From Himalayan Roads: Chapter Eleven - Annapurna

The fresh snow has made the path more laborious to navigate. The whole of the Annapurna region is muffled by it, the stream far down below barely audible, the clouds muted as they lift up and over the behemoth peaks, dissolving into a blue sky. It seems a sin to add the Styrofoam sound of crunch-crunch to the scene. It’d be better to keep it silent, soak in the silence until it completely relaxes you.

But I’ve got miles ahead of me, and I need to push on. Each step: Crunch. Crunch.

Who would I be disturbing anyway? There is no one else here.

I imbibe a question that may have originated from the very sound of the footsteps, which vibrated through my legs, into my chest, and then appeared in my consciousness, nagging:

What is the worth of walking alone in the mountains?

I think of the parallel universes that would have me with my feet up on an ottoman in a dry-walled home, watching TV. Or in a busy bar, clinking bottles of IPAs with friends, the music too loud for good conversation. Or maybe I’m back in that café, sitting across from Her and chatting over a cup of black coffee, but this time our knees laced together like teeth on a zipper.

In this life, such occurrences are not so. Almost every day I have found myself doing this exact same thing: walking alone up mountain paths, with just my thoughts as company.

There is an overwhelming peace to it.

When you have climbed up the steep grades and your t-shirt is cool with sweat and your lungs are hot; when the fatigue in your legs is not crippling yet and you are not weak; when you step with lightness, then you can push on over the high passes, beyond the forests, where the wind is uninhibited and stings with an invigorating chill. You lose yourself in those alpine winds.

During those times you are meditating, and not just on behalf of the threadbare prayer flags fluttering in the wind. Your thoughts come and go as a natural state of things. They may sometimes be frivolous thoughts, and sometimes profound. They may cause pain, but they may also heal. Yes, in fact, they often do. You will smile and laugh aloud sometimes, the noise echoing off a far crag, or swallowed up in the wind. All the thoughts are fleeting; they change with each mile gained. Some are gone as quickly as you take a single step. It would be a good thing if I could learn to let go of the poisoned thoughts always in this way: with just a step. That’s the beauty of this kind of walking – it is easy to let go. You learn the way thoughts ought to be.

It is healthy to walk alone. It makes your heart pump strong blood through to your extremities. Your muscles do what they’re designed for. You breathe fresh air. In and out. Cold, fresh air that smells of pine in the lower altitudes, and of tundra higher up.

Whether you are paying attention or whether you are not, you will learn about yourself. Since no one is there accompanying you, you get chances to see yourself as others see you. When you meet yourself there in the mountains, and you see yourself alone, do you like what you see? Do you like who you are? The fortune is that you have no distractions from these questions; you will have to face yourself as resolutely as you would a bear in your path. Do you turn around and run? Do you bluff?

Or do you charge?

There is too much virtue in these solitary walks. When I am walking alone in the mountains, I am graced by the knowledge that by being there I am a part of the mountains. I feel their imposing presence with clarity and awe. I respect them, their majesty and inhospitality. Their beauty strikes me deep in the chest and I find it impossible to understand how vistas can hit you so profoundly, how the feeling sits with you for years after, unforgettable. The feeling can be nothing other than love. It is a good love, the best of love, because it has no pretense. Walking alone in the mountains teaches me how to love, and how to appreciate beauty.

Yes, it is good to wander alone in the mountains. Benefits abound. When I return to civilization, I return better, healed of lingering wounds and chaotic thoughts. I know who I ought to be, how I ought to feel. I am calibrated to that mountain-walking man, and when I find myself slipping into the vices of the city, into polluted, metropolitan delusion, I know where to find redemption.

* * *

I’m alone, but not lonely. Not this time.

I have the comradery of the Annapurna range. This, now, though entirely new, is familiar. I’m on foot and have the weight of a backpack instructing my pace. The air is thin in the altitude, it smells of junipers and freshly fallen snow. I know how to move here, I know my pace up the steep slopes and when to take off layers of clothes to keep cool. I know that a pinpoint of pain on a foot is a warning sign, but general soreness means that I can still go for miles.

The Annapurna Circuit to Annapurna Base Camp stretches nearly 125 miles. It is regarded as one of the most beautiful treks in the world. Like a Buddhist devotee circumambulates a stupa (only counter-clockwise), those who do “The Circuit” loop around the Annapurna range of the Himalayas, peaks reaching 26,000 feet. It’ll take me three weeks to complete.

