse.  

It was very cold at Himalaya.  And after taking my shower, it was even worse!  Why?  The hot water was by a gas heater, but the water pressure was not very stable.  The temperature varied from 20+ degrees to 40+ degrees.  It was crazy to be in a close to 0 deg Celsius temperature, standing in the bath room, naked!  Haha, our Singaporean friend, Swee Hock, was the worst.  He was kind of 'stuck' in the shower room for quite some time, with a naked wet body.  He was swearing and cursing. 

That day, our lunch was at Bamboo.  Lunch time the sun was shining warmly on planet earth.  Everybody took out all their dirty and still wet clothes to dry under the sun.  Quite a memorable scene.  

And our Singaporean friends that night arrived at Himalaya at around 6pm.  They were very brave and capable, because they walked in the dark!  By 5pm, it was already completely dark outside.  

After a long day's walk, we rewarded ourselves with a can of luncheon meat that I brought with me.  Actually I brought two, but I left one at Chomrong thinking we might not need it at all.  Well, on the contrary, everybody was craving for some meat after such long walks.  Then Y said I did the right thing, because no meat is allowed at Annapurna Base Camp (ABC), as Annapurna is a holy mountain and no meat is allowed beyond a certain point.  How to know where that 'certain point' is?  Oh, along the trek, there is a small little grey brick structure with two bells in it.  You can ring the bells there to make a wish, I guess.  There is also a notice board there saying beyond that point, it is considered to be a Buddhist temple, which no meat is allowed.  Anyway, I only saw that notice board on my way down from ABC. 

As I am writing this blog entry, I realised I might have quite some pictures of mine in Y's camera.  I hope he will contact me after he is back in Japan, so that I can ask him for my pictures. :)

You can find a complete list of blog entries about my Nepal trip here.

No comments:

Post a Comment