This is a bit overdue but as we are planning our Great Adventure now ( Related: We’ve Done It Again & Giving Retirement a Trial Run) , it is becoming quite apparent on how much we rely on information in blogs to get some insights.
Therefore I felt a duty. A duty to give back and share what we have learnt when we did the amazing trek up to Annapurna Base Camp and our top tips!
Trust Your Guide & Porter, But Manage Them Closely!
I can’t emphasize this enough. It would be fabulous if you got a guide that really caters to everything that you want but our experience was not quite that. Our guide was young and he made sure we were safe however there was no directed debriefs after the trip. He didn’t manage to tailor it to what we wanted to experience. We kept getting stuck in the daily showers at 2pm. We reached Annapurna Base Camp and it was cloudy as it was going to rain. We had late starts as meals were still being prepared.
We started managing our guide closely after a bit and that made our experience more closely aligned to what we desired. Specific examples of this:
- If we agreed to leave at 730am, we would ensure that we would be ready to leave and we will head off first while they were still getting ready. Typically they are faster than us anyway so they will catch up very soon after.
- Lunch typically takes longer than necessary as the time taken to get our orders, prepare the food and serve us takes about 40 mins! We figured the menu is the same at most places so we asked our guide to go ahead and put the orders in when we are about 40 minutes away from the rendezvous point for lunch. That meant we would arrive, drop our bags and have a hot meal waiting for us. Any time saved is a bonus as it allows for you to reach earlier (in our situation, it was important as we were trying to avoid the rain at 2pm daily), go further even or carve in extra time to stop and admire the beauty of nature.
Going Off-Peak was Actually Wonderful!
We went when it was the start of the rainy season. It rained everyday around 2pm which made our hiking hours in fair weather short and in the rain very difficult. I quite honestly could have done without that challenge as with rain, it becomes so much colder, the riverbanks overflow where the trekking paths are and what is worse than that is the leeches! I am no fan of creepy crawlies in any way, shape or form and especially not one that sucks my blood!
Having said that, I would still go back during May. Off peak meant the trails were far less crowded, we almost felt like we had the place to ourselves. No inadvertent “race” amongst the other hikers, no noise, no jostling. It was simply us and the nature that surrounds us. Bliss.
Another plus on going off-peak was that we always had rooms to stay at the tea houses. Apparently when it’s peak season, you might get thrown in with others and you might have to sleep in the dining area! Yeah, that’s not the kind of experience we were looking for!
Water Purification Tablets Should Be Your Best Friend!
We initially started off with buying water bottles but I alone could consume 2-3 1.5l bottles in a day. All that waste just added up and we didn’t quite like that. To add to the waste, was the dent in our pockets as water became more expensive the higher up we went. Day 3 saw us ditching our old ways and buying water purification tablets and it worked like a charm. No issues at all and we used the water bottles we brought.
Save some money and more importantly, produce less waste. That’s a fantastic win!
Headlamps are A Must Have!
You might think it’s not necessary if you are not planning to hike in the night / early morning. Let me just tell you that at some of the places you might stay in, there could be electricity cuts. That means the entire place is shrouded in darkness. What’s worse than trying to find your way to your room in the dark is trying to use the loo 🙂
Skip Poon Hill, Enjoy Tadapani Instead!
If you are planning on staying at Tadapani, then I would totally skip Poon Hill. While it was a gorgeous view, I would skip it because:
- There were lots of people going up to Poon Hill, I did not like the crowd on the narrow steps! This was off-peak mind you, somehow the Poon Hill stretch was very crowded. I would imagine that would be the normal crowd on the other trails during peak and I totally did not enjoy that. Where’s my peace and quiet?
- It was a big rush in the morning to get up to the peak before the sun rises and coupled with #1, it was too chaotic. Perhaps I was spoiled by the treks on the earlier days which were quiet and empty!
- It added to the entire trek distance that day which was very long already for an entire experience that wasn’t all that magical.
Instead, Tadapani gave us the most beautiful sunrise right from where we stayed. We had only 5 others watching the sunrise with us. It was magical. That’s the sunrise in the cover picture of this post.
Well that’s our top tips. Writing this is so difficult, I want to go back! 🙂
