Annapurna Circuit Trek
‘Fast Facts’
What: A trek around the Annapurna Mountain Range in the Himalayas, Nepal
When: April 8th-25th, 2008
Who: Mad, Ev, Guide (Govinda) and Porter (Nabin) – it was supposed to be a larger group but no one else signed up for the same timeslot so we lucked out
How long: approximately 220 km in 16 days
How high: the Thorung La pass is the highest point, 5416m above sea level (Blackcomb is a mere 2,284m in comparison – not even half!)
How low: the lowest point was probably around 800 m above sea level – our starting point in Besi Sahar…

Trekking the Annapurna Circuit is like the ultimate Fat Camp for the semi-fit. It rapidly rids you of any delusions you might have had as to your fitness, and it keeps you on a rigid exercise schedule with an enforced diet (limited to the general menu approved by the local tourism division). What really makes the Annapurna Circuit fabulous though, is the scenery. Hopefully my photos will convey at least a tenth of what it’s like to walk through this area. Words can do very little.

There are times here where we’ve felt like we’ve stepped back centuries. The villages seem to run much as they must have hundreds of years ago. Heating, if present, comes either from fireplaces or the placing of pots of hot coals under tables. Cooking is typically done on fires and as for plumbing – virtually non-existent, especially in the more remote villages. The landscape feels even more ancient. Part early-man, part fairy tale, it’s a land made for mammoths and dragons. How did we get here?!

*Additional Side Note on Food (Because food is always so important to us!)

In terms of food, you might think that the overall tourist bureau menu would be extremely restrictive in variety (which it is). Here, it seems, variety is only to be found in the different restaurants’ interpretations of the menu items. For example, let’s say you order Tomato soup. Your resultant broth could be created from a range anywhere between fresh tomatoes cooked with spices to ketchup mixed with water and maybe oil – it all depends on the restaurant.
Those with more particular tastes develop a quick instinct as to the quality of the kitchen’s potential output. Spying on your neighbours’ dishes (and eavesdropping on their comments) is particularly useful, but generally the best bet is simply to stick with the local food. This means a lot of Dal Bhat (lentils with rice). It’s a good thing it’s pretty tasty, at least in most places.
Our guide & porter have Dal Bhat every day, lunch & dinner. That’s a little too often for us, but we’re starting to have it at least once a day, especially because we’ve found the vast quantities of Yak cheese consistently piled onto the more western dishes a little off-putting.
What most people find appealing about the Dal Bhat is that simply by virtue of it’s name it is considered an ‘All you can eat’ type meal. For Evy & I this doesn’t mean much, as the quantities given to begin with are fairly large. In fact, for the most part we share one order (something we were surprised at being allowed to do – there’s no way you’d be able to share an ‘all you can eat’ dish in Canada!). In terms of your typical Nepali, however, this ‘All you can eat’ Dal Bhat means that when they say they’re feeling a little full ‘cause they’ve just consumed 1.5 kgs of rice’ (Govinda), they’re not exaggerating. We’d noticed the way the kids at Shanti Bhavan could pack in the rice, but Govinda & Nabin (our porter)’s capacity, along with their fellow guides and porters, is phenomenal. They have at least one if not two more of the 3 cup rice serving given to begin with. Just to clarify, that’s 6-9 cups of rice. For one person, for one meal. In addition to the lentil, vegetable and pickle seconds/thirds/fourths. It was pretty crazy.
In keeping with the feeling of Fat Camp – even though Dal Bhat could always be relied upon for overindulgence in terms of sheer quantity – overindulgence in unhealthy foodstuffs was a little more difficult. As you progress up through the mountain ranges, potentially tempting items such as bars of chocolate (mainly Snickers, Mars, Bounty and Twix) and bottles of pop (Coke, Sprite, Fanta, etc.), are unfortunately available and in plain view, but they go up drastically in price (the I-was-carried-up-on-a-porter’s head/mule-charge). It is to be hoped that as your self-control collapses under the strain of constant grueling exercise, your sense of frugality kicks in and prevents you from spending the $6 on a chocolate bar that was less than $1 eight days back.

Annapurna Circuit Trek
April 7 – 28, 2008

1st Day – Kathmandu, Nepal
The tour owner meets us at the front desk. Sushil. Bit of a character. Small, thin, wiry, apparently expected us to be British – not quite sure why. We go to the lounge, chat briefly, wait for our guide to show up. Are given the basics, including being told that we’ll need to buy/rent some extra gear (fleece pants, down jackets, sleeping bags). It seems our guide will help us with this today. We’re being rushed out of here tomorrow because they’re worried about the political situation – elections happen in two days and they want us out of Kathmandu and well on our way already.
‘If anything happens, ’ Sushil says,‘don’t stand by and watch – keep walking and if there’s a serious riot or anything someone will take you into their house, you can stay there until it’s safe again.’. Comforting…
He also talks a little more about crossing the Thorung La – the 5416 m pass that everyone tends to be worried about (with good reason). The trek has been organized to permit proper acclimatization (I’d read about that already – apparently once you ascend past a certain height you have to be careful to sleep within 400 metres of the height you’d slept at the night before or else run a high risk of improper acclimatization and the typically-fatal-if-advanced ‘Acute Mountain Sickness’ (AMS)).
The locals chew garlic as a natural aid to acclimatization, Sushil tells us. For us there is a sort of garlic soup that, once we get past a certain altitude, we should try to eat on a daily basis. We take all this information in good stride, though we are not in the least helped by Sushil’s admitting that out of the group taken up by the same porter 3 weeks ago, 2 out of 3 had to turn back. 2 out of 3 not making it is not a good ratio. Especially considering that Evy & I have been slightly worried all along, and are still sort of wondering how we’re going to manage all this. For all our good intentions, we totally haven’t trained. Sushil is so ridiculously fit too, the archetypical Nepalese mountain trekker…
Then, finally, our guide shows up. Govinda. Govinda has a small pot belly. Thank God. The potbelly may be misleading but it’s a comfort to both of us. Maybe we actually will be able to do this trek…

2nd Day – Kathmandu to Besi Sahar, Nepal
5.5 hours after going to sleep, we wake up only to have to finish repacking our bags. It takes longer than planned so we miss the breakfast we were supposed to have with Sushil and another duo going on a separate trek. Ooops. We didn’t think we were that late but whatever…

Need money, no banks open. Driver, porter, and guide (Govinda) all hang around and wait with us for the hour and half it takes until the closest bank is open. Get a massive (for here) cash advance, then call mom on cell phone from car so she can hopefully immediately access my account to transfer money from it to credit card… Irony?! – My supposedly international debit card doesn’t work at most Indian/Nepalese banks but while being driven from Kathmandu to some remote village in the Himalayas I can talk to my mother in Canada via cellphone. What a strange world.

