Review of Walking the Annapurna Circuit Trek, Nepal | 4K | From Besisahar to Thorong La Pass

the Annapurna circuit the check that will go through welcoming Villages rolling Fields vast valleys plush forests and hillsides surrounded by the breathtaking Himalayan Mountains throughout the eight day Trek from Bessa Sahara to muktanath lessons were learned and experiences were had keep watching for an overview and more details on what we did where we went and what we would do differently we are traveling Butler and you'll be seeing a lot of myself Sam in this video and not so much Matt unfortunately as he is doing the hard work behind the scenes we filmed during the majority of our Trek and edit it down just to give an idea of what you might experience along the way trekking during the last week of October we started in warm summer weather and ended an extreme cold and snow without any guides Porters or room reservations we set out on quite the adventure come along as I talk and share our sights eats and sleeps during each day in order to get excited to start and finish this journey we started from picara early morning and drove rented a car we wish we got through our hotel and arrived in Vasa Sahara after about a three and a half hours of a drive it was quite the shock because we were anticipating about 40 degree temperature and we came into 70. so with a quick wardrobe change we were on our way with Lovely help from locals to show us the way which licely was marked with red and white flags along the way I usually painted on rocks and surroundings so it was very easy to find the trail starting out it we were just in awe we were along the road dirt roads and parts and some hearts and trails it kind of went back and forth throughout we did 9k for our first day to get to our first guest house anyway we were just surrounded by these vast Hills and rice paddies and of course our first Bridge which was kind of scary but we got used to it because we're gonna run into quite a few of these along the way as well the locals were always very friendly never turned into an issue occasionally there were the children who were asking or demanding for chocolate so be mindful of that it reminded me a lot of being in Vietnam with the rice paddies the very friendly locals and walking through these very small villages getting closer and closer to our first night uh first Village that we were going to stay we did go find a really nice guest house my biggest tip here would be to look at more than one just to compare and contrast and see what you really want and make sure that you're checking the boxes if you need a power source for that night to ensure if there's electricity to ensure if there's extra blankets if you need it at that point so just be on the lookout for that off and obviously check the weather and try to get a accurate weather reading as possible [Music] so as we go through this video you're gonna see the lovely towns and Villages that we went through we didn't stay and all there might be some before there might be some after there might be different Villages around that we just simply walked through staying getting up the next morning we came across this lovely beautiful waterfall pretty soon on our Trail but for the morning which we left by 8 A.M so getting up nice and early with that nice breakfast and hitting the truck by 8 am again nice and early a little bit cooler temperatures in the morning but you quickly warmed up and as you can see I will lose this jacket pretty soon there it goes so total today we did about 13.4 miles or 16k we did stop for lunch along the way which was great very friendly people everywhere we went offering to come eat with them talk with them asking where we're from again children asking for chocolates which came up more than I thought I definitely read about it in blog posts but it definitely happened uh quite a bit so again we are not really seeing a lot of like the Peaks and the snow caps which I I guess Common Sense wouldn't make sense but walking through in the trail was like walking right alongside people's yards and homes and through their fields so very much a part of the community a part of everything daily life in Nepal [Music] there was a point in which we did take wrong turn on the Trek but we didn't get very far without somebody actually telling us a lovely local telling us that hey you missed the turn go back so everyone's very helpful we did stop for lunch in this town we had a beautiful view for lunch overlooking the mountains again some of the most friendly people telling us what great food they had what they recommended we try and of course we try I think we got some fried rice here it was delicious and more than plenty to eat [Music] and we typically were taking longer lunches maybe hour hour and a half really just to give ourselves enough rest to recover and to be able to keep going what I loved about the trail too is you were able to see where you were the trail was going as well as turn around and see where you've been it's a great kind of Judge for throughout the day of what you're able to accomplish I will note early on that prepared does not equal confident so I think that we spent about six weeks hiking and walking through the city in order to prep for this trip I wish that I probably would have done more stairs and try to build that endurance through stairs to help prepare as well I was definitely surprised by the amount of stairs that we would encounter in this eight day Trek we are approaching through another Village and approaching jig at which would be the night where we would stay [Music] but again I mean I was just blown away by some of the houses that were right on the edge and we did see some ruins we did see some houses that had fallen over a lot of damage from her previous earthquakes and constantly changing weather and the mountains are young so the roads would be washed away pretty continuously lots of local animal life we ran into a lot of mules and goats early on and then we start to see so here we get a view of jagat as we're approaching and you see a village and you're excited like okay made it here we go so and again staying here the night was great we did stay in the room for free here as long as you ate dinner and breakfast there we were able to negotiate the room for free the bathroom was not ensuite in this town but again that's something that you can compare and contrast when you're looking for places to stay throughout different guest houses