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The real Billy the Kid!

Ok I know my last blog post stated that I would be gone for 3 weeks…. well here’s what happened. When I set out to trek (hike) into the Himalayan Mountains I knew that I didn’t want to carry my own bag. My plan was to hire or buy a donkey to carry my gear, which was mostly heavy camera equipment. I quickly learned that its not possible to get just one donkey as they work in a “Donkey Train” which is a group of donkeys from 8 to 30 following a senior or lead donkey. So now that my dream of buying my own jackass was crushed it looked like I was going to be humping my own gear! I must first say that I’m no mountain man, my experience consists of day hikes with friends in the California foothills… not the highest mountains in the world. Like usual I set out under prepared and poorly equipped with in the first 3 hours of hiking on the first day my feet developed some pretty serious blisters thanks to my cheap Chinese made hiking boots. So on the second day I opted to hike in my trusty sandals, the weather was warm so it seemed prefect.

When the sun was out during mid day I was hiking in only shorts and no shirt, people looked at me as if I was lost and looking for the nearest beach. After hiking for 2 days my shoulders were killing me so I decided to hire the next best thing from a donkey… a human mule. The Annapurna trails are full of human porters carry everything and anything you could imagine. The area I was hiking in had no roads so the only way for these small towns to get supplies was on the back of these human mountain goats. I was amazed by the strength of these guys, the average weight of the loads these guys would carry was around 100-kilos which is 220 pounds!!!! That’s almost twice my weight. I felt like a complete wimp since my bag only weighed around 10-kilos or 20-pounds. The biggest load I saw was a guy carrying what looked to be a refrigerator. The age range of these guys was insane, from 12 to 74…. yes that’s right 74 years old carrying 220-pounds over some of the highest mountain passes in the world, where most of you reading this would have hard enough time just walking let alone carrying that kind of weight. My porter was a 57 year old grandfather…. yes I know it sounds terrible… I can read your mind right now… “Jimmy how can you have an old man carry your bag?” Well this is where the story gets good….

When I set out to hike into the Himalayas I planned on filming some sort of documentary. And when I meet my porter Gorahta I found the story… “The real Mules of Annapurna” a story about how far a father will go to help his son. When I first met Gorahta he told me that he was a porter and did the Annapurna trek all the time. After spending a few days with him and trying to get to know him, I found the story to be a little different. He lied to me saying that he was a porter, the truth was he was a shop owner, which sold supplies and a grandfather and father of 3 kids. The last time he hiked the Annapurna circuit was 17 years ago! I thought to myself well what would make a 57-year-old grandfather leave his family and strap a heavy backpack on his back and hike into some of the highest mountains in the world for 3 weeks? Well the story was his 23-year-old son Nawbin moved to Malaysia to work in a factory where he thought he could make better money and be able to send money home. It turned out to be a bad situation and he quickly found himself with no money and in need to get back home to Nepal to help his family. Now remember Nepal is one of the world’s poorest countries so the money that I would pay for 3 weeks was almost half what people in Nepal make all year.

With the money Gorahta would make from me he was going to buy his son a plane ticket home. Once I heard the story I quickly switched focus…. but here is where it all went wrong. After 5 days of hiking in sandals in some of the most demanding terrain I have ever set foot in my left knee was completely screwed! My knee was sprained beyond spraining, I could barley bend my knee so at that point I found myself in some what of a pickle. I was now 1 day away from crossing the summit or mountain pass which was almost 20,000 feet high and there was no way I could continue on as the hiking was only getting tougher and I was also coming down with a small dose of Altitude sickness. This area is no man’s land… no roads or airports the only way down was by heading back. The thought of walking back for 6 days was enough to make me think about throwing myself off the edge and ending things the easy way. Hiking back for 6 days was still not going to be easy, so I quickly got thinking and found the best way out… on horseback. This is where the documentary ended as I was heading back down on horse so there was no need for Gorahta…. I feel really bad about not being able to finish the story but in the end Gorahta still made good money and hopefully will be able to soon buy his son a ticket.

Arranging for the horse took some time but finally the guy showed up with the horse or should I say baby pony! The guy originally said he was going to have two horses one for me and one for him so we could ride fast. Well that turned out to be false as he showed up with only one small small horse. I felt like such a retard I was like the big kid at the fair ground riding the small pony. He would walk ahead pulling the pony as I rode on the back looking like a giant riding toy horse. After an hour or so of this I couldn’t take it anymore, we were going so slow since he was walking I felt I would have been faster on my own. In the next town I started looking for another horse… this time I was persistent that I had two horses and I meant real horses the big kind. Finally I found a cool kid with the prefect setup… so we rode off into the sun like two lost cowboys. I went from feeling like killing myself to having the time of my life… I was 100% in heaven. The different landscape of this part of Nepal is truly breathtaking; no photos or words will ever descried the feeling of riding in this magical place. I spent 3 days on horseback completely loving life… I would daydream while riding about what it was like back in the Wild West I would think of the famous Billy the Kid and how he would ride off into the unknown with the law chasing him.

At one point I became “Jimmy the donkey wrangler” my horse porter’s brother owned a bunch of donkeys and while we were riding we ran into 8 of his donkeys, which were sitting on the side of the trail eating and screwing off like a typical jackass. My horse porter’s horse was having some problems with one of its hoof (foot) so he told me to continue on and lead the donkeys down the trail. This was for sure the highlight of the trip for me… there I was on the back of a badass horse that I named “Edge” because he liked to walk close to the edge which would drop down a 1000 feet into the river gorge below, and up ahead was 8 donkeys. At some points I would come across from other tourist hiking along the trail and here I was this tall blonde guy on a horse with 8 donkeys… they all looked puzzled as you don’t see any other foreigners on horse back and defiantly not wrangling donkeys. After 3 days of hard riding I finally made it back down where I was able to catch a jeep back into town. I must say I’m not sure if I was better off with the horse or not… cause now not only does my left knee hurt but so does my right knee and every other bone in my body and also I have one sore ass! But the lesson learned was that in any tragedy or hardship, if you step back and look at it from a different perspective you can always find a little gift. This famous quote says it best “Happiness comes from good judgment, good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.” This trip for sure started off with bad judgment, which quickly turned into an unforgettable experience, which lead to better judgment followed by 3 of the happiest days of my life!

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Posted by Jimmy under Nepal, Photos, Travel Tips, Uncategorized, Updates |