The beginning of the trek appears to be a 160 km crazy-traffic/pothole-riddled/seriously-zigzagging car ride (we literally came within an inch of having a head on collision). It will end up taking 7 hours. 7 hours for 160 km. Car sickness becomes a much less remote possibility on rides like this.
Eventually at some point we make a toilet stop (only about an hour after I requested it). The driver attempts to stop at what must be the toilet stop for Nepalese – squat-hole in a cement 3-walled structure with opening facing the street. Govinda, perhaps sensing I’m not into mooning the street, tells the driver to keep going. We end up stopping at a large stone wall with some general scrub in and around. He waves me around the wall, apparently I get to pick the most preferable terrain. Sweet.

Besi Sahar, our actual trek beginning point, is beautiful – large mountains on all sides and quite pleasantly cool. We rest, wander around, buy a pack of cards purely because the trek company website recommended it as a good thing to have, and go for dinner. Oh and we buy kerchiefs. Apparently they’re necessary, and Govinda had said we’d be able to get them here. When he’d said that he didn’t happen to mention the only patterns that would be available – they kind of look like bad-video-game images. Each store has approximately the same variety – skull & crossbones variations, a Bob Marley/Che Guevara in bright greens, reds & yellows, or a monster/spider/reptile in brilliant colours. Hmmm. I eventually see one hanging with colours I like, when I open it out it’s a picture of Leonardo Di Caprio & Kate Winslet from Titanic… sold?!…sold… Though a Britney kerchief similar to my Titanic one is an option, Evy decides that for her the lone camo one we discover is the lesser of all evils.

In the evening it turns out Govinda and our porter, Nabin (‘Nah-been’ - who can’t speak English) were very excited by the cards. We spend the 2 hours between our dinner and theirs playing cards (tour guides/porters don’t get their food until all foreigners have been fed – 1950’s style segregation much?! I can only imagine a North American Hotel trying to prevent all locals from eating until every foreign guest has eaten…).
In terms of card playing with Govinda & Nabin, it ends up being a little more complex than first expected. Or maybe I should say less complex. First we try to teach them Crazy 8s, but that doesn’t go so well – too confusing. So then we play a game that’s a sort of cross between GoFish & Rummy, ultra simplified, that Govinda knows. Pure luck, but they take it very seriously. Evy and I are rather pleased when their food comes – we’re going to have to figure out a new game to teach them.

Heartstring moment of the day – we gave Govinda and Nabin each a piece of gum in the car about an hour before lunch. They seemed kind of excited by it – gum isn’t that common here. After lunch Evy noticed Nabin take out a little package – he’d saved it, and now started chewing it again!

Trek Day 1 of 16
Besi Sahar to Bahundanda
Left 15 minutes later than planned because Evy & I were 15 minutes late… We were surprised – we’d timed it out, we couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
‘Did you adjust for the time change?’ asked Govinda.
I thought he was joking.
‘India, Nepal, same time right?’
‘Haha, no. It’s 15 minutes earlier.’
‘Seriously? 15 minutes? Who has a 15 minute time difference?’
Govinda’s English isn’t always stellar, I thought he might still be confused/joking. Doesn’t seem to be. We adjust our time. We depart. Still not sure that this isn’t some sort of joke to make us earlier.

It’s hot out, but there’s a breeze and it’s beautiful. We’re walking up a river between various large tree-covered mountains. The areas that aren’t tree-covered have been altered to form staggered plateaus for growing rice/potatoes/millet etc. There are a lot of plateaus, very impressive especially when you think of the work that must have gone into it.

Nabin, the small wiry porter, is carrying both Ev’s and my huge bags, both sleeping bags, both down jackets (also in stuff sacks), as well as his own bag. They did not inform us that only one guy would be carrying all our stuff. We were under the impression that it would be divided among two. We feel very guilty.
I perhaps stupidly decided to bring this computer along, and with Nabin carrying so much already I didn’t feel right loading the computer on him as well. Which is why I now find myself lugging a video camera, a computer, a stills camera and approximately 2 kgs of dried fruit through the Himalayas. The fruit is deadly, but again I felt too guilty to make Nabin carry it. Variety of food decreases as we ascend, and what with our still recent stomach ailments it seemed important to have a consistent source of fibre in our diets.

The last two kilometers today were virtually entirely uphill and by far the least fun. You go up in a sort of zigzag pattern, which means that you can keep deluding yourself that the destination is right around the next corner. It never is.

We finally arrived 2 minutes before a huge flood of rain, which was nice, and rested while it poured. Govinda requested the ‘time killer’ (the cards) after our dinner, so I went to get them. I’m also lugging Rittersport chocolate with me, so I brought some out for the four of us. It was all whitish and grainy, ultra disappointing. Especially when you’re going to the effort of lugging it through the Himalayas.
We started to teach Govinda & Nabin Rummy, which was fun. Two other guides/porters here were super interested too, so very shortly we were playing a rousing game with 6 people. I won despite the fact that Nabin ended up being a cheeky little man - checking my cards not-so-discreetly over my shoulder, then reporting back to his partner so they wouldn’t discard anything they thought I needed!

Trek Day 2 of 16
Bahundanda to Chamje
Woke before our 6:30am alarm from crazy dreams and loud neighbours, but slept fairly well on the whole anyway. Everyone tends to watch this sort of thing carefully now because of the dangers of altitude sickness. We shouldn’t be getting into dangerous territory until tomorrow though – anything above 2500m is considered to have potential.

I lost some personal esteem in myself this morning – I placed the large heavy quantities of dried fruit in the big backpack Nabin the porter would be carrying. While I felt very guilty about it, I think I’d have been suffering severely if I hadn’t. As it was, whether it’s my fitness level or the carrying of the computer & video camera above and beyond the camera & jackets we’re both carrying, Evy is plodding along at a much faster pace than me. Then again, I do take forever taking photos & video footage. Either way, so far so good, we seem to be maintaining a reasonable pace. As our guide kindly reminded us, however, it only gets worse from here.

