Getting My Feet Wet

I once met a girl from Nepal whose family owned a trekking company. She spent a couple of days training with the mountaineering staff at Adventure Unlimited, and it was in Colorado that she reached her first summit, a 14,000 foot peak. I remembered being amazed that she lived among the greatest mountain range in the world and had trekked above 18,000 feet many times, but never actually climbed to the top of a mountain.

This memory all makes sense now that I understand more about trekking, and that it isn't exactly mountaineering, although at times you encounter some pretty steep and rough terrain. It's basically walking from point to point, usually mountain village to mountain village, sometimes passing over huge passes or peaks to do it.

Robert Pirsig wrote, "It is the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top." On my short two day trek, I passed through several mountain villages, met nomads from Punjab with their sheep and horses and saw a variety of wildflowers and crops terraced into the mountainside. In the villages, local people would invite me and my guide in for chai. My conversations were usually limited to "Namaste" and a smile and children asking my name or yelling "Hello! Chocolate? Hello! Chocolate?" My guide usually did some interpreting for more in-depth conversations. The villagers have been spending the last few weeks stocking up food and cow feed for the harsh winters that are about to come. It never ceases to amaze me, though, that in a village where running water was limited, nearly every house had a satellite dish and a DVD player.

I was pleasantly surprised by the varying terrain and landscape of the Himalayas in the Kullu Valley. There were the snow covered, jagged peaks that I always associated with the range, but the peak I climbed, Pitalthsu (spelling?) Peak, was very agrarian and pastoral. Sheep were grazing and corn was growing below tree line. I usually associate corn with the flat prairie lands of my home state of Illinois, not the Himalayas. Cannibis also grows wild in these parts.

At 12,800 feet Pitalthsu Peak is not the highest mountain I've ever climbed, but it might be the steepest ascent I've ever done. I gained 6,000 feet in about three hours. Needless to say, coming down was a bit painful. My toes are well acquainted with the front of my hiking shoes after slamming into them with each step. I discovered later that I cracked both my big toenails very low in the nailbed.

I'm a bit sore, blissfully exhausted and already planning my next trek. Time was a limiting factor this week, but I'm looking into longer treks in Sikkim, the far north-eastern state near the border of Nepal, during November when my teaching assignment is over. Hopefully my toenails will grow back by then.