our primary concern was making sure we had a power source so we can charge up off the next day we go beautiful waterfalls I thought I was obsessed with the waterfalls in the Philippines but Nepal's waterfalls on this truck we're mind-blowing I just couldn't stop taking photos of myself lots of bridges that we passed and I felt like we kept going back and forth from side to side we're going to cross we're gonna cross back we're gonna climb we're gonna go down it was up and down but again this day we did start out early again I was woken up quite a few times by some roosters again very still warm weather at this point for us as you can see I think there was a shot of Matt walking shirtless so we were very warm but again we hit the track around 8 A.M we did see a few more fellow Trekkers at this point we had a couple at our Our Guest House too but we really after getting going for about half hour you are so spaced out we didn't we barely saw anybody at that point for a total of this day we we got to about 15K [Music] so we did stop along the way to take some great photos to rest to make sure that we were staying hydrated we didn't want to do too much too fast which stopping for videos was always a great reason for that we did stop in tall for lunch and this was a beautiful little village right at the base of a couple waterfalls we had a whole rooftop restaurant to ourself where we absolutely are falling in love with Tibetan bread becoming a quick favorite my biggest tip here just stop and look around it's so easy you know you're tired and you're trekking and you're watching where you're walking and you're watching the trail but just stop take a look all around you the people the trees The Sounds the views and just soak in where you're at because whenever when are you going to be in this again and I think that's probably my biggest takeaway this early on in the trip especially because I was in a little bit of that anxiety I can't believe we have so many more days of this and I'm tired and I don't know if I could do this the self-doubt comes in and then just you know stopping and saying this is beautiful and focusing on the positive and what's around me [Music] you did share the road at some points multiple points especially early on so the trail wasn't just solely the walking Track you shared it with the cars and so that became quite the challenge sometimes when we were passing but watching some of these vehicles maneuver the dirt roads and the rocks and the water it was quite the experience to oversee definitely made me a little anxious hopeful that our way down in a car won't be that bad more to come later on that we started being surrounded more and more by these you know hillsides we're starting to actually catch a little bit of a peek of those snow caps and it gets a little bit exciting we definitely are starting to run into more Porters and other groups of people we would run into a group here and there that were walking together and again a lot of locals who were not afraid to ask especially the children for chocolate I we didn't have any we didn't come prepared but that's what they asked for a lot of the times these were some really great archways that we would walk through it usually was a symbol that you were coming up to a village or you were leaving a village and I did get excited about many times like okay so a lot of times when we would stop or stop for something to drink or it was just we knew that we were going to have access to water and a lot of times we had a self-filtering water bottles so we would fill those up there are safe drinking water stations along the track but a lot of times you have to pay for those and it wasn't crazy amount of money but we did use our self filtering water bottles which was great this was a little bit more of the treacherous peat of the trail and we did run into those a lot so you see we have some areas where they were fairly stable stairs and then there would be areas where it would be narrower and maybe not so defined stairs well again I wish I would have done more stairs definitely was exhausted after this this day we started off fairly early we were on the Trek by 7 15 a.m very much again reminded of Northern Vietnam however this is the day it also started to change as we started to climb we started to gain a little bit more altitude and this day we added about 14k to our total distance strict so about we did it in about six and a half hours on this day which wasn't too bad considering we like to stop we did start out pretty slow this morning I think this was the morning I was the most tired and feeling a little bit sore but after about that two Mark two hour mark into the check I started feeling no pain and ready to go I kind of found myself in that pattern the first couple hours I was like a little bit sore and tired and a little bit from back pain or shoulder pain from the backpack uh and again in the morning you could see a little bit more Checkers with us but again as it like I said before as the day went on we didn't run into as many we were able to space out a little bit more and really just be the two of us along the way this is the day I also found myself starting to like pant a little bit in my order I think that was attributed to a little bit a of the altitude again we were we were climbing a lot more so I was really excited to stop and get some lunch and just kind of you know take the shoes off relax for a little bit and rest up and get ready for the next half of the day we found ourselves walking through most of the villages and finding something to eat on the other side again it wasn't very crowded so you could take your pick wherever you want I think we did not really have any bad Meals by any mean and then we are back out on the Trek for the afternoon to get to our final destination [Music] I think also we would pick a bigger town for lunch a bigger Village for lunch so that way we would have the option should we be tired or you know not feeling it or not feeling well we could have that option to just let's just stay here the night and I think that was great I mean you're still going to run into Villages later on but it was just that nice option to have great town of Koto a very friendly people we did come into our first or second at this point a permit checkpoint along with the permits I would definitely recommend getting tons and plenty having plenty of passport photos with you before you go it makes the process once you're in Nepal a lot