Injury tally:
1 fall (minor elbow scrape, cameras/computer ok!)
1 left foot arch cramp (never had that before, I feel like such a geriatric!)
Several small flesh wounds (I don’t know how I manage to acquire them but I have two on my right foot and several on my left leg… clumsy! Mainly an issue here because everything takes so long to heal and it’s so dirty there’s always a serious risk of infection)

The real disaster fortunately didn’t happen to us, we just saw the remains along the way. A jeep got into an accident yesterday – it fell down the huge mountainside across the river from us. 2 dead, 4 injured. Makes you a little more nervous to drive here again.


Trek Day 3 of 16
Chamje to Bagarchap
Nepalis seem to lack the sense of personal space that apparently (or at least according to Evy’s Family Studies classes!) Canadians take for granted. Besides the fact that for some reason my foot cramp hasn’t healed and caused a severe ‘cramp’ in my style (sorry, had to put that in!), my biggest issue with today was the fact that even though we’re hiking through a massive mountain range, whenever I was walking behind Evy I would find Govinda, the guide, like a shadow at my side. Evy had the same issue when our positions were reversed. To the point where it would consistently be a question as to who would step on the one rock through the river in front of us, or whatever small area our path gave us to move in. He would always give way, but it’s surprisingly annoying having someone within half a foot of you while hiking through an area as spacious as the Himalayas. Especially one who we found to be rather reminiscent of our brother Al as a child (random noises, whistling, singing, all directly in your ear because he’s right there…). Since we’ve noticed other Nepalis lack the sense of privacy and personal space that we have (at the internet café both owners, the guide, and the porter were all watching over my shoulder as I attempted to write an email to my mother) we don’t think it’s personal – it’s just a way of being. Kind of like how they’re apparently completely comfortable using a roadside toilet without a door that faces the road… Privacy isn’t an issue.

Today was rather more hilly than foreseen – the original Govinda pep talk of ‘first half hour uphill, everything else easy’ was amended in the morning to ‘lots of uphill/downhill before lunch, then easy’. We’ve learned not to trust these forecasts – there’s usually a hidden agenda. If the town is visible, it means there’s a massive hill somewhere prior to arriving, likely one which requires us to descend several hundred metres to the water, and then re-ascend to the same height we were just at… We’ve also learned never to think you’ve arrived until you’re actually sitting in the guest house. Or at least we’re trying to learn that!
Today was kind of fantastic though. In terms of scenery we literally had to stop every five minutes or so just to take it in (and catch our breath!). Somehow there’s a feeling of ancientness to the mountains, or baby mountains as the locals refer to them (apparently a land mass a mere 4000 high isn’t worthy of being deemed ‘mountain’).
There’s this general feeling like you’ve stepped back in time. First off, the villagers live for the most part in a manner that (besides the somewhat westernized clothing & electricity) they’ve probably lived in for hundreds of years. The landscape feels even more ancient – Evy and I were discussing how at any moment you half expect to see a mammoth or something. The other half of the time, you feel like you’re in some fairy tale lands, and half expect dragons and princes – you’re walking along this beautiful path through immense lush mountains, an aqua-coloured glacier water river roaring below, and from the brilliant greenery on your right you catch sight of a unicorn… well, a white horse… but still. And then the mountain goat in a tree. Seriously. I never would have believed I’d see a goat in a tree, but today I saw two. The lengths they’ll go for tasty food…

SideNote
I have discovered a newfound sympathy for young boys learning how to aim while peeing – it’s a whole lot harder than it looks. Especially when you’re aiming for a hole in the ground with flies coming out of it. Somehow there’s no appeal in hovering right over it…

Day 4 of 16
Bagarchap to Chame
While faced with choosing the lesser of two evils – ‘short cut’ going straight up the mountain, vs slightly longer route zigzagging gradually up the mountain:
Govinda: You can chose the young route or the old route
Mad & Ev immediate reaction: ‘We’re old.’

Day 5 of 16
Chame to Pisang

Conversations…

We’ve started seeing some regulars on the trek, people who appear to be on a similar schedule to ours. Today we had a nice chat with a German girl who’s trekking on her own. She was supposed to meet up with some friends she’d met earlier in her travels but apparently they hadn’t shown up when they’d said they would – so she was doing it on her own until (if/when) they might catch up. She’d been in India, much like us, directly before the journey. She too got sick.
‘Yeah I got sick in India just before coming here too. I was worried about not gaining back enough weight to do the trek – apparently you lose a lot of weight while doing it so I had to eat soooooo much beforehand.’
We smile and nod, but with two major thoughts in our heads – 1)We totally didn’t have that concern, and 2)We totally hope she’s right about the whole losing weight thing!

***

Govinda (to Ev): Motti
Ev (to Mad): Govinda has a new nickname for me.
Mad: What is it?
Ev: Motti. It means pet. I don’t like it.
Mad laughs. ‘Motti, I like it!’
Govinda: Yes, because of her body. Nepali for Phet.
Mad. Pet?
Govinda: yes, ‘cause she’s opposite of thin. Phet.
Mad: Fat? You mean fat?!
Govinda: yes Fet. Not skinny.
Mad & Ev both laugh. Talk about inept. No wonder Govinda doesn’t have a girlfriend!

***

When we’d left Besi Sahar on the first day we’d noticed a pair of girls in overly tight sports gear. We guessed eastern European but weren’t sure. Today we talked with them, turns out they’re quite nice (why that was surprising I’m not sure). They’re from Northern Italy but speak German. They’re also sisters, but they trained before coming here… on skis in the alps… right…

Day 6 of 16
Pisang to Manang
Arrived in Manang, one of the key stops in our trek. This is the required acclimatization village – everyone spends at least one extra night here in order to help acclimatize to the altitude. Rest day tomorrow! Yay!

Day 7 of 16
Acclimatization day in Manang
Walked up to a monastery at 4000 metres today in order to help us acclimatize for tomorrow – we spend another night here in Manang (3500 metres high) before leaving tomorrow for Yak Kharka (4090 metres). There’s a 92 year old monk that lives up there, he used to live there with his wife but she died in February. He hasn’t hiked down to Manang in two years.
We went through a whole little blessing procedure once we arrived up at the monastery, including having a string wrapped around our necks to help us cross the Thorung La (that 5416 metre pass required to complete the Annapurna circuit which everyone continues to worry about a little). We were then requested by the monk for Rs 100 each, including for Govinda. Govinda had mentioned to us before and reiterated afterward, somewhat irreverently, that the monk is often known as the Rs 100 monk. Since Rs 100 equals approximately $2, we weren’t too bothered by it. It’s also kind of impossible to refuse a 92 year old man who lives on his own in a tiny cave at the top of a mountain. He asked for chocolate too – if we’d had it we’d have given it! but we didn’t.

