Nepal! The beginning of our ABC Trek

So on the 20th of october I landed in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal. A busy city, puny compared to the huge indian cities. But it was still big, had as much traffic and was almost as crazy as India.

Short Info: I didn't take alot of pictures in Nepal, I apologize! But the others took alot of fotos, as soon as I have a link I'll share it! Otherwise you can search for the twitter hashtag: #ABCEFGJ16 (Annapurna Base Camp Emu, Flory, Gerrit, Jakob 2016 - a great hashtag :D )

I was here to go hiking with friends from Germany, who arrived a day later. I did some shopping (needed some gear for the hike I didn't carry with me in India) and had a short look around Thamel, the tourist discrict of the city. The next day Gerrit, Florian (Flory) and Emanuel (Emu) arrived and we made plans, arranged transports and so on for our ABC trek. ABC stands for the "Annapourna Base Camp". From here people could start to climb the Annapurna mountains. But just going up there is a popular trek aswell. Probably more popular is the circuit around the mountain range.
We had to get closer to the mountains and headed to Pokhara, another big city to the west of Kathmandu. From there many people start their treks and the city (at least around the nice lake) is almost exclusively for tourists. Bars, restaurants, shops, homestays and other accomodations line up along the streets and you need to walk a bit to find the "local" area, same as in Kathmandu (where you'd have to leave Thamel).
Here we stayed a night, because the bus took forever. It was a tourist bus and "comfortable", but it stopped alot. A short toilet brake here, another two for the first and second breakfast, wait isn't that a hobbit thing? Anyway we didn't need that many stops and I thought it only made the busride even longer. In total it took about 7-8 hours....
Exhausted we just stayed in Pokhara and organized a taxi for the next day. But this gave us the chance to look for a restaurant where Emu and Flory had been 3 years ago, when the two of them did the circuit. When we finally found it we enjoyed our dinner and they sent some fotos to their friends, who they met at the trek back then.
The next morning it was time to go hiking, we left some things at the homestay and left Pokhara. The taxi dashed off towards the mountains and arrived at a small stop, where one hiking path starts. We had breakfast and saw how we were the only ones starting from here without porters. Other people had guides, porters who carried their bags and so on, we didn't mind and started as another group of hikers arrived.

Nepalese grow vegetables everywhere! Almost every lodge had a small garden!

This was in Tolka, where there is still a village rather than just lodges

The beginning gave us a good perspective of what lay ahead: stairs. An uncountable amount of stairs. So... many... stairs... Who built these?!
This was an exhausting start. I thought I was prepared for stairs after climbing up to Tirumala, but carrying a big backpack and having hiking boots is a different thing. Only later my friends told me this trek was also called the trek of 1000000 (add more zeros as you please) steps or something like that. Maybe I dreamt it, but it definitely fits!
So we climbed up the stairs. And we climbed and we climbed till we reached some children, they stood on the way and started to sing. We stopped and listened and smiled: how nice of the kids to sing for us! Then we realized that they were holding hands, so no one could pass and they had a small basket with flowers and money inside. They wanted cash... we couldn't give them any (the money was inside the backpack somewhere) and so we moved past them. Then they started shouting stuff after us on nepali. Probably not that nice things, but we didn't care. By that they probably got rid of the good karma they built up for singing for us ;-)
But we didn't know what the song was, Gerrit joked it could be translated to "Give us all your cash! Please gie us all you cash" - later we found out it is a religious song and was played at several other places (temples and so on).
Some hours later we arrived at a place where we could have lunch. That was really nice. And my filter (thanks FSR!) came in handy. The water was already getting much more expensive (instead of 20 rupees, it cost here around 50 rupees). So we filled up our bottles instead of buying new ones (and creating more waste) and went on. Goal was Tolka, there we wanted to stop for the night.
We came past different people. Some wanting us just to stop and stay there, others wanted to sell us stuff and others told us we should go to the next group of lodges and stay at their friends/ cousins/ brother in laws place.
While it was getting dark we arrived at Tolka and found a nice lodge to stay in, before the sun hat fully set. We showered, ordered food and started playing "Doppelkopf" (DoKo) again. We planned to keep a game going during our hike and had started at lunch. DoKo is a traditional german card game. It isn't that easy to explain, so I won't try here. If someone wants to, he should walk into a dark german bar and look for 4 or 5 people sitting at a table with cards, they'll probably be playing it! CHances are higher if the people are old. You need 4 people to play, if they are 5, one is the dealer.

For the next day we had already ordered breakfast (you also order it in the evening before) and left Tolka. We came past schools, where children played and passed other hikers, or they passed us. Alot of Nepali porters also came by, they usually are unbelieveably fast, eventhough they were carrying as much as they weigh themselves and only wearing flipflops! We just stopped and let them pass, if we saw them behind us. They basically RUN up the mountains...

We woke up in Tolka to this nice view of Annapurna South (one of the 5 Annapurna peaks)

This second day was very hard on me. We started at about 1900m and dropped down to 1500 to cross a river. Then we climbed up a ridge to 1900 again, just to walk down to 1500 again, to cross another river, flowing to the first one. Then we had to climb up to 1900 again, to reach the lodges, by then it was lunch time, so we had food. And it was good! I hoped I had enough energy for the rest of the day, I did manage in the end, but it was hard!
We climbed about 400 more meters up to Chomrong, a pretty big village including a checkpoint.

To go trekking in Nepal you need permits.For the ABC you need 2. The TIMS (Treking information m system) and the ACAP (Annapurna conservation area permit). The ACAP we got in Pokhara, the other one we had gotten in a small village before Tolka on the first day. Now we arrived at the ACAP checkpoint (the place where we got our TIMS we also got checked in). You check in in case of emergencies. And when you leave the area you should check out again, so in case someone doesn't check out for a long time, they might go searching for you. And especially if an earthquake or whatever happens, they will know about how many people were out in the mountains and for whom to search.
Now we were checked in, so we headed on. Another 400 meters down to cross a river and back up to a small lodge, where we finally stayed the night. It was almost dark when we arrived. I was exhausted, considering walking almost 2km just in height, I think thats ok. And I did't pack lightly. I mean why should it be easy....? *sob*

Anyway I managed and it felt good to finally rest after such a hard day!

Yay! Nice warm socks (thanks mom!)