easier we got our permits in Pokhara it took us probably an hour or so and then filling out both sets of paperwork the acap and the Tims I definitely recommend doing it they do have opportunities in other locations that you can get your passport photo taken it just adds more time and more steps so make sure you plan accordingly we are approaching shame which is where we stay the night it was actually kind of fun because a gentleman who drove past us on a motorcycle and stopped and started talking to us and gave us the card for his guest house which is a new guest house so we stayed there for the night it was great we did stay for free again as long as we ate dinner and breakfast with them so we were able to negotiate that we had an ensuite bathroom in this one but no hot water so we had to use the shower downstairs and I apparently chose the wrong one and that one did not have hot water so again make sure you ask questions and ask for help because had I asked and stayed and waited for somebody they probably would have showed me to the to the shower room with the hot water next morning leaving out was probably the more crowded morning leaving out I think it was I felt like a trekker's parade there was lots of people walking leaving their guest houses to hit the trail at 8am by now we were pretty spaced out we saw some more people approaching another town this one had an apple orchard that you could stop at and it had lunch we kept walking at this point so we kind of passed through most of the Trekkers that were resting there and we just kind of kept on trucking we totaled about 14.5 k for this day and we were just mind blown with all these crazy amazing hilltops and we are seeing more of the snow caps and getting more into that Forest I think we started smelling some more of the pine versus the more tropical like down by the rice paddies and all of that down there definitely starting to feel that you were definitely climbing more and reaching that higher altitudes [Music] I also will notice like some of the smaller Villages are getting smaller and smaller the higher we get and the closer we get to the throng pass so we are working our way today to our purposing was the goal of our night and I will say walking through some of this forested area was quite the challenge a lot of uphill a lot of steep uphills [Music] like I said through Upper saying you can also stay in lower pissing but again naming in the title lower saying is at a lower altitude upper is at a higher altitude we chose upper in the hopes that we would continue to acclimatize in a healthy and safe way I think this is the point where it actually started to smell the snow which I got really excited about um as we I know like okay I'm getting closer I can definitely do this and again lots of places along the way as options to stop get something to drink to rest to get something to eat and we're not seeing a lot of crowds at this point either in this point of the season as we approached upper saying where we decided that we were going to stay we kind of walked through town a little bit and this is another beautiful Lake that we were just surrounded by following our lunch and so as we approached the town we kind of walked through to try to get a different idea of different rooms we try to look at a couple different ones and one was fully booked I think this was the first time that we ran into that this whole trip so far of a guest house being booked but I think it was booked through a tour companies it was a big group of I think 20 or 25 people on that tour [Music] the trail was a little bit more narrow at this point definitely no cars at this point as well at least at this part of the trail again it went back and forth between sharing the road and not we had a beautiful room that had three sides of Windows overlooking the mountains it had an ensuite bathroom I did get a hot shower shower was not attached and we had some really great food we got there fairly early so we were able to really enjoy a little bit walk around the town we did walk up to the top there was a temple at the top highly recommend walking out the next morning surrounded by some more people started to feel a little bit more in the cold in the morning so you can see more hats something I really did like along the trail as we would leave a village you could turn around and see it at some point just like you could see some of them walking up to it and it was just a really great broad picture of where we just were and I think that was just really cool to see a lot of the times [Music] you had the option to rent trekking poles and I was very sad that I'm like yes I'm definitely going to rent trekking poles however when it came time I decided not to and in hindsight looking back at the truck I probably would have only used them the last day or two so again I would have had to carry them with me for the first like five or six days and then only use them at the end would it have been worth it I'm not really sure we also rented sleeping bags in Pokhara I definitely recommend because not a lot of the places had extra blankets and we definitely use the sleeping bag on top of extra blankets a lot of points too [Music] this is kind of where I was introduced to the infamous Switchback I did not fully realize that's what they're called as I'm new to trekking however there's a steep uphill turn steep uphill and we kind of went back and forth with this in a couple different areas on this day's Trek [Music] totaling today we accomplished 19.5 kilometers yes I'll say that again 19.5 it was pretty pretty tired I did find myself stopping quite a bit just to just kind of lean up against the mountain or sit on a rock however getting to the this is at the point of a top of one of the switchbacks that we probably were working on for about 45 to an hour back and forth so walking into the town to take a little bit of a break but not too much for us because we want we knew how much further we had to go we wanted to keep going we did try Yak cheese here I loved it I thought it was delicious it kind of reminded me a little bit of cheddar and gouda but it was very delicious a nice snack to kind of keep us going on the push so we decided from today that we were going to try to get to Braga that was our end goal for the day so walking through this town I thought was very historical you could tell a lot of older buildings but the views were insane we stopped I think along the way from just walking through the town