Sushil the tour company owner had told us there would be a useful informational talk given by ex-pats in Manang about Altitude Sickness. I asked Govinda about it, he claimed that it was in Thorung Phedi, not Manang. It was too late by the time we found out that Govinda either misunderstood or didn’t know about it – it was indeed in Manang and it was on our afternoon off. Because I’ve been feeling so perpetually tired I was particularly interested in going to the talk, and was rather annoyed about having missed it. Fortunately for us, the skinny German girl made it to the AMS talk, and she kindly passed on the information she could remember to us… Stupid Govinda…
One of the most exciting bits of info that the German girl passed on was regarding our recently noticed Austin Powers post-freezing style peeing. Apparently it’s a good sign, having to constantly use the toilet (or alpine shrub, as the case may be) and for extended periods of time – it means our kidneys are functioning properly and are working in overdrive to help us acclimatize to the altitude. Kind of a relief to know, though it hasn’t lent any more charm to the numerous mid-night visits to the ice-cold, exterior, outhouse-style ceramic holes they call toilets here.


Day 8 of 16
Manang to Yak Kharka
Today & tomorrow are short days – we’re ascending more rapidly terrain-wise, and at this height apparently you aren’t supposed to sleep more than 400 metres above where you spent the night before. This unfortunately does not mean that having arrived by lunchtime we then get to relax and do nothing through the afternoons (as I’d originally hoped!). Instead it means we get to do an ‘acclimatization hike’ after lunch, in preparation for the next day. Apparently it’s good to go up a couple hundred metres and then descend to sleep, preparing you for going up and then sleeping at a higher height the next day.

In Manang our acclimatization hike to the Rs 100 monk was grueling but at least it had a destination. Today in Yak Kharka (literally ‘Yak herder’s residence’ – the ‘village’ has all of 3 buildings!) we just went up a hill for no reason but to go up. I was exhausted, grumpy, and very shortly had to go pee. As we finally got 200 metres above where we were to sleep, a huge snowstorm started up. Time to go down again. By this time there’s no way I’m going to be able to wait the hour it’ll take to get down again to a toilet, but of course we’re in alpine territory now, so the sparse bushes are all of 1 foot high. Evy, Govinda & Nabin go ahead down the hill. I wait for a yak to go by, I pick a shrub. The shrub is more a sop to my sense of dignity than useful in any practical way – its max height of halfway up my calf would do nothing for privacy should someone actually come by. I hope for the best, squat, and at this precise moment discover that there is a reason why ankle-biting pants are popular with trekkers. Wide-legs, a much more flattering style in my opinion, flap in the wind. Fine when you’re walking, not so fine when you’re squatting & trying to aim. Oh the joys of being out in the wild. In a snowstorm. Trying to pee.

I make my way back down the hill slowly, but that isn’t so atypical these days. I’ve been a lot slower than Ev for the trek so far, but it just keeps getting worse. Whether it’s due to the altitude or residual illness from India I’m not sure, but it’s got to the point where the guide, the porter & myself are all getting worried as to whether or not I’ll make it over the pass. 5416 metres is pretty high. A person can be struck with altitude sickness at any point from 2500 metres up, chances obviously increasing as you ascend. Altitude in itself affects everyone, particularly in the sense that the higher up you go the more energy you need to move. Altitude sickness, or as it’s more accurately known, Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), is a little more serious and can strike anyone though, experienced or not.
AMS apparently takes 2 major forms – excessive fluid build up in the brain, or excessive fluid build-up in the lungs. Both are extremely dangerous and when fully developed, fatal. Signs pepper the villages we’ve ascended through, listing the warning symptoms of AMS (headache, dizziness, nausea, and then as it gets more serious – severe vomiting, excruciating headache, and if it’s the lung type then a persistent cough). If you start to feel the remotest sense of any of the symptoms you’re meant to immediately increase your fluid intake, rest, and if it doesn’t go away then descend immediately. Stories abound of people who’ve died from it, who’ve had to turn back because of it, etc. Because it does tend to be fatal and the symptoms don’t always feel as such, it’s something you worry a little more about than potentially getting a cold or something.

Other than feeling tired I haven’t felt a headache or anything, but the extreme difference between how quickly Evy moves versus how slowly I do is strange. At first I thought maybe my ego just couldn’t handle the fact that I’m slower, but upon reflection I don’t actually think that’s it, much though I may need to be taken down a notch! As recently as last year when Evy & I would go hiking or walking together I would easily be 50 paces ahead of her, particularly in hilly terrain. I’m well over 50 paces behind her here. I can feel it in myself too, a total lack of energy. It’s not a big deal per se, except that it makes me feel (and apparently the guide and porter as well) that I’m more susceptible to AMS/won’t be able to cross the Thorung La due to lack of energy. As long as I can keep going at my snail pace I hope I won’t be struck with any of the symptoms.
My dreams of being carried over by mule if I feel really bad were dashed today when it turned out a guy in a tour group who was feeling sick ended up going over by mule & then promptly died on the other side. Sweet. Perhaps I could arrange for a mule prior to illness, thereby preventing it?! Apparently it isn’t so much the exercise as the height gain itself though… I guess we’ll see.

