Most of the time, “trek” is a term thrown around with travelers and is more akin to “hike” or “walk.” Meaning, a trek can be anything from a walk across town to buy the cheapest pack of cigarettes to tucking your toothbrush into the waistband of your flowy fisherman’s pants and taking a five day jaunt into the Cambodian jungle. If you can replace the word “trek” in your sentence with stroll, saunter, skip, hop, or ramble and/or your so-called trek ends by meeting back at the air-conditioned bus at an appointed time, you are probably not using the term properly. For the first time, I can use the word honestly.

The Annapurna Circuit trek is a very long walk from one side of the Annapurna mountain range to the other in approximately two to three weeks, depending on your perseverance, your resistance to altitude sickness, the weight of your pack and the compatibility of your trekking partner(s). The trek begins and ends at 3,000 feet above sea level, but you end up walking as high as 16,500 feet to go over the mountain pass and back down. Making over the mountain pass – Thorong La – is the climax of the trip, and everyone wonders as they set out if they’ll be able to do it. Injury, altitude, physical ability. All of these things can get in the way and send you back down on the same side that you came up on. And only days walking and time will tell how you’ll fare. But day-to-day, the routine varies little.

1) Wake up with the sun, unless the crowing rooster or barking dog kept you up all night.
2) Re-pack your bag, which requires you to compress your sleeping bag from human to pea size and the process never seems to get any faster.
3) Eat breakfast, usually porridge that makes you think slop, eggs either laced with garlic or deprived of salt, or some sort of wretched carbohydrate that you had for dinner the night before because it is cheap and fills your stomach for at least 3 hours. All food is served on tin plates, which enriches the mock experience of eating prison food.
4) Haul 30+ pound backpack onto your back and merge back onto the dirt path from which you came the night before. This may require ducking out of the way of passing mule trains, redirecting dirty children asking for pens or dancing around piles of cow, mule and horse poop.
5) Walk 4 – 7 hours.
6) Talk about all the meals you will have when you get off the trek and not much else.
7) Stop for rests and lunch along the way.
8) Absorb, photograph, revel and wonder at the changing, stupefying scenery. You are walking in the Himalayas. There is no one else in your family, friends who can say they’ve done this. You have never seen mountains this tall, landscape this wondrous, people this dirty. You have never appreciated a hot shower and meal more. You will not see a motor vehicle for at least 16 days. You have never felt so fit in your life. You have never felt hungrier than after a two-hour climb to 15,000 feet in the air. You will climb even higher than that when you go over the pass, a day that will require you to climb from 13,500 feet to 16,200 feet and back down in the same day. The whole trip is leading up to that day, and each day that you climb, you are growing stronger, colder, drier and more able.
9) Eat dinner. Potatoes, macaroni, rice or other bland carbohydrate fried. Cover carbohydrate with a runny, hot pink ketchup-like substance that is marginally more tasty than the fluorescent green substance labeled “chili sauce.”
10) Go to bed with the sun.

The only thing that changes from day to day is the scenery, the soreness of your leg muscles, the cramping of your shoulders and the altitude. The altitude is a big factor. Altitude affects attitude. The higher we climbed, the closer we came to the day of reckoning – the day we would have to climb over the pass. And the closer we came to the pass, the more strained and stressed we grew. As we climbed higher, the air grew thinner and drier, the highest snow capped peaks came into view and people started feeling ill from the altitude.

Altitude is a funny thing. It affects some people and leaves others alone. It doesn’t discriminate by age, physical ability or number of cigarettes smoked per day. It just strikes. As you climb into the 15,000 feet range, some people become winded walking from their bed to the toilet and need to take a day or two rests. At the same time, that person’s trekking partner may be jumping up and down on the foam mattress spouting about how hungry and fit she feels. These two personalities don’t always mix. But in a few days time, both should be feeling well enough to continue the trek and ascend to new heights.

I did not experience altitude sickness. I had slight headaches that went away after dinner. I had waking dreams through the night (altitude does not allow you restless sleeps). I had shortness of breath. I used an uphill step I donned the “wedding march” – step with the left, bring right foot to meet left foot. And this is how I climbed hills and kept myself breathing after 13,000 feet. But this is all normal for 13,000+ feet.

