Forty years after my first visit I returned to a much changed Nepal. Stifling air and noise pollution in Kathmandu, thousands of tourists moving in waves through once quiet streets, now packed with retail stores selling American and European brand knockoffs from China while restaurants advertised menus with a wide variety of western dishes to satisfy an increasingly hungry global appetite. Outside of Kathmandu on the popular trekking routes modern accommodations offering espresso, pizza, hot showers and wifi in places that were before empty and remote wilderness while helicopters with wealthy tourists hoping to get a glimpse of the world’s highest peaks buzzed the sky unabated. By the end of my trip, however, I was relieved to have found that much of the majestic Himalayan landscape and kindness of the Nepalese people were as I remembered them from decades earlier.
During five weeks I completed three very different itineraries comprising nearly three hundred trekking kilometers with a total elevation gain of 18,000 meters. My first destination, the wildly popular Annapurna Base Camp trek, is an easy to moderate route that takes approximately one week to complete. There are comfortable accommodations along the way offering a wide variety of services, from the first day all the way to base camp at 4130 meters, one reason many opt for this trek. Jaw-dropping scenery is your constant companion each day, with deep, steep and mysterious valleys - the pathways to the giants - that culminate below the immense, three thousand meter south face of Annapurna I and the West Face of sacred, unclimbed Machhupuchhre. These are once-in-a-lifetime vistas that anyone can appreciate.
My primary motivation for returning to Nepal a third time was to follow the original route taken by the 1950 French Expedition that made the first ascent of an eight thousand meter peak, without supplemental oxygen or reliable maps, and on their first attempt of a mountain that had never before been explored. The subsequent account, 'Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak' by expedition leader Maurice Herzog, was written over seventy years ago and is still the best selling mountaineering book of all time, an epic yet controversial account which adds further mystique to the region on both sides of the Kali Gandaki, the deepest canyon in the world. The French had their sights originally set on Dhaulagiri I, the seventh highest mountain in the world, but after weeks of searching for a viable route to base camp they eventually gave up, deeming the mountain unclimbable, and instead quickly changed their objective to Annapurna I, statistically today the most dangerous 8000'er of them all, with a summit to death ratio of 27%. My plan was to follow this difficult approach that gave the French expedition, including some of the best mountaineers of that era, so much trouble, using a small team and minimal resources.
I set out on the 16-day Dhaulagiri Circuit - considered one of the most difficult treks in Nepal due to its remoteness, altitude gain and exposed sections of trail that would be unquestionably treacherous during periods of bad weather or after heavy snowfall - in late November, with a guide and two porters, to explore the Dhaulagiri Region directly across the Kali Gandaki Valley from the Annapurna Massif. By comparison to the popular treks in Nepal, one must bivouac for several nights at higher altitudes where no villages exist, and carry the necessary provisions, an anomaly when tea houses are prevalent on nearly all other itineraries. We completed the trek in just ten days, feeling stronger each day as we gained altitude, culminating in a very long final day, from Hidden Valley to Marpha, a descent of 2560m/8400.' We were extremely fortunate with the weather, but perhaps even more so for the total absence of others on the route. All climbing expeditions and trekking parties had already departed this late in the season, and I later learned that we had been granted the final 2019 permit for the Dhaulagiri Circuit, which helped explain our good fortune. If you're interested in escaping to a remote region of the Himalaya which even today remains relatively quiet, I highly recommend this trek, particularly in late autumn, between mid November and December.
My third and final destination was the short and sweet Poon Hill Trek, one of the best locations in Nepal to view the sunrise on Dhaulagiri I, the Annapurna Massif and Machhupuchhre. This is a short and relatively easy itinerary, just 3-5 days, with a little over 2000 meters of elevation gain and full amenities beginning to end. Leave Ghorepani well before sunrise - the climb to Poon Hill takes less than an hour - then watch the landscape transform as stars disappear from the sky and alpenglow begins to paint the Himalayas.