Through Kak and High Water

The night was not particularly restful. My Garmin declared 5 hours and 20 minutes of sleep as “non-restorative” and firmly suggested I take a rest day. Alas, today is anything but restful with 14 miles ahead, and, depending on which source you believe, around 0.9 mi of cumulative vertical gain as we roll up and down ridges on the way to Jagat.

The bedroom never really cooled. My thermometer recorded a drop from 91°F when I arrived yesterday afternoon to a still-sultry 75°F overnight. Humidity hovered around 80%. The shower was wonderful, though it would have been vastly improved by the presence of a towel—an item I had, in keeping with tradition, forgotten to pack. Mine was helpfully sitting back in Kathmandu, ready to dry my empty suitcase whenever it takes a shower. I ended up using my cold-weather fleece buff instead. It worked perfectly well, but now I just hope it dries before I actually need it to keep my neck warm.

Given the heat, I slept in my sleeping bag liner, which reminded me uncomfortably of the full-body condoms in Naked Gun. Since it has no side opening—and even comes with a little mummy-shaped hood—you have to tug it over your head and roll yourself down into it like a reluctant burrito. There’s even a small hole at the bottom so you can shuffle around without pretending you’re in a potato sack race. I like to imagine it was protecting me—along with my own pillowcase—from the clearly well-used bedding. Ugh.

Sleep was further interrupted by weather—lots of it. Despite all seven of my weather apps promising a clear night, the heavens opened. Torrential rain hammered down for hours, bouncing off the tin roof with the enthusiasm of a school marching band. Around 3 a.m. it was joined by rolling thunder, loud enough to startle me awake. I lay thinking of the fresh landslide area we’ll have to cross today, and how rain is unlikely to improve its stability.

By 4:30 a.m. the local cockerels joined in, holding a cock-a-doodle-do competition of industrial volume and questionable timing. By 5 a.m. I surrendered. I packed carefully, triple-checking that everything was wrapped against the rain, ate breakfast, and scribbled these notes while waiting for our 7:30 departure.

We headed out at 7:30 a.m. I made a quick stop at a local shop to buy a towel—300 rupees (about $2.50) for a small hand towel that would have to do. Then we started the climb out of Machha Khola. Almost immediately I noticed my heart rate climbing far too quickly. Three things were working against me: the heat (already 31°C with 85% humidity), the lack of restorative sleep, and the 20-pound pack strapped to my back. No matter how much training I did with weight at home, my heart has never quite come to terms with the idea of carrying it uphill.

The road smelled like a barnyard. A mule train half a kilometer ahead made it obvious what every animal had eaten for breakfast. And so began one of the themes of the day. The trail is never free of animals, and therefore never free of what animals leave behind. This, incidentally, is why I first wrote up this trip on a site called kak.fm: I knew I’d be walking through kak for miles. At first I was careful, placing each step with surgical precision. But eventually you come to a cliff edge where the only safe foothold is squarely in the middle of a steaming pile, and you just step in it. After a few hours I stopped giving a shit about the shit. These shoes won’t survive the trek anyway.

Back to the trail. We followed the road for a few hours. Somewhere in there, I managed to tweak my right ankle—not the injured left one I’d been worried about, but the supposedly “good” ankle. It settled down within a mile, but it was a reminder that the Himalayas don’t care about your plans.

The road was lined with waterfalls, some of which we walked straight through. We met several groups of trekkers along the way. Two stood out: an Israeli group, part of a five-year “around the world” odyssey (who, by chance, knew some of the South Africans in our group from a wedding), and a German group. One of the Germans had lost his brother here in the 2015 earthquake, so he walked in a solemn mood. But the moment that really made them memorable was when another German fell off a cliff. Only six or seven feet, thankfully—but still, not the best place for a photoshoot.

Not long after, the road served up its first real test. Our operator had warned us we’d “need Gore-Tex shoes today.” I had them, but no shoe on Earth could handle what came next: a full waterfall, blasting straight across the trail. The water came over my knees with enough force to knock me sideways, and this was on the lip of a 400-meter drop into the Budhi Gandaki. The wind and spray shoved me around like a rag doll; half a meter separated me from freefall. It was, without exaggeration, one of the most terrifying minutes of my life. Gore-Tex was useless. Nothing short of scuba gear would have helped.