Day 9 of 16
Yak Kharka to Thorung Phedi
Today sucked. I got a minor headache in the morning and had to remind our somewhat forgetful guide that he was meant to give us half a Diamox each this morning (Diamox is the drug they recommend for altitude sickness, it was recommended that we take a little the morning before, evening before, and morning of crossing the pass. It’s supposed to be very effective for helping with acclimatization).
I started drinking water like crazy to try to get rid of the headache, which had worked a couple of days ago in Manang when I’d felt the beginnings of a slight one. The headache went away and the scenery was actually pretty cool, but I was super slow. And of course there was the whole constant need for toilet bushes thing. We finally arrived at Thorung Phedi, the foot of the Thorung La, and last stop before crossing the Thorung La pass tomorrow.
After lunch (Garlic soup which was excessively garlic-y!) Govinda asked us if we wanted to do our ‘acclimatizing’ walk. For some reason I was feeling even more than typically tired, but we decided it would be a good idea to do and that we might as well get it over with. He claimed we’d just go up a couple hundred metres (this doesn’t sound so bad, until you realize that that’s a couple hundred metres up in terms of elevation – several hundred metres if not kilometers in terms of distance!).
Within the first 50 metres of elevation I developed a headache. It wasn’t excruciating, but it was present, and with every plodding footstep I debated whether or not it would be better to just turn around and go back. Of course it is at this time that Govinda decides to leap agilely up the mountain (who knew he had it in him) and so I decide to keep going. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Upon questioning I tell Ev that once we get to the large rock where Govinda’s sitting, approximately 100 metres up from our hotel, I think I’ll just stop. We get there. Govinda asks how we’re doing, I explain that I’m really not feeling well. He suggests I drink a little water and that we go up just a little bit more. Once again he leads the way so far ahead that we have no opportunity to say anything to him. Finally manage to get to where he’s sitting and sit down.
‘5 minutes rest’ he says ‘and then we head back down’.
Sweet. I can’t wait to go down. For some reason my intestines have also suddenly decided to act up and feel like they’re grinding into themselves, have no idea what this is due to. The garlic soup?
‘How are you feeling?’ Govinda asks.
‘Not well’.
I feel like I’m falling apart. I don’t even want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk to anyone. All I want to do is lie down and not have to deal with anything.
‘ Alright, let’s go’ Govinda says. ‘Up, up’
He starts to lead the way up.
Up? I thought we were just having a rest and going back down. Apparently not. I can’t face it.
‘I don’t feel well, I’m going back down’
Ev stops, looking from one to the other.
‘No, no’ says Govinda.
‘Not much further, maybe five minutes. Much better if you go up.’
He leads the way.
Ev looks to me.
I don’t know what to do. It feels weak and dumb to go back down but I feel disgusting. And yet I’ve told the guide I feel like this and he’s still pushing us to go up. I don’t have the energy to fight it, especially with my ego subconsciously attempting to avoid the blow of turning back. We continue up, walking up a sort of small stream to what is known as the ‘high base camp’. Why this stop hasn’t been included on our trip I’m not sure. It would make a lot more sense to spend one more night here and then continue up across the Thorung La the next day. It makes even more sense when we find out later from Govinda that the rather grueling climb we just did was only a quarter of the uphill portion we’re to accomplish the next day. Why not divide it? Too late now. In my current state all I can muster in myself is an extreme sense of gratefulness for the ice-covered ceramic toilet hole in the wooden shack that exists up here. It affords a brief moment of immeasurable relief to my intestines, permitting me to have enough energy to get back down again, atrocious as I still generally feel.

I sleep the next couple hours away, wrapped up in my down jacket and enveloped in the down sleeping bag as well – it’s cold. Evy comes to check up on me and we go back to the dining hall together. If I’m supposed to be trekking a kilometre into the air tomorrow I need to have ingested at least some nutrients the night before. Govinda takes it as a sign that I’m doing better, which I suppose I am in the sense that I no longer have a pounding headache. We go to sleep early, as usual here. 7:30 pm is typical, late by the time it gets to 8:30pm. We literally function with sunrise and sunset as our clocks – once it gets dark out in the early evening lack of electricity effectively prevents any extended interest in staying up. Somehow we need more sleep though too – we sleep through the majority of the 10-12 hours of dark. 7:30 pm to 6:00/6:30 am.
Tonight our sleep is briefly interrupted when some girl mistakes our room for hers – we’re in a barracks style building with numerous identical doors along one side. The locks aren’t always stellar, with a hard enough push most doors can be opened from the outside, and since they tend to be stuck anyway most people get used to using force without meaning to. I accidentally forced my way into a ceramic toilet chamber in use at one of the earlier villages – it was a little embarrassing for all involved. In this case the girl utters a brief exclamation to herself upon discovery of her mistake, then closes the door abruptly. We fall back asleep.
I wake up at around midnight. I don’t feel well and I desperately need to go pee. I don’t want to get up, but we’ve learnt that you pretty much can’t sleep unless you make the requisite nighttime toilet excursion – the afternoon/evening portion of 4-5 litres of water per day just can’t sit in your bladder forever. I force myself out of bed, put on my shoes, and make my way through the obstacle course of our stuff to the door. It’s locked. I unlock it from the inside (Nepalese doors, and many Indian ones as well, function with a two lock system – there’s a lock on the inside and a separate lock on the outside). I’d always thought the concept of having individual locks on the door a little hazardous, though convenient in the sense that you can both lock yourself in and out (some doors here lack that capability!). The problem with the dual locks is when you’re inside and for some reason the door gets locked from the outside. (Some moronic tourist locked me into a toilet in Jaisalmer a couple of weeks ago and only realized it when I pounded out my entrapment. Fortunately she was waiting for the toilet so my release was fairly quick.)
When the door in the room at Thorung Phedi wouldn’t open, however, I had a brief flash of the girl accidentally walking into our room & closing the door… and locking it?! One would hope that you’d curb the instinct to lock the door behind you, especially someone else’s door in a case like this. Several attempts at dislodging the door disproved this however. We were locked in. It was midnight and no one was around. Our lone large window was covered in bars. Though my first feeling was one of distinct claustrophobia, and the whole fire hazard thing came up, I didn’t feel up to pounding my way into someone else’s sleep-ridden consciousness. We should be able to wait the 3 or hours until being let out (we were to leave at 3:30 in the morning). Anyway, Evy was still fast asleep – it was only me that was currently conscious (and worried) about our predicament. Just don’t think about it and it’ll go away… Then I remembered the whole reason for my discovering our situation – I have to go pee. Badly. Hmmmm… This makes the situation a little more serious.
I attempt to jimmy the lock, but the whole virtue of the fact that it was on the opposite side of the door is against me. Neither the metal knife from our cutlery set nor my leatherman prove helpful. Evy sleeps on. If the door were open I could remove every article including myself from this room and she’d be completely clueless.
What to do, what to do, what to do. My bladder is pressuring me, an insistent sort of pressure that will not last 3 hours, let alone permit me to sleep. I try to think of an alternative option and catch sight of the two tea mugs we’d brought back with us from the dining hall, now empty. Oh no. Is there any other way? I see no other option. Except there’s still the slight issue of aim. Actually, make that major issue. Aiming in daylight at a large-ish (comparatively) ceramic hole set amidst washable flooring is one thing – aiming at a tiny little mug in the middle of the night inside a room is another.
As a joke before we left Evy gave me a present, an object she’d encountered in a meeting with two Danish girls on another trip. They are known as disposable pee cones. The package is ridiculous, a bright pastel picture of a girl standing to pee, and when I received it for Christmas I couldn’t stop laughing whenever I saw it. The concept is that squatting to pee can be ridiculous and or impossible at times, so the purposely phallic style disposable pee cone lets you pee standing up. Like a guy. Supposedly. Well, laughter or no, we’d brought them along thinking ‘you never know, they might come in useful’. I had not seriously thought we’d ever have to use them – more that it would be funny at some point or other to see how they work. Well, they work. And if nothing else, they permit aim in the dark.
I go back to bed, and, lying there, wonder what I’m going to do. Somehow waking up in the middle of the night and feeling horribly unwell while everyone around slumbers on peacefully is one of my least favourite activities. If we were on our own, I think I would wait another day before going up. Because we’re with Govinda though, it seems we’re going whether I like it or not. Unless I decide that I’m really not well enough to go and call halt to the procedure. In which case what, wait another day? Turn all the way back? I’m not sure what to do. I try to force myself not to think about any of it (obviously ineffectual) but eventually decide that there’s nothing I can do at the moment, and when we’re woken up at the beyond ungodly hour of 3am, I’ll not only have remember to immediately get Govinda to unlock our door, but also decide whether or not I’m up for the whole thing.