I’m fast. I don’t mean to be, and I probably shouldn’t be, but I can’t help it. Since I was a child I have been hiking in the mountains, struggling to keep pace with my father who carried a monstrous pack and never seemed to slow down. Now that I am an adult, I walk with the same urgency as that boy. Only now I have a man’s muscles and a man’s gait, and so I find myself quickly covering ten, twelve, fifteen miles in a day. I pass groups and individuals. I pass local farmers, trains of donkeys, and porters who try and keep up but give it up all too soon. When I arrive at the guesthouses, the owners ask me where I came from that day and when I tell them, they all respond with same word: “Fast.”

I don’t think I miss anything though. The landscape is too expansive. It takes all day to traverse the base of a single mountain. I can still take it all in. I take pictures of the gorgeous vistas, and ensconce myself into ancient villages made of piled stones and fragile, decrepit wood beams. I say “Namaste” to women with ruddy cheeks and men with calloused hands and kind smiles. I appreciate the pulsing vibrations as I walk across suspension bridges that cross raging rivers. I observe sheep and buffalo, and then yak in the high tundra. No, speed does not inhibit me from being a part of this place.

I rest at the guesthouses. I order sweet milk tea and Tibetan bread and I sit out on the veranda, breathing in the dry alpine air. From these perches I wonder at the beauty of the peaks and I ask myself over and over again just how I got here. It seems like such an experience cannot be real. In some of the villages I wander up to monasteries and I turn prayer wheels and incant Om mani padme hung, like I did in Bhutan. The prayer wheels ding against a bell with every rotation. I stand alone in the monastery – even the caretakers have seemed to have disappeared – among golden Buddhas and multicolored idols. I prostrate, turn around and walk out into the sunshine and then my eyes adjust on the view of the Himalayas in every direction and I believe that I am having a religious experience.

In the evening, other trekkers arrive to the guesthouses. There are never many as it is the off-season. We form a small coterie around the woodstove and we talk little about trekking. Rather, we learn about the world, each person representing their corner of the planet.

“In Indonesia, we usually go to the beaches and spend our weekends hanging out.”

“In Korea, we have some nice beaches, but we are city people. But there are many problems right now. We have a bad president. But our democracy is making it so she will not last long. There are many people protesting.”

“Democracy is a great thing. We have the largest democracy in the world. We are still trying to rid ourselves of corruption, but it is good that we have it.”

“And Trump? What do you think about all this, Josh? How are things going in America?”

“Very poorly. I’m embarrassed by him. But we can really test our democracy now. We’ll see if our protests can really do anything. We’ll see what power the people really have.”

“Ah, I wouldn’t be too embarrassed. In Europe we are going through the same kinds of problems. What is wrong with the world? What is this illusion of a singular cultural identity? There is not one kind of Frenchman, like there is not one kind of Brit, like there is not one kind of American. What is all this fear?”

These conversations flow easily as dinner is served. Usually the meal is the illustrious dal baht, the only local food that comes with free seconds, an opportunity not often passed up by famished trekkers. “Dal baht power, twenty-four hour.” We have all learned the t-shirt slogan.

At one point I sat with a Finnish doctor, two Austrian scientists and their Nepali guide, a German psychologist, an Australian barista and a Spanish computer programmer. We talked for hours, ordering drinks, and discussing such variegated lives that had all found themselves together as brief wanderers and vagabonds, inspired by the Annapurna range. In that moment, despite having just met those people, I felt a connection that made it easy to call them friends and feel comfortable among them. I will remember that conversation as clearly as I will remember the views of the celestial peaks—both enriched me and made me feel whole. I was alone on the Annapurna trek, but also not. There were many friends I met along the way, and their company during times like these was relished.

For a final exploration on the Circuit, I added a five-day jaunt off to the Annapurna Base Camp. It had just received a meter of fresh snow and the sunrise view gave me the impression that I was standing in a cirque of clouds. It was easy there to forget the tourist infrastructure, the wide, cobblestoned trails and gaudy guesthouses, because they are so miniscule in that world where glaciated peaks surround you and soar into the sky. Nature is no less majestic because there are a few huts around and more than a few tour groups guided to that spot. The mountains still vibrate a magnetism that can’t be ignored. The Annapurna range had that power that I have always known mountains to have. 

Still, they possessed their own personality, one that I got to know like the new friends along the way. And like with the others, as I left the Annapurna range, I felt I was leaving a good friend, one that I shared challenges and moments of great beauty with. It is a friend that I will miss. One that was hard to say goodbye to.