Less than a mile later we scrambled across two fresh landslides—loose soil over sheer drops into the river. My heart rate spiked to numbers Garmin probably thinks are medically impossible. According to the math, my “max HR” is apparently higher than the formula allows—about twenty three beats above the age-based 220-minus-age estimate. Good to know.

After the landslides we left the road and joined the official Manaslu Circuit trail, crossing the first of many suspension bridges. They are harder to walk on than expected: they bounce like trampolines, and the planks never sit quite where you think they will. Every step feels like something from the Ministry of Silly Walks.

The views made up for it. Waterfalls tumbled from every cliff, some taller than anything I’ve seen outside Norway or Iceland. The jungle was lush and chaotic: poinsettias, morning glories, canna lilies, and, occasionally, a cannabis plant tucked casually among the greenery.

We stopped for lunch—dal bhat, naturally—after five hours. Everything is cooked fresh, which means waiting an hour, so we peeled off wet socks and let our feet steam dry. By then I was oddly fine, despite two hours earlier having worked flat-out in Zone 5.

The afternoon brought endless stairs—hundreds of them, some up to knee height. My thighs endured them for two hours before revolting in the form of cramps. I’d drunk nearly five liters by then, cycling between LMNT (which tastes like the ocean if the ocean were angry at you) and some less intense electrolytes.

The final miles were the hardest: flat sections that somehow still kept me pinned in Zone 5. We crossed more suspension bridges, plus one low bridge strung just a few meters above the riverbed. It was fine, aside from the holes punched in it by falling rocks. The descent at the far end was via iron strips welded 10cm apart—a neat trick for my big feet, but something I’d have feared for a child.

By the last 45 minutes I was running on fumes, my thighs conspiring to strangle me from the inside out. We reached Jagat around 4 p.m. I collapsed on the bed and immediately passed out for an hour.

The room was basic: a thin mattress on what looked like plywood salvaged from old Blackberry shipping crates (remember those? I wonder whatever happened to Blackberry). Total walking time was 6 hours 44 minutes of effort spread over 8.5 hours on the trail. Whoop rated my strain at 20.7 out of 21. Garmin gave me max scores—5 out of 5—for both aerobic and anaerobic load, then politely asked how I was still awake.

This is my heart rate data for the day, drawn with altitude and temperature. Note the long periods in Zone 5. Tough day.

Dinner was dal bhat again, washed down with a Sprite for the carbs. The communal shower was cold enough to double as cryotherapy and horrifyingly dirty, but I took it anyway, unsure how many more days I’d get the chance. Toilets came in a mix of Western and squat; I chose Western while I still had the option.

Water consumption was high today, at 6 liters. Garmin estimated I lost 6.2l of sweat. I tested, and rejected the Grayl today, opting instead for haunted swimming pool (which is to say, Aqua-tab chlorine treated) water in the Nalgene bottles. Two primary reasons for this: first, despite having the biggest 32oz bottle, it filters only 0.5 liters at a time. While there is water all around, sometimes the water is very poor quality so you have to go to the next area for some. So this small volume of water is just unworkable when you have to drink 1l/hour and have 2h between safer water spots. The other issue is the weight - it is 4x the weight of a nalgene bottle. So it just does not make sense at all in this scenario.

I need a good night’s rest. Tomorrow, the climb begins in earnest.

Note: very poor wifi in Jagat means little images today. Hopefully better tomorrow.

Volatren and Ibuprofen entered into service today. 400mg of Ibuprofen at 4pm, with Voltaren on the shoulders at about 8pm.

Electrolytes (definitely not enough for the volume of water I had):

• 1x LMNT
• 4x Propel 0.5l of water packets
• 1x SaltStick chews after arrival in Jagat when my thigh muscles were trying to murder me

Food:

• Breakfast: 2x MET-RX Super Cookie Crunch. 820 cals, 84g carbs, 42g protein.
• Morning snack: 2x clif bloks. A very scarce resource I ate long before I expected to.
• Dal Bhat for lunch: I skipped the melon as I had seen it in the kitchen and deeply questioned the hygiene. I accidentally poured my Dal over the table, and decided that was a sign, so didn’t take more. The pickle was too spicy, so only a bit of that. Rest was a cup of rice and half a handful of hot potatoes. Maybe 470cal.
• After lunch snack: Kars
• 1.5L of coke, 33g of carbs
• Afternoon snack: 100 cal bag of lightly salted almonds.
• Dal Bhat for dinner: mystery steamed veg seemed ok. Dal again seemed grainy. Potatoes and rice fine. Maybe 470cal.