I trudged, step after step after step, as I had for the last four days. Even though we had left the backpack at the Machhapuchhre Basecamp, leaving me with my sole camera bag, and even though the seemingly neverending stairs had been replaced by a simple upward trail, every slowly negotiated step felt as if I were running for dear life. We were at four thousand meters.
There is something deeply serene in the exhaustion brought by physical exercise, something that every sportsperson has probably experienced. The need to draw air, to breathe as much as possible, surpasses every other at some point — even if you might have to manage it while deflecting a blow, or simply not show it. And you are left concentrating on making your body work, with no other thought in mind. Step after step after step.
The time takes another meaning. Instead of being carried by the rhythm of your problems, worries, desires, tasks, you turn to the delicious breeze cooling off your sweat, the chirping of the birds, the comforting regularity of your shoes hitting the stone. It could be seconds or hours before you look around you again, and it does not matter one bit. There is nothing else than you being a part of the world, no more and no less than anything, rightfully existing and breathing, and there is nothing else than the simple beauty of it all.
“Wait!”
Ladina, leading the way in front of me, halted. Before we could do anything else, we took a couple of heavy breaths. After a moment, I managed another sentence.
“I have to take a photograph of this.”
I had to.
I put my camera back in its bag and we stood there, gaping at the landscape surrounding us. The small stream next to us was peacefully trickling down to the valley.
It was one more hour before we reached Annapurna Basecamp, but what an hour. The cirque where the ABC was located, right at the foot of the Annapurna I, was commonly called Annapurna Sanctuary; and this name perfectly described the feeling of remoteness and pristine nature we silently experienced.
At long last, we climbed the last few steps to the long-anticipated destination of our journey. Actually little more than a collection of lodges next to a campsite, the ABC was, at 4,130 m, still home to quite a few Nepalese locals, guides, porters, cooks and other mountain refuge managers. Some of them, mingled with trekkers of all ages and origins, were playing volleyball in a makeshift field under the nose of the Annapurna South.
After a hearty meal and a stroll on the ridge of the South Annapurna Glacier — sometimes grumbling with the sound of loose rocks meeting their horrible end at the bottom of a crevice — we went back down to the MBC, for our night at 3,700 m planned in order to prevent acute mountain sickness.
The clouds started rolling in on the following day, as we once again reached the ABC, laden with all our equipment. The skies still allowed beautiful sights, though, and the atmosphere was bubbling with the elation of all the hikers discovering the Sanctuary.
“And I am SO, SO happy to be here, I cannot put it in words, it is wonderful”
Up on the ridge of the glacier, with the mighty Annapurna I as background, a joyous Youtube broadcaster was gesticulating in front of a camera held by his friend. We stood watching him for a moment, smiling, before entering our room and immediately starting to spread our constant clutter of stuff everywhere.
The views did not last long, unfortunately. In the afternoon, with the gray clouds came the rain, a constant pattering of bone-chilling drops that did not only steal the sights but also the bright mood. We sheltered ourselves in the dining room of our lodge, an all-purpose wing whose function spanned from socializing to heating up against the cold, and included sleeping dormitory for the Nepalese staff (or the stranded trekkers!), room for time-killing activities, and, well, eating.
With high hopes for a beautiful sunrise, we went to bed early.
“What do we do now?”
With the disappointing persistence of the rain throughout the night, we had in the morning the choice between going down into the valley that day — as was originally planned — in the rain and the mud, or staying in the ABC one more night in the hope of catching the sunrise the following day.
All the mountaineers you know will agree on it: weather forecasting is a tricky art when it comes to the mountains. Between conflicting reports from weather stations and observatories, and a landscape which allows a sunny day to transform into a thunderstorm in the lapse of half an hour, any prediction is to be taken with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, we chose to trust the weather forecast given by French climbers, who were to climb Singu Chuli (aka Fluted Peak, 6,501 m), that assured us of a halting of the rain on the morrow, and we decided to stay one more night up there. After all, why make so much effort to climb if we would not take the time to actually enjoy being at the top?
The day revealed itself a long, long one — watching the rain and drinking tea can only entertain a person for so long. We switched between the coziness of our room and the chatter of the dining room a number of times before the daylight finally faded, having tried reading novels and magazines, playing cards, dice and chess with a Hawaiian couple, discussing the evolution of the weather, and eating yet another Dal Bhat.
And as the alarm clock ringed us back to the cold world of humans, what appeared behind our curtains could only make us smile.
The rain did come back after seven a.m., but how could it have washed away our happiness? We genially slipped on the mud, cloaked in our waterproof garments, and carrying with us wonderful memories.