Day 10 of 16
Thorung Phedi to Muktinath
We’re woken up at 3am, Govinda unlocks the door (finding the situation altogether amusing, which I suppose in retrospect it was). We make our way in the dark and cold to the dining hall. I feel better than I did at midnight, so I decide to just keep playing it by ear. We begin plodding by headlamp and flashlight up the same route we took yesterday. I borrow Evy’s MP3 player (my Ipod committed suicide a month ago and is waiting to be returned to Apple once I get back to Canada… stupid Ipod). I’ve realized that the only way I will conceivably make it through this day is if I have something else to focus on besides my own health. The relentless monotony of plodding permits little in terms of excitement, beautiful surroundings in terms of vistas or no. It would be very easy to freak myself out if my own reactions are all I have to focus on.
Evy had issues with her MP3 player before leaving and was only able to load songs from the old house computer before leaving. Songs downloaded by some family member or other years ago, and more recent old school stuff of dad’s. I needed something with a fairly uptempo beat to it though, which left me with little choice. They may not be very good songs, but I have a whole new affection for a variety of songs by Ashanti, Chingy, Ludacris and Nelly – they got me over the Thorung La. There was even a song, an excessively dirty song that I’d never heard before, that had such a strong beat that when we at last started on the way down I almost danced (and promptly almost fell down). It’s cleanest lyric was ‘Get off your ass and jam’, and I felt like doing just that, now that we had no more uphill.
The way up had been excruciating, but perhaps not quite as bad as I’d expected due to the music. Clambering along snowy precipices with constant avalanche chances was interesting – Govinda worriedly informing us that we’d left too late in the morning, the later the time of day the higher the danger level (it was only about 8am by the time we hit the worst of them, but once the sun has started rising it all starts going downhill… literally…). Now you tell us?! There were a couple of times where if he’d just explained his reasoning we would have made more effort to leave earlier or whatever was necessary. Sometimes I think he had delusions about how quickly we (I) could move. Other times he was completely accurate.
According to the website, once we crossed the Thorung La there’d only be 3 hours of downhill. Govinda laughed when we mentioned this.
‘3 hours?! More like 5 hours’ he said.
‘But the website said…’
‘The website is written for fast Israeli men. Fast Israeli men – 3 hours to Muktinath. 5 hours for you guys.’
For some reason the Nepalese have this beef against Israelis. Apparently they’re always trying to get deals, always arguing, blah blah blah. Blatantly prejudiced against them, Govinda still appreciated the fact that they moved quickly though. And would consistently use them as a means of comparison for our speed. They were definitely faster than us. But 3hrs vs 5hrs? Misleading information – the website should not be catering to fast Israeli men!… Very lame altogether. More lame when I started to develop a severe headache within the first half hour of climbing down. This would of course be the time when Govinda decided to entertain me with stories about the numerous people who’ve died in his care. There’s the guy who they’d thought had just fallen asleep in the jeep, but had actually died. Then there’s the guy who wasn’t feeling well and a couple of hours later collapsed, dead.
But now that we’ve crossed it’s fine right? No, no, it turns out just crossing isn’t enough, you have to survive the post-crossing time as well. He tells us of a girl who crossed just fine and then died in her hotel room that night, only to be found the next morning. There was even a girl taken up by a friend of his who died a couple of days post crossing in Kathmandu. Sweet. I turn the MP3 player back on, and focus on keeping one foot ahead of the other. Downhill may not be as difficult as climbing up in terms of energy, but it’s a wearing process. Especially on the knees. While it was a 1 km altitude increase, we’re descending nearly 2 km in terms of altitude decrease. I think it was around 18 km actual plodding along-wise.
We were meant to have lunch at our hotel, post trek of the day, but the whole not-being-Israeli-men thing meant that when we reached the first sign of remote civilization at 3pm or so (three little mountainside cafes), we stopped for a snack. We hadn’t had a food break since breakfast at 3 in the morning. My headache by this point was not so much throbbing but dull now, but then I nearly fainted in the bathroom. By nearly I mean I caught myself before falling headlong into the ceramic hole, and simply lay myself on the ground there temporarily. 1-2 hours trekking to go. Every step became a task unto itself, downhill or no. When we finally reached the village with our hotel I could barely muster an extra step. That night Evy didn’t sleep at first because she kept checking to make sure I was still breathing. Seriously. Oh the joys of high altitude.

