Off Season Trekking | Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal

June 2013 - Isi came to intern at socialtours from Germany in February. She finally made it to a trek with Parbati, one of our female guides - to the Annapurna Base Camp. In her own words, she talks about her trek, and the fact that it was an off season trek.

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by Isabel Braeuer

Well, how to start?  I really expected the worst for my off season trekking – I expected really bad weather with rain, lots of rain and clouds. Thus, I didn’t even get my hopes up for seeing the mountains at all. I though like this “Expect the worst, then you don’t get disappointed”. Surprisingly, we started our trek on a wonderful sunny and hot summer day in June and I thought, maybe it’s actually not going to be that bad. But we had 6 more days ahead of us before we would reach Annapurna Base Camp … “Don’t get too excited Isi”, I tried to remind myself. The heat and my heavy backpack made me realize that it’s going to be a hard long way. A long way with billion and trillions of stairs – they were really killing me! I was so exhausted…. Oh dear, on this first day of trekking, I seriously thought I would never ever reach Base Camp…

View from Dhampus

Over the next couple of days it got more cloudy, cooler and a bit rainy and the sun only showed up a couple of times. I have to admit, I actually liked the cooler weather – it was so much nicer to walk. And the landscape is just absolutely incredible! I walked through beautiful villages, little jungles, dense forests, rice fields, meadows with lots of flowers, pass buffalos and goats standing on the way, cross rivers over wooded bridges and trek along waterfalls, little quells and the mountains. And you should have seen how the clouds slowly soaked in through the valley and made the mountains, villages and forests disappear in seconds. That was so fascinating! Especially in the quiet forests - it all looked so mystical. I will definitely not forget that. 

 

 

Besides, you meet so many nice trekkers on the way. Everyone is so friendly and the atmosphere in the guesthouses is super relaxed since it’s not very crowded at this time of the year. That made it even possible to talk to the local village people and I could practice a little bit of my Nepali.  Another day, it was heavily raining – it was so heavy that the stairs turned into waterfalls. Imagine that, you basically have to climb up waterfalls!! That was so much fun! But I definitely had the greatest moment up Base Camp. After finally succeeding to reach there, we weren’t able to see anything at first. It was all cloudy – but it felt like being in heaven – it was kind of magical. However, the next morning we were so lucky – it all cleared up. My chin dropped when I saw these snow covered giants right in front of me.  I couldn’t believe my eyes. I felt so tiny. It was just breath-taking!!! 

To sum up, I totally enjoyed this incredible trip! Without Parbati, my friend and guide, it wouldn’t have been the same! She’s just amazing and together we had such a good time. And this always changing  weather ended up being a real adventure for us! Oh yes baby, I’ve been REAL trekking. What else to say, it was the best adventure I ever had.