My trekking partner did experience altitude sickness, although he was wont to admit it. He is someone who is in great shape. He is someone who has the competitive edge of any boy who grows up on sports. He is someone who quickens his pace when young Israeli boys trek faster than he does. He is not someone who wanted to admit that the altitude got the best of him, and it did at both 13,000 feet and again at 15,000 feet. So we tacked on a few extra rest days, 80 more games of Uno and a few hundred more pages in War and Peace. (Yes, I carried and am still reading War and Peace, but that’s another story.)

The day of reckoning finally came. We had been staying in a hellhole called Thorong Phedi for two days, waiting for Graham’s nausea to subside so that we could begin our final ascent. Thorong Phedi is a place I hope never to go to again. It is colder than cold. Garlic is used as a poison, not a flavoring. There was no hot water for bathing on the second day. A roof blew off one of the buildings. My feet were cold for over 48 hours. I can’t mention the toilets.

It was the prospect of having to stay at Thorong Phedi one more day that got me up and over the pass.

We got out of bed at 5am. The anxiety of the climb and the altitude had kept us both awake most of the night. At 5:15am I somehow got down a garlic-laced omelet and a brick of bread. At 5:40am we began the first part of the climb to base camp, the steepest and highest ascent yet which would take us one hour to complete. We were enclosed in fog. A light snow fell the whole time we climbed. So much for the mountain views.

We climbed between a group of Germans and a group of Israelis. The Germans kept a steady pace in front of us. The Israelis behind us were not looking so good, some of them bent over and gasping for air ten minutes into the climb. I was feeling wretched after no sleep, regretting the garlic omelet, cursing that I had to pack my bag in the dark, and hating Graham for feeling spry for the first time on this morning. I kept climbing. I tried to keep pace with Graham and was hit with a bigger wave of nausea. I made it to base camp near tears. I needed to use the bathroom and someone had gotten sick in there. I wondered if I’d be next. Graham kept telling me how good he felt. For the first time, I wondered if I had it in me to make it over the pass. I tried to suppress the nausea, the panic, the thought of another night in Thorong Phedi and Graham’s energetic smile and just concentrate on moving.

Graham raced ahead to keep up with the few Israeli boys who had also raced on ahead. I slowed down. I took a deep breath. I remembered the wedding march step and stuck to it. I found I could keep my breath. My nausea subsided. The boys raced on and up and had to keep taking breaks after each climb. I found I could keep going without a break. I found my strength again. I forgot about my fatigue. I marveled at the depth and breadth of the male egos around me, at these heroes racing each other up the mountain. I realized how competitive the trek had been up until this point. I cursed the male ego and wished for a female companion. And then I forgot all about it and smiled at how easy I had made the climb by just slowing down and going alone.

We made it up to the pass in four hours. It was supposed to take five. Even at my own steady pace, I was only minutes behind the racing team. We made it down from the pass in three hours and rewarded ourselves with pizza and caffeine. I had my first bout of altitude sickness on the way down, struck with a splitting headache. After descending nearly 5,000 feet in just three hours, I killed my left knee. I had “trekker’s knee” for the next three days of descending, and then trekker’s knees for the final day.
The day before the last day of the trek was my 31st birthday. I spent the first seven hours of it walking and the last three hours of it bathing in natural hot springs. I celebrated that night with friends I had met on the trek. Graham got me a friendship bracelet. Another couple bought me a comb, which I had neglected to pack and complained about for two weeks. It was the first birthday I had ever spent in the company of strangers and probably the last I would spend at hot springs in the Himalayas.

And now in Pokhara, AKA civilization, the trek is slowly becoming a memory, except for my knees that hurt to bend and straighten and Graham’s foot odor that was still potent at dinner last night. But the knee pain will fade soon and Graham will be off the India and I to Bhutan. And then home. Which is what I spent my waking nights dreaming about and what excites me even more than being back online.