We gained about 1,100 feet of altitude during our hike but it was a barely noticeable gain because it was over a fairly long distance. The scenery is now absolutely spectacular! We are seeing the Annapurna peaks all the time and there aren't many villages along the trail anymore, so we see lots of fields and trees alongside the trail. This is why people come to Nepal - to see the grandeur of the mountains. It just takes about 5 days to get up here. There won't be many trees from now on, and it is quite windy at times. It was still warm today in the sun, but it is quite cold here when the sun goes down. We are staying at the Yate Hotel, and Shari and I think we are at the Hilton. Our room is big (about 14 feet square) and we have our own attached bathroom. The shower and toilet are in the same room and the shower just drains into the toilet hole. We took showers and the boys did our laundry and then hung it up on a line outside our room. Shari, Nar and I were having some lunch (we got here about 2 PM) when it started pouring. We ran over and grabbed our clothes off the line and brought them into our room where we rigged up a clothes line with some rope Shari had with her. Of course our clothes are soaking wet because they just get wrung out by hand, so hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow and we can hang them ouside again.
This tea house has a great dining room. Elsa and Manu, and Vannesa and Tara are also staying here so Shari was playing cards with them in the dining room after lunch. There is no electricity in Manang tonight (Nar told us that different towns get electricity on different days), so they lit the gas lanterns during supper. It is so nice to sit and listen to people talk in different languages while we eat. Nar and the boys sat at a table behind us reading some kind of Nepalese magazine and Singa was reading out loud very fast. I love to listen to them when they talk to each other - they talk so fast and all the words seem to run together.
The good news is that neither Shari nor I are experiencing any altitude sickness and this is where it would likely start if we were going to have any problems. I hope we continue to feel okay over the next few days. I feel the best I have since I started this trek. It's amazing what beautiful scenery and getting rid of an upset stomach can do for you.
We asked the other trekkers if they had a room with an attached bath and they said no they didn't want to pay the extra money (we are paying 220 Rupees - US$1.40 each), and they are paying 150 Rupees. I think the extra 70 Rupees is well worth it for the convenience and privacy of your own bathroom.
4/27: What a great day! It was our rest day but we didn't rest at all, instead we did all sorts of neat things. After breakfast (my best so far - eggs, real toast with butter, hash browns and my first cup of coffee since we started the trek), Nar, Shari, Elsa, Manu and I did a hike up the hills behind town. One way to help acclimatize is to hike up to a higher altitude but then come back down to sleep. We probably went up about 800 - 1,000 feet and it was a beautiful hike. We took lots of pictures. We started our hike at 9 AM and got back around 11:45 AM.
When we got back Shari and I went to check out some stores and we found a lovely one across from our tea house. The owners are a husband and wife (he is Nepalese, she is Indian) who moved from India to Nepal 9 years ago. She spoke beautiful English (she was educated in a convent school in India) and they just built and opened this store and restaurant last year.
While we were in the store we started talking to a young woman, Annette from Holland, who is trekking with her family. I asked her where she was from in Holland and she said Amsterdam, but that she grew up in Breda. When I told her I had been to Breda she asked why, and I told her it was a business trip for Mellon Bank. I mentioned the joint venture between Mellon and ABN Amro and she said she knew it well. She is a lawyer and she is working on the contract for the JV. I asked if she knew Nadine Chakar and she said no, she hadn't met her, but of course she knows who she was because of the JV contract. What a small world.
I bought quite a few things in the store - 2 fleece liners, batteries, a book and a prayer flag - the 5 colors of a prayer flag are blue for the sky, white for clouds, red for fire, green for water and yellow for crops - all for about US$28. For someone who doesn't like to shop, I've bought quite a few things since I've been in Nepal. I bought some jewelry in Kathmandu and pendants from Nepali vendors along the trail. Everything is so inexpensive that it's hard not to buy things.
We thought the store was so nice that we made plans to eat lunch in the restaurant with Elsa and Manu. Well, the food was very good but it took forever to get served. We got there at 1:45 and didn't start eating until 2:45, and Shari and I wanted to go to a health talk at 3 PM, so we had to rush through eating. The portions here are huge, so we left part of our food to be packed up ("Nepalese doggie bag") so Elsa and Mana could bring it back to Nar and the boys.
The health talk was put on by the Himalayan Rescue Associaiton. The Association was started in the 1970s by a doctor who was very concerned by the number of people who get sick and/or died in the Everest region from altitude sickness. Their main pourpose was to help prevent people from getting altitude sickness by educating them on acclimatization techniques and symptoms of the sickness, and providing treatment when needed. The Association is staffed by volunteer doctors mostly from the States and Euope, and they have a clinic in Manang where they give the daily health talk, treat trekkers if necessary, and provide health care to the Nepalese people. There are no local doctors in this area.
The talk was very interesting and covered AMS - Accute Mountain Sickness, which is the first stage of altitude sickness, and HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema) and HAPE (High Altitude Pulminary Edema), which are very serious, life threatening illnesses. Basically, everyone can avoid getting sick by following proper acclimatization techniques (which I described previously in my notes), but some people are in too much of a hurry to get up high and many people still get sick and some still die in both the Annapurna and the Everest regions.
I was curious about why I feel so much better breathing up here, so I told the doctor I use an inhaler for exercise-induced asthma and asked him why it seems easier to breathe when hiking high versus down below. He said it was quite common for people with regular asthma or exercise-induced asthma to feel better up here, because the air is much cleaner, even though we get about only 75% of the oxygen at this level than we do at sea level.
After the talk we could get our blood oxygen level tested for a fee of 100 Rupees. It's best to have a level in the 90s and 85 is the cut-off for a safe level. Shari had a 93 blood oxygen level and a pulse of 77. Mine was 84 with a pulse of 110. The doctor left the monitor on my finger for about 30 seconds to see if the level changed and it went to 85 with a pulse of 99. He told me I was okay to continue as long as I felt okay, which I do. We have a conservative schedule, so I'm not worried about going higher.
At 5 PM, we all (Elsa, Mana, Tara, Vanessa, Nar, Singa, Pratik, Shari and I) went to see Into Thin Air at the Projector Hall. It was a funny little building with benches that could hold about 25 people and a little projection box up at the ceiling. The quality of the video wasn't too good and it stopped about two-thirds through the movie, but someone got the "projectionist" and he came in and got it going again. It was a really neat experience. Unfortunately, it is a hard movie to follow if you don't know the story, so Elsa and Mana couldn't follow a lot of it, and it was in English so I'm sure most of it was lost on Nar, Singa and Pratik.
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