Tea Shop Touring

In Annapurna, regarded as the godfather of mountaineering tales, the late Maurice Herzog recounts his team’s first ascent of an 8,000-meter peak in Nepal. Their target was Annapurna, the 10th tallest mountain in the world. It was barely visible on the horizon as I lay atop the roof of a teahouse on a cold Himalayan night. Flipping through my tattered copy of Maurice’s book, I reflected upon the stark contrasts between our two adventures. Our trip would most definitely be considered a cakewalk to Maurice. We were bikepacking along the now well-established jeep tracks and trails of the bustling Annapurna Circuit, while his team had slowly bushwhacked through the dense jungles and unexplored wilderness of the lower Annapurna region just to access the same terrain.

Written and photographed by Colt Fetters

Maurice was one of two climbers who reached the summit of Annapurna on that expedition, a feat made possible only after months of reconnaissance. Their team had traipsed up and down many of the same paths we’d explored on our bicycles, though their account of these trails seems to have fewer teahouses and apple cobblers than ours. I can’t say that I’d trade experiences.

The paths along the now popular Annapurna Circuit have seen a great deal of development since Maurice’s time. Towns along the circuit offer simple lodging, complete with small bunks, hot tea, and steaming bowls of dal baht, the local dish of lentils and rice. All these amenities sounded too cushy as we were planning our trip back in the States, where we longed for the simplicity of sleeping under the stars and cooking our dinner over a cheap alcohol camp stove. But, after a few evenings of sitting inside, sipping hot tea and watching the pre-monsoonal rains through the window, we fell into the rhythm of it all. Sure, we weren’t going to garner the same recognition as Maurice and his team, but he also lost all of his toes, and I quite like having mine.

The Annapurna Circuit is known as the Holy Grail of treks, ever popular since it opened to tourists in the 1980s. You’d think it’s popularity would fade with time, or that the backpacking elitists wouldn’t be impressed with its crowds and ongoing development, but hardened trekkers and travel writers alike still gush about the pure magic of this trail. The diversity of landscapes along the circuit is remarkable. The beginning of the route weaves through dense, jungle-filled canyons, steep cliffs towering above, lined with flowing waterfalls. As the canyon widens, the terrain gives way to rolling hills dotted with pine trees, oddly reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest. Near the top of the route the skyline is filled with dramatic 20,000-foot snow-capped peaks, the trail cutting into the mountainside as far as the eye can see.

Our mornings were spent sipping hot milk tea, usually produced from one of the many yaks roaming through town. Our stomachs never quite acclimated to the unpasteurized milk, but the rich, fatty drink was too delicious and the smiling Nepali faces were too friendly to deny. After several cups of tea we would eventually get around to packing our bicycles and setting off down the bumpy jeep track, searching for the bits of intermingled singletrack that leapt from village to village.

The jeep track was definitely more than Maurice and his team had available to them when they were trekking back and forth between Dhaulagiri and Annapurna in 1950. And Maurice certainly wasn’t the first one to travel the area, either. The Kali Gandaki River Gorge lies between the two towering peaks and is an area that’s been used as a trading route between India and Tibet for centuries. The Kali Gandaki is said to be the deepest river gorge in the world when measured from the summit of Dhaulagiri on the west to the summit of Annapurna on the east, five times deeper than the Grand Canyon. Old suspension bridges covered in prayer flags connect the two sides of the wide riverbed. Giant scree slopes climb thousands of feet into the clouds, where the peaks are only visible on clear days. The jeep track along the Kali Gandaki Gorge leads to the illustrious Mustang Region of Nepal, famed for its alpine desert landscape, before it rises up to the holy Hindu village of Muktinath, the last village before the famed Thorong La Pass.

Being a trekking route, the Annapurna Circuit isn’t always great for riding bicycles. We were left hiking our bikes through certain sections of the route, usually due to the steep, technical trail and our seemingly deflated lungs, owing to the thin mountain air. There were moments of pure brilliance along the trail that came to us in the form of sinuous singletrack. Roughly half way through the 150-mile slog, we arrived at Thorong La Pass, the highest point of the route at 17,764 feet. The backside of the path revealed a thin ribbon of singletrack, winding off into the distance in between the maze of talus-filled slopes, beaming white glaciers, and craggy peaks. We wound our way along nearly 6,000 vertical feet of pure singletrack bliss before we finally arrived in the quaint village of Manang, where hot apple cobbler and stiff mattresses were waiting.

The landscape was wondrous, but even more wonderful were its inhabitants. Popular for always wearing a smile, the locals were quick to give directions or invite us in for tea. A typical day’s end on the circuit was spent eating a bowl of dal baht and sipping rhaksi, Nepali rice liquor, with the locals in their teahouse. The locals nodded knowingly as we recounted the beauty we’d seen along the trail. Surely they hear the same reminiscence from travelers nightly, but they never showed boredom, instead expressing genuine enthusiasm and pride for their land.

“There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men,” Maurice wrote in the closing line of his book. In other words, everyone has their own big, hairy, audacious goal. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Annapurna. Our audacious goal was to live off our bicycles for a month while touring around the Annapurna Massif and Central Nepal. It wasn’t nearly as hairy as Maurice’s undertaking, but it was our own adventure, one we were proud of. We can’t all start with Annapurna, but that doesn’t make our individual goals and dreams any less important.