It was worth it. So worth it.
That was my immediate reaction to seeing the view at Annapurna Base Camp, the destination of my Nepal trek.
The night before we would reach base camp was the first of the trip I felt the need to set an alarm. 4:30am, since we planning on having breakfast at 5. That whole morning was blurry, an internal sensation doubled by the thick pure white clouds rising up through the valley that we would hike to base camp. We started early, on the trail by 5:40, hoping to get to ABC by 7, our usual start time. The hike was, of course, uphill, the name of the game in the Himalayas, and as we were approaching an altitude of 4100 meters, I could feel the thinness of the air in the shortness of my breath.
The hike started with a treacherous ice slip and slide courtesy of last year’s avalanche and then continued into steeper and steeper inclines that I had to force my body up. Eventually it leveled out a bit and I was able to step outside the constant count in my head I use to keep moving forward when the going gets tough and really look at the magical landscape that surrounded me. The grass was lush and green, cut through by whispering streams that seem to laugh at hapless trekkers. It is spring, and the small mountain wildflowers are in full bloom, many of them seem like familiar miniatures, like the dwarf poppy, but some of them are completely new to me, like the spherical conglomerations of blue flowers that dominate the lower areas.
The thick white cloud followed us up the trail and then gently dissipated into thick mist lining the the rising natural walls surrounding the valley we were still hiking up.
I caught a glimpse of rooftops ahead and then in the distance I spotted a sign. It had to be base camp. We got closer and closer until the lettering was clear enough make out- “Annapurna Base Camp.” I had made it! That moment was one of complete triumph for me, there were a couple of moments on the trek up where I hadn’t been sure if I was going to make it. We took lots of pictures and then kept going up, to the actual camp, not just the sign, and the viewpoint just behind the little settlement.
It was unbelievably spectacular.
The sun pushed through the clouds, clearing the white barrier, but not completely, so the mountains were still demurely and beautifully shrouded in mist. Annapurna rose up in front of us, flanked by an entire range of the Himalayan mountains. You could stand in one spot and spin around, seeing a giant towering above you the entire time. We were surrounded. Each peak was still shrouded in mist, with glowing white caps and dramatic black crags standing out against the blue sky.
It is worth noting that all three of the guys have and are still wearing their down jackets on top of several layers while I stayed comfortably in my t-shirt. It was this hike, and that moment, that the guys started to understand that I had not been exaggerating the extreme effect the heat and the sun had on me.
That was only the early morning of our day, we hiked all the way down to Bamboo, one village farther down than we had hiked up from the day before, and we got there at 3, just an hour past our typical stop time, after our extra early start. I was very proud, and very happy, since the hike, for the first time, had been completely down hill!