11/3/08 - Day 13 - Jomosom to Kokhethanti

Jomosom Elevation: 8,924 ft

Kokhethanti Elevation: 8,320 ft

Daily Distance Walked: 12.4 miles

Total Distance Walked: 99.4 miles

Starting Time: 8:00AM

Ending Time: 4:00PM

We stayed up late last night, relatively speaking anyways - 11PM.  There was a large group of Spaniards at our lodge. It was fun hanging out with them even though the majority of the conversation was in Spanish.  Laurence and a couple of the Spainards interpreted for me or spoke with me in English.  The two Spainards that we had met in Upper Pisang were there, and we learned that they were having flight difficulties.  One of them had practically run by us on the way to Jomosom in an effort to reconfirm their flight for today.  Many of the the airlines operating in Nepal make a habit of overbooking their flights so you have to reconfirm your reservation prior to the day of your flight or they will give away your seat.  Even then, it behooves you to get to the airport and checked in for the flight early or they might give away your seat.  Thus, Carlos had run from Muktinath to Jomosom to reconfirm their flights.  He got there at 11:45 and learned that their seats had already been given away and that it would be 4 days before he and Raoul could get another flight.  To their advantage, but to what would become Laurence and my annoyance, it was possible to take a jeep nearly all the way from Jomosom to Beni, one of the possible ending points of the Annapurna Circuit.  One of the recurring conversations along the trek dealt with the road that was being built between Beni and Jomosom, which once completely would essentially kill the end of the Annapurna Circuit trek (this portion of the trek is also called the Jomosom trek).  All of the talk on the circuit was that the road would be built or was being built, not that it had already been built.  What we eventually learned was that only a very small section of the road had yet to be completed.  Until this fact became evident to us, however, we held out hope that the road would disappear.

Because of the wind we had encountered the previous day, we made an effort to get up early with the hopes of getting the majority of the day's walk over before the winds picked up in the afternoon.  There was a path going off the road down towards the river shortly after we got outside of Jomosom, so we took to escape the road.  We eventually came to a fork in the path, and for the first time made a wrong turn.  As we were climbing a steep hill, we even commented that we didn't think we were supposed to have a whole lot elevation gain or loss today, but we were still going in what appeared to be the right direction, so we kept going.  The elevation map we had of the trek wasn't exactly super detailed.  Luckily, we encountered a nice Nepali teen on his way to work in Jomosom and he got us turned around and on the right path.  While we walked up a steep hill completely unnecessarily and lost about half an hour, we did both get this pretty picture :-)

This is what we should have been seeing.

The first village after Jomosom is Marpha and many trekkers go from Muktinath to Marpha instead of stopping in Jomosom.  Once reached it, we knew why.  There is a way to bypass the village, but we opted to go the long way so we could see it.  It was well worth our time and efforts because it was one of the nicest villages we had been through so far.  We both wished we would have stayed their the previous night, but at the same time know we were way to exhausted to have gone any further the day before.

After Marpha, we started seeing green again.

We continued on to Tukuche before stopping for lunch.  We first time in many days, we were able to have pumpkin soup again!  Since apples are such a big crop in this region, we also had som fresh apple juice and apple mo-mos.  They were both really tasty.

This woman was working across from where we were having lunch.

To our dismay, the winds picked up again after lunch.  At least they weren't nearly as bad as they had been yesterday.  Laurence's face was still dark with dirt by the end of the day though.  I think the brim of my ball cap helps keep some of the dirt off of my face becasue I don't seem to get quite as dirty.  Laurence might have you believe it is because she is always walking front taking the brunt of the wind though :-)  I've offered to take the lead and let her draft off of me, but we tend to fall back into her leading or walking next to each other fairly quickly.

The clouds were really thin and made the mountains look really neat today.

Our plan when we left Jomosom was to go as far as Larjung today, but since it was only 2:00PM when we arrived and we were feeling pretty good we decided to keep walking to the next village.  At that point, we wanted to be able to spend as much time in Tatopani as possible since there were hot springs there (another chance to use our swimsuits!).  The farther we got today adn the farther we got tomorrow would make or walk to Tatopani in 2 days time very short, giving us almost an entire day there.

Pictures of Larjung

Babies!

There were more unsteady brides to cross along our way today.

We reached the next village, Kokhethanti, around 4PM and decided to stop there for the night.  The village is rather small and one of our guides indicated that it had only 4 lodges.  It appeared that only 2 of them remained.  The effects of the road were already visibly deteriorating the villages along the trek as well as the trek itself.  It's not very fun being honked at and having dust thrown up in your face as the jeeps and motorbikes rush by.  Laurence commented that it looked like we were going to have the lodge to ourselves for the evening, but I think we ended up being the only trekkers in the entire village that night.  There is a larger village about an hours walk away, so I think most people wither stay there or back in Larjung.  

We were able to do a bit of laundry, and more imprtantly take "showers" to wash all of the dirt and dust off of ourselves that the wind had caked on us that afternoon.  I say "shower" because only cold water came out of the shower head, so we got buckets of hot water to use instead.  The amenities in teh larger villages are better, but I really liked staying in this lodge and it was nice to provide business to a lodge owner in a smaller village.

The woman running the lodge is very nice and very helpful.  Her husband is a bit odd though.  He sits around a lot and likes to join Laurence and I at our table and look through our maps and books.  We are happy to let him do it, but we were glad he didn't hang around while we ate dinner.  We were, however, serenaded by a lot of noisy spitting during dinner.  It was so loud and so frequent, we were laughing by the time we finished and again during breakfast the next morning.

 

Our lodge in Kokhethanti.

The clouds were really heavy this evening, so we were looking forward to taking pictures of the mountains once they cleared in the morning.  That evening, we even got a little bit of rain, the first of the entire trek.

Chickens!

Flowers in the garden of our lodge.

More views from the village.

Pumpkins!

A caravan of mules came through the village while we were taking photos, so I took this quick video of them passing in order to share the sounds we had become so accustomed to hearing along our trek.  They are really rhythmic and calming, most of the time...