Day 11 of 16
Muktinath to Kagbeni
Cloaked in an attempt to show us a local infamous Hindu temple/Buddhist monastery (it really is both) that in reality Govinda and Nabin were the ones really excited by, the four of trouped over to it today before our trek. As we hiked back up toward it, I don’t know if it was psychosomatic or whether I was simply experiencing similar symptoms of dehydration typical of both Altitude sickness and when we were in Bodhgaya, but I started losing circulation in weird extremities again – my hands, my face, everything started feeling funny. Am I becoming a hypochondriac? I hope not, but if so I now see why they’re slightly crazy – I actually did not feel well, whether or not it was a false feeling. I think Govinda thought I was being ridiculous but then again I don’t think Govinda’s exactly the brightest light (sharpest crayon in the box, however you want to put it). I found the little room where you’re supposed to go see the eternal flame extremely claustrophobic, jam packed with tourists, with donation boxes prominent. I left.
It was a beautiful trek to Kagbeni, though crazily windy. Like when you’re on the bow of a ferry and can lean at a 45º angle without falling. Pushing against that kind of wind becomes a little tiring after a while, so it was nice the trek was relatively brief – we arrived there around lunchtime. I was feeling better, thankfully, but still tired and out of it. Spending the rest of the day laying down helped immensely, as did the decrease in altitude. Hopefully it can only get better from here, though we’ve been warned that we have a 1.8km altitude ascent coming up on one of our last days… So not looking forward to that.

** Post-dated note – I found a book at the Pokhara airport about a guy who does the Annapurna Circuit, and when he took the Diamox for altitude he was warned that you could feel a tingling and feeling of circulation loss as a side-effect. Now if only Govinda had told me that, I might not have been so weirded out by it…

Day 12 of 16
Kagbeni to Marpha
Once again it was a shorter, 5 or so hour trek today. We arrived around lunchtime. It was nice because we then had the energy and time to walk around the town a little, and check out all the little shops. Marpha is the apple capital of Nepal, so there were a lot of apple products for sale. In the evening Govinda bought us a little apple cider each, which was a little overly strong (it kind of tasted like apple vinegar with a high alcoholic content). The food here has been quite tasty though.

Day 13 of 16
Marpha to Ghasa
Govinda claimed today would be short. That was a lie. It took us over 8 hours and by hour 5 each excruciating step was another feat overcome. Evy in particular had had enough, and resorted to my Thorung La crutch – the MP3 player.

For some reason all day I felt a distinct urge for a Bounty chocolate bar. Maybe because they’re in every window and have a slightly illicit feel to them because they’re so expensive in the higher altitudes. Of course, when we went on a Bounty hunt (haha) in the tiny village of Ghasa post-dinner, there wasn’t a Bounty to be found. Mars and Snickers yes, but no Bounty. Probably a good thing for my waistline, but rather depressing at the time.

Day 14 of 16
Ghasa to Tatopani
Downhill, downhill. Descending isn’t so bad, but the knowledge that tomorrow we have to reascend to our original height and more takes away a little from our enjoyment. The bribe today is the natural hotsprings in Tatopani (literally – Tato means hot and Pani means water). When we meander down post-afternoon rest, however, it is to see crowds of Caucasians stuffed into the small pool area, with all of the respective guides/porters watching from the ‘bleachers’ (the nearby picnic tables).
A little too much of a spectacle for us, we are particularly put off by the practically purple over-tanned older European men giving each other backrubs in one corner. We roll up our pants, dip our feet in briefly (the water is definitely hot!) and have had enough. We leave Govinda and Nabin spectating, and make our way back to our hostel, very excited to have arrived early enough to warrant an afternoon ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’ (the German coffee & cake time!). We spend much time deciding and eventually enjoy a very tasty apple filled baked good. As we relax with tea & ‘kuchen’, we appreciate the orange growing on the orange tree outside of our rooftop dining area – it’s nice to be well back down below the tree-line!

Day 15 of 16
Tatopani to Ghorapani
Up up up.
I began the day by tripping over my never-again-to-be-taken-hiking wide-leg pants, taking a large chunk out of my knee. Now I’ll have matching beat-up knees.
2nd to last day of our trek, and this is the point where Govinda has to admit that the first aid kit he purportedly carries is not actually carried by him, the guide who’s always with us, but by Nabin the porter, who’s always either way up ahead or behind. Useless.
Fortunately for me, one of the purple-tanned European men from yesterday is part of a group that was behind me when I fell and who are now walking by. He overhears our somewhat annoyed conversation with Govinda (‘You don’t have any basic bandaids or sort of safety kit on you?!’) and takes pity on our plight. We repent our superior thoughts of yesterday and are grateful for the kind eastern European and his wife, who whip out a superb little first aid kit and promptly deal with my rather nasty looking wound. I even forgive them the need to video my limping progression post-medical attention.
Govinda errs again, in my opinion, by letting us stop for a half-hour tea break 20 minutes from where he’d planned on having lunch. If he’d just said that that was the plan, we’d have kept going. Instead, pissed off, I refuse to stop for lunch right away after tea and keep going with Ev, leaving them to their lunch. I feel both a little bitchy about the lack of forethought and also know that if I stop now I’ll never make it the additional 1km in altitude increase we still need to accomplish. We always move more slowly after lunch and so I’d like to be more than half done by the time we stop. Sure enough, even with our postponed lunch break, it’s dark by the time we finally make it to our destination. We’re 1.8 km higher than we were last night, and took several hours longer to trek than Govinda foretold.
When Govinda brings out his medical kit in the evening neither Evy nor I is impressed – while he appears to have a good selection of altitude medication, his basic first aid supplies are ridiculously understocked – maybe 4 bandaids altogether. Fortunately we also have a first aid kit, which Evy hasn’t felt up to carrying in her day pack (I have no room in either of my packs). We hadn’t felt it necessary to have ours super handy because we’d been under the impression that should something happen, Govinda’d have his kit available. (We’d even attempted to buy extra supplies for ours when we went shopping in Kathmandu, but he’d prevented us, claiming he had a sufficient supply. Haha.) We extricate our own safety kit from the big bags and are able to do a fairly decent follow-up patch-up job on my knee.

I’m realizing that this is becoming a bit of a documentation of hardships, which I don’t really want it to seem. One has to remember that the countryside we were trekking through, for all the various issues we had, was fabulous. I just kind of find it boring to constantly attempt to describe and find new words to describe what photos do a much better job of explaining. I’m not even going to attempt to write about the beautiful mountains, stunning greenery, amazing selection of animals, or try to search for numerous words that have the same meaning as quaint, picturesque etc. etc. You’ll have to look at the photos for a better appreciation of all that!

