WE'RE ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, that's right, we're back, and you wont believe what we've been thru! After making it to the Annapurna base camp in only 3 days instead of the usual 5, we decided that the base camp wasn't enough of a challenge, and set out alone to tackle the peak.....
ok ok, I'm lying. Here's the real story:

Day one:

Got a cab to Nayapul, from where the book says it's a 20 min walk to Birethanti, the start of the annapurna conservation area. 1 hour later we arrive in Birethanti...... start to have doubts about the trekking times given in our guide book...... The book also told us it would take us about 4 hours to reach gandruk, our destination for day one. We set off from Nayapul at 8am. By 2pm we were still in the first village along the trail and having trouble getting up the first hill. Then it started raining..... and hailing..... and then more raining..... We sheltered in a tea house and watched the crazy nepalese porters continuing to trek past us in the rain. I say crazy, as the path no longer resembled a path... more of a cascading river/waterfall/mudslide affair.... and these nepalese were wearing flip-flops (slippers) and carrying about 40kg of stuff on their heads...... Anyway, after about two hours the rain stopped and we headed off. Our plan of arriving at lunch time now turned into a plan to try and arrive before it got dark.... Selene decided she couldn't go any further with her pack, and luckily for us a local guy offered his services as a porter for 200 rupees (about 1 pound 50).

So eventually we arrived at the start of Gandruk, just as it was getting dark. At the first guesthouse we came to we stopped for a rest, and a voice from the balcony above us shouted: "Hello! Come and stay here, it's great!". We didn't need much convincing, and we trapsed in. Anyway, they were right. It was the most fun place i've been so far! It's run by this old nepalese lady who we called "Ama" (mother) and she called us "Chora" (boy) and "Churi" (girl). These 3 words formed the entire basis of every converation we had with Ama, and beleive me we had a lot! A typical coversation would go something like "Ama!"..."Chora! Churi!"... "Ama!".... "Chora!".... But she laughed and smiled so much that you felt like you were sharing your life story with her, and being damn amusing in the process! The other word she knew was "Ganja", which she would add onto the "Chora!" every now and then before offering us and huge pile of ganja for 20 rupees...... I cannot beging to explain how much this woman laughed. And no, she wasn't stoned, she only grew ganja to give to other people! Let me give you an example. You try to order some food... "I'll have and onion omelet please".... "Omelet!!! Chora omelet! hahahahahahaha!!!!!".... you get the picture.....

Then there was Cook. Cook, not surprisingly, is the cook. He is 21 years old, and completely insane. Having a conversation with him is like putting your brain in a blender. I wish I could recount even a part of what we talked about with him, but it would be like trying to explain random events in a sequential order..... It usually involved a lot of hysterical laughter from both parties, although never at the same thing..... However, Cook could cook, let me tell you! As long as you asked for no salt... otherwise you got 2 heaped teaspoons full no matter what the dish.... :)
The guys who called us from the balcony were a bunch of very friendly Israelis, and that evening we sat around a campfire with them and had a lot of fun... Effy, the guy who shouted us, had been there for 3 days, after deciding that trekking was not for him on the first day of his trek. Having been there for so long, he had appointed himself manager, seeing as no one spoke english, and ama and Cook had both wholeheartedly accepted him as such!

Day 2:

Decided that after the hard day on day one, we needed a rest day. Spent the day lazing around. walked into gandruk and looked at the view. Decided that maybe the ABC (Annapurna Base Camp) was a bit adventurous for us and started thinking about alternative routes....
After having my second nap of the day, i emerged from my room to find about 13 nepalese sitting on the lawn playing cards. There was aslo about 5 tents pitched in the garden. Wow, I thought, nepalese tourists! I was wrong. They were in fact part of a 14 strong crew (11 porters, 1 cook, 1 guide, 1 assistant guide) who were part of an organised trek. So where were the "customers" of this organised trek?? Then i spotted them. All 3 of them. 1 english guy, fresh out of school, not looking a day over 18. One English girl, who was too nervous to make friends on her own, and one ozzy girl. All 3 had signed up for the trip back at home, and were paying about US$70 a day for the trek!! And they were staying in tents and having their food prepared by the cook. As you can imagine they were a bit shocked to find out that we had rooms with comfy beds and were paying 100 rupees for them.... :) The brit girl asked me... "but what do you eat??".... "whatever I decided to order off the menu in the restaurant" I replied. Poor ignorant fools.

Day 3

Having realised that we hadn't bought enough money with us to hire a porter, it was decided that i would become the porter, and selene would transfer her stuff into my bag and leave her bag at the guesthouse. What an amazing plan! So we set off at 8am heading for Chomrong. With Selene packless things were going much smoother. We made it to the halfway mark with time to spare, and were just starting to feel really optimistic when it started raining. We didn't let thing dampen our spirits however, and set off thru the rain, which wasn't that heavy anyway.

