927 Days of Summer: Around the World in a VW Van (Drive Nacho Drive) by Brad Van Orden & Sheena Van Orden

Author:Brad Van Orden & Sheena Van Orden [Van Orden, Brad]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-05-07T07:00:00+00:00

39

Annapurna Trail

to Bragha

Sheena

Before we left home I had met exactly one person who had hiked in the Himalayas. That was Baroon, our dear friend and the son of Bharat and Durga. I had been green with envy when he told me about his trek. Imagine! The person sitting in front of me had trekked the mountains at the top of the world, had walked around Annapurna, and had seen what I dreamed of one day seeing. Those talks had the sealed the deal. I would get there, somehow. My mind was even able to skip over the minor details, like the part about the trek around Annapurna being three weeks long.

When we were in India, the closer we inched toward Nepal, the more we talked about our trek. Brad had tried to be realistic and had made it clear that he thought we were incapable of finishing such a feat.

“Don’t you remember what happened in Peru? We had to sleep in that guy’s barn because you couldn’t even walk anymore. That trek was only three days. Only three days!” he exclaimed. “You’re talking about doing something that is three weeks!” He looked wide-eyed at me. “Do you really want to hike that long? I mean, seriously?”

I did remember Peru. I had cried outside of a guinea pig barn in the Andes Mountains, unable to motivate myself to take another step forward. The problem was that I had been wearing my running shoes and the weight of my pack had crushed my feet. I had reason to cry. I had been crying “uncle” for hours, but the steel pliers only gripped my feet tighter and the only way out was to sleep in someone's barn and beg a ride out of the mountains in the back of a rattletrap chicken truck.

I had learned lessons in Peru; first, that Brad would carry the food, and second, that I needed boots. With the Himalayas in mind, I bought my first pair of backpacking boots. But since buying them, I had only worn them twice: first when I tried them on the store, and second on our ill-fated trek in the Thai jungle when bees and leeches had attacked us.

We had desperately wanted to make it to the Himalayas, but even just a few months prior we had our doubts about whether we’d even make it to Nepal. In our minds, Nepal had been the most unattainable prize on our trip. The Kingdom in the Clouds on the direct opposite side of the globe from our home. Back home someone who had spent considerable time in Nepal told us that we would never make it, and that even if we did, we would never survive the rough roads or the rebels.

The Himalayas in a two-wheel-drive van? Please! But we had made it to Nepal after all, and that was reason enough to head out on the Annapurna circuit, one of the highest, most sought-after treks in the world. The Annapurna circuit is a 150-mile-long

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