Day 16 of 16
Ghorapani to Naya Pul (and then Pokhara)
Today was all about steps. Fortunately for us, steps down.
The morning was livened up by an early morning (5am) wake up call so that we might make our way a couple of hundred metres up nearby Poon’s Hill for a view of the mountains, only to realize (as we’d foreseen the night before) that the dust that’s been blocking the mountains from sight this whole second half of the trip is still present. Not much to see. Oh well.
A Canadian girl known to the porters and guides as the ‘Motti’ (fat) Canadian girl, a fact I would have had sympathy with but for the fact she wears overly tight spandex pants, was staying at the hotel next to ours. She’d seemed nice enough, though overly loud, when we’d run into her and her friend back in Manang. {Evy and I have found the Canadians we’ve met along the way to be consistently embarrassing to our sense of national pride. So far they’ve all insisted on carrying out loud opinionated conversations, so loud that they force everyone in the nearby vicinity to listen to their particular thoughts on whatever topic they’ve currently decided is of interest. Usually it’s not.}
Motti Canadian girl stopped me on my way back to our hotel that morning, wanting to know the name of our trek company. I told her, then offered to write it down for her, knowing from a previous conversation that she and her friend were going to do another trek directly after this one. I followed her inside, wrote the name of the trek company down, and then proceeded to get lectured by this girl about how we’re mistreating our porter and according to the research her friend did before coming (she didn’t do any herself) he’s way overloaded and she’s going to make an official complaint and she’s sure we didn’t mean to do it because Canadians just aren’t brought up that way and she’s assuming we’re going to be tipping him well for having overworked him and in future she knows we’ll do as her friend did and make sure to go with a union organization, and blah blah blah.
Evy joined us for the tail end of this and both of us felt quite annoyed. We’ve both felt the whole Nabin thing to be weighing on us, and I suppose part of our annoyance with this girl was that we had been wondering what the right solution is. The blatant interference was perhaps not appreciated, but at the same time I suppose it helps to have someone call you on something you’ve felt is wrong. Her methods of doing so were a little underhanded though, and the full-on lecturing was a bit much. All in all I felt sort of dumb though – somehow you assume that a person being mistreated is an obvious situation and it’s easy enough to avoid or put a stop to. Apparently (and I suppose obviously) not.
In this case we’d thought something was wrong but when we questioned both Sushil and Govinda, both overrode our qualms, and since there are all sorts of people carrying immense packs along the trail, we didn’t feel like we were in obvious error. One tends to forget that laws and regulations that protect people’s rights, the ones that we’re used to as being basic, aren’t necessarily in place here. They want to make money, and being overworked or underpaid isn’t going to stop them if the alternative is no cash inflow.

Already planning on giving Nabin a decent tip, we decided to give him double what we’d give him normally, all the while wishing we could’ve simply hired a second porter or brought less. We informed Sushil about the whole debacle at the end, but were somewhat dismayed that he seemed to gloss over our issues about the lack of info on his website re pack size, and/or porter regulations. We felt Govinda should be aware of it too. We should not have been led to believe that everything will be carried for us if it’s going to be done at the cost of physical safety of a porter. It wasn’t even that Evy and I had that much stuff, but together and in addition to Nabin’s stuff it was way too much for one person.
I don’t know whether unions are the answer, according to Govinda the unions here are all affiliated with political parties – something he didn’t want to get involved with. Whether this is true I’m not sure, but the level of corruption here is such that I can see not wanting to get involved with a labour union with even the remotest political ties. There’s a lot of favouritism and connection-making here – it makes sense that a labour union in Nepal might be more focused on pleasing the ‘right’ people, rather than protecting the ‘basic rights of the people’ – in which case I wouldn’t be that keen as a visitor in supporting it.

I ended up looking into the porter regulations that are being proposed in Nepal, and 30kgs is the suggested limit per porter. Nabin was carrying much more than that. Evy’s and my packs together easily weighed 30kgs, let alone the addition of his own pack, the sleeping bags and the down jackets.

We’re putting together an email of comments and concerns to both Sushil and Govinda so that at least Govinda gets an idea of what our problems are.

In retrospect I think Govinda;s ignoring of the problem was an example of Govinda writing Nabin off as an individual much the way Sushil writes Govinda off – as being completely beneath him. The caste system is very much in play here, Evy and I noticed it often. By consistently attempting to include Nabin in our evening activities or conversations (difficult as he couldn’t speak English) I think we managed to make Govinda realize that we don’t consider one beneath the other in terms of individuals. Hopefully with our email we can also make him realize that if it irritates him the way Sushil writes him off, maybe he’s doing the same to Nabin, and perhaps that’s not a good way to keep getting tourists (it bothered us immensely). That may be too much to expect of him, seeing as the caste system is a culture embedded through their lifetimes, but at least he might be able to get an idea of the way we think about it. He’s not completely moronic, after all. He just finished a poli sci degree at university, one’d hope he’d be open to new ways of thinking. Or if not that, then at least new ways of making money - most conscientious travelers would be happy to pay extra for a second porter, or would simply reduce their packs but go with a company that treats porters fairly. Most conscientious travelers don’t want to feel like they’re overworking some Nepali for the sake of a couple of dollars. So long as it’s clear in advance what the baggage limitations are, it shouldn’t be a problem. We’ll see if we manage to get that across – maybe we’re just dreaming.

Though this all occupied much of our thoughts during the day, and were somewhat disturbing in terms of concepts, we couldn’t resist the appeal of the countryside we walked through. The first hour or so downhill was through a fantastic grove of rhododendron trees. And no, I don’t mean bushes - they were immense trees. It was pretty impressive, one of my favourite parts of the hike. Over 5000 stone steps down followed the grove, which is rather hard on the knees, but we were spurred on by the realization that it was our last day of trekking. It was with great relief that we settled into our ‘taxi’ (an old personal Toyota) and drove the last portion to Pokhara. It was an amazing trek, but it was the perfect time to end it as well.

Last 3 days in Nepal
Kathmandu
We flew from Pokhara to Kathmandu, which was nice, and because we’d left a day early for the trek we now had 3 nights at the 5-star ‘Hotel Malla’ before flying back to Delhi. We enjoyed it immensely. We went swimming in the outdoor pool, worked out in the gym, and went out shopping in the nearby area of ‘Thamel’. Thamel also was host to a couple of fabulous restaurants, one of which – ‘Kilroy’s’, we ended up going to every day. Kilroy’s was a little expensive, but it had food of the sort we’d been missing for months. Western style food made with high-end ingredients, it was difficult to resist. So we didn’t and it was fabulous!