An hour later, and we were still trekking thru the rain, but surprisingly, still happy. If Selene started to look a bit miserable, all I had to do was pop a gummi-bear in her mouth and her scowl would immediately be transformed into a look of joy! The power of gummi should not be underestimated... Eventually we reached the only tea house on the way to chomrong, just in time, as the rain, which up until then had been of the english variety (relentless but pissy and weak) suddenly turned into himalayan kind (torrential, turning into hail and back every few minutes, accompanied by lightening that singes your eyelashes and huge clouds that envelop you and block out the sky).

We stayed in the tea-house for an hour and drunk burnt milk tea while I played my flute to try and calm the gods a little. Eventually the storm passed, and we set off on the last leg of the journey as the sun came out.....

.......for about 5 mins, after which the storm returned with a vengence. This time we had no tree cover and the wind was blowing the rain directly into our faces. Selenes face was now displaying signs of Acute Mountain Depression, and no amount of gummis was going to work this time. But still we soldiered on (we didn't have a lot of choice) and in the end we reached Chomrong. We stopped at the second guesthouse we reached (an improvement on Gandruk!) and peeled off our soaking wet clothes.... My so called "waterproof breatheable" jacket had breathed about as much as a week old corpse, and as a result I was soaked thru to the skin with either sweat or rain... does it really make a difference?

After we dried a bit, there was a break in the clouds and for the first time we caught a glimpse of the mountains. Wow. This is why we came! They were so big and pointy with white bits at the top! Awesome!

Day 4:

Woke up at dawn and went out to have a piss. Was confronted by the most amazing view I've seen on my trip so far. The sky was cloudless and the air was completely clear. The sun hadn't yet risen over the ridge to my right, but it's rays were searing their way accross the sky like a halogen torchlight in a dusty cellar. Where these rays touched the peaks of the mountains, they caught the fine spray of snow blowing off of them and illuminated them like a floodlight. I cant fully describe this, but luckily the photos I took can, so keep your eyes peeled for them....

We had designated today as a rest day, but i was feeling restless, and when the guest house owner invited me to the hot-springs I couldn't resist. He was taking this french guy, Jean, there. Jean had broken his foot on the way to the ABC and had been resting in this guesthouse for 3 days waiting for his foot to heal. Apparantly it was just about ok, so he was going to attempt this walk. I was told it would take about an hour to get there and 1.5 hours to get back. No worries.

After about 20 mins of going down the steepest steps I'd encountered so far, my knees started giving me some trouble. And from what I could see the path went pretty much straight down into infinity and beyond.... But I survived until the bottom by running ahead, therefore taking the risk off my knees and placing it on my life instead. I don't know if you've tried it, but running down mountains is exremely effortless compared to walking down them, and just requires a bit of quick footwork and an acceptance of a possible, probably very painful, death.

At the bottom I lay in the hot spring and rejuvinated my aching muscles... bliss! However, rejuvintaing your muscles is a fairly pointless exercice if it forces you to completely fuck them up beyond repair trying to get home, which is exactly what I did. I set off back up the hill following Jean, who despite his "broken" foot was setting a pace that was somewhere between an olympic walk and a sprint. I'll remind you now that these were very steep steps, with no flat bits, and no traversing, just tight zig-zags going all the way up the steepest side of the mountain. One hour later we reached the top (30 mins faster than it was supposed to take) and I thought I was going to die. It was midday and the sun was beating down on me. Every step felt like I was being stabbed in the chest with a large kitchen knife, and my legs were numb. I staggered into the courtyard and selene greeted me with a look that said "Oh my god, your about to die!". Somehow I didn't die, but my rest day had succeded in completely straining every muscle in my legs. Tomorrow was gonna be fun.....

Day 5:

Set off for Gandruk at 6am. Almost all enthusiasm had evaporated by now as we were no longer heading towards the mountains but away from them. My legs were fucked. For the fist 30 mins I was actually hobbling as my knees felt like they might go "pop" at any moment. Just in case you sitting there saying "God billy's such a hypocondriach!" I'll have you know that my doctor has told me that I do have some condition with my knees called "old man's knees" or something, and if you dont beleive me I'll get him to write me a note!! So anyway, I'll spare you the details, but we trekked back to gandruk.

When we arrived it was like ariving home! Ama came rushing out to greet us, and the time honoured shouts of "Ama!" "Chora! Churi!" filled the air once more. Once we'd settled in, I appointed myself manager seeing as effy had left, and sat on the balcony trying to coax in tourists. I managed to get in one Israeli and was later offered a large bundle of Ganja by Ama as payment.... !

Day 6:

Set off early again and made good time as it was all downhill. By the time we arrived in Pokhara again we were sooo knackered, but the thought of all the luxuries we could buy was too much so we headed out into town. First we ate thai food. Then singaporean food. Then Japanese food. Then we bought a large bag of sweets and chocolate and made ourselves thoroughly sick. Then we went and slept for a long time.....

Right, I'm sick of writing, and I'm sure you're totally bored shitless of reading, if you are still reading of course. I'm actually back in katmandu now btw, just to confuse you all. :)