Annapurna Circuit: Day 3
Dharapani to Chame
Distance: 15 Kilometers
Total elevation climbed: 800 meters
Ending altitude: 2,670 meters above sea level
Calories burned: 1,500
Kumar warned that today was going to be difficult, since we were scheduled to climb 700 meters, drop 100, then climb 100 again before reaching our stopping point for the day. But we woke up early, got on the road on time (by 7:30 am), and all of us had a decent night’s sleep, so we were ready to go.
The first hour was relatively easy, but then we began to climb up man-made steps of stone cut into the hillside. We took a number of breaks, stopped for tea, and then had an awesome lunch at one of the new tea houses in town (complete with an oven to warm us up and a kitten to keep us company). We actually made it to Chame in better time than we expected, and then Kumar surprised us with…a hot spring cut into the hillside, right next to the powerful rapids formed by the monsoon!
We bathed, and then were joined by another family, who also came down to bathe, and then washed our clothes, since today was the first day that we saw sun. Awesome day!
The views along our path have been breathtaking, ranging from rice fields on Day 1 to tall grasses and bamboo on Day 2, to Alpine forests today. Who knew that you could see such a range of vegetation in such a short amount of time!
And today, as I was walking alongside Andrew, singing songs, farting and generally horsing around, I remembered why he is my favorite person. We certainly have difficult moments, don’t get me wrong. And we have days of silence when we’ve just run out of things to talk about. We get on each other’s last nerves at least once per week. But our good moments rock out the bad ones.
I know that we are going to have difficulties in this marriage at times. We are going to have huge differences of opinions and hurt each other’s feelings. We are going to disagree, at times, about how to raise our children. We won’t always have it this easy. But I thank God that we do now. We are building a life together.
And the view from up here - it is pretty awesome.
