Most of all, says lead guide Romi Tamang, “Everest has lost its charm. It’s too busy. You get people wanting to get married on it now, people trying to climb it at 70 or 80 years old, gimmicks like that.”The Annapurna trails are for people like me, who prepared by plotting the shortest distance between two pints. I could be sinking into the sofa, checking my phone, and watching the Himalayas in high definition.Yet on our first day’s trek, passing Nice View Guest House and its neighbour and marketing superior, Excellent View Guest House, I see a vista no camera can fully capture.A flaring red sunset dances with shadows on the Annapurna range, a bristle of 7,000 metre-plus jutting peaks, like peaks on a polygraph chart. Guide Birkha Magar, like a kid imagining shapes in clouds, says Annapurna Two is a thumb. Annapurna Four is a Gurkha’s knife. “No,” says Tamang definitively. “It’s Tintin’s hair.”By night, sky that’s free of pollution overshadows the summits. Stars reduce my world to a diamond canvas. My brain resets, fading to black the latest political result that supposedly spells the apocalypse. Maybe this is why vagabond dogs bark all night like timber sawn by hand. Merciless mutts just want me to know about the handsome sky. Perky shouts of “washy washy” announce the delivery of our morning shower, in a silver bowl.No commuter commotion exists off-piste. Instead, leaves crunch like the potato-chip packets our group collects for World Expeditions’ cleanup initiative. Kimrong Khola waterfall’s gentle thunder floods the valley.
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