I think it took us about 40 minutes just because we kept stopping to take videos or photos or I think we spoke to the locals I think we bought a souvenir we bought the cheese I mean it was just a great break but yet not break we kept walking through it another thing you could see the trail so there was multiple trails but it was just great to see how far we'd come that another great view of the broad picture of that Village so it was fantastic just constantly breathtaking we decided to stay in Braga instead of manang so mening was the next big Village and our plan was to make it to Braga just which is about a half hour before midnight and our thought was a lot of Trekkers and a lot of the things that are recommended is to stay in menang for a whole day so almost for two nights to help you acclimatize so our thought was to stay in Braga and then the next morning just beyond my name so we would still be acclimatizing we still wouldn't be going as far we'd be doing shorter days and resting for most of the day I think it worked out for the most part but we also started the Trek at Betsy Sahar so if you're renting a car and you're starting further along the circuit it might be better to stay the full like day and a half in mening [Music] another beautiful beautiful Archway surrounded by the prayer Wheels which we were told along the track at some point that walking through and spinning those would be bring good luck to your journey however when I did research it was more like prayers and mantras and setting a tone for yourself we stopped in Noel for lunch and again we had beautiful views we did not climb those stairs but you can there's a temple at the top and we were able to rest for about an hour or so I think this was probably one of our shorter lunches because we wanted to really just get to our place to stay for the night we wanted we knew that we still had a few hours to go from here [Music] [Music] there's a couple points at this part where we weren't sure if necessarily we were on the track because we had not seen the red and white for a while we did um we did reference our map too which we didn't fill up as much as I thought we would but again we also ran into other Trekkers where we were able to talk about it and we were on the right track so yay so this is now approaching uh Braga and there is a lot of new construction going on so I would hope that in the future that this I believe this is going to be a guest house a bigger guest house um actually we're still in Nepal but it will be become right Beyond this it will be Braga and there was a beautiful like soccer field and Temple and so we kind of stopped for a minute and considered like should we stay here um and I we ended up continuing on because Braga was probably like the next the next Village over the interesting thing about Bravo was that the primary guest houses weren't really guest houses they were lodges so a lot of the rooms in the main Lodge did not have power source or a lot of electricity for that matter we were lucky in that were you able to grab the last cabin which was in one of The Lodges outside the lodge and it had power source and it had an ensuite bathroom no shower ensuite but I had a bathroom and it had power for us to to be able to charge everything and we were able to you know relax a little bit and actually take a shower I had gotten a cold shower because again I went to the wrong shower and during that shower actually they ran out of water so he had to wait for them to refill the water tank so leaving the next day we got to mining very quickly it wasn't very far like I said earlier it was probably a 30 minute walk from there today total we're only doing about two to three k as like I said we're trying to acclimatize a bit more Benin was quite the big town I think it's the last bigger Village that you'll pass before you get through to the wrong paths we did have to go through a checkpoint it was this was probably the more detailed checkpoint to show our passes and permits and they took down a lot of information from us um I would say that it was easier I also had a fanny packed so I kept all my permits and things in my fanny packs it was easier to get out and reference I'd also recommend having that because we also had tissues in there because altitude the weather we went through quite a bit of tissue ISO I recommend that as well I also had cough drops I also had hand sanitizer which was a good one a little bit of toilet paper just in case we also kept some whole rolls of toilet paper in our backpack at all times [Music] so walking through mening we took our time here because we knew it was gonna be a short day and B this was our only chance to really see this this Village and it was beautiful lots of historic buildings lots of friendly people lots of shops so this is probably the biggest stores that you'll probably find at the this far up on the Trek so you can get your toilet papers and toiletries and some mild groceries some snacks along the way if that's what you're looking for so if you wanted to stock up on anything I would say to it in mening because you're not going to find as many options for the rest of this trip so I had been taking altitude sickness Med pretty consistently because I do have a history with getting altitude sickness in the past and so I wanted to be extra prepared so drinking lots of water but also taking the altitude sickness meds which we also bought in bakara which I would recommend you can find it on the Trek in some of the bigger Villages but I wouldn't risk it I would make sure you stock up in pakara if that's something that you would want to use I definitely started feeling the effects a little bit more towards this point and it wasn't so the symptoms weren't so severe it was more of just like trouble catching my breath a couple times a little bit light-headed but stopping drinking some water very helpful and it also helped a lot so we were able to keep on walking and I said I think we did about two to three k so it didn't take us to too long to get through and so we just took our time and really enjoying the scenery and the trail and the views because again now we're getting higher and higher up we're seeing more and more of the Himalayas of the snow caps [Music] we arrived into then saying where we decided that we were going to stay the night and this is it it's very small village no stores two guest houses one of which was closed so we did stay on the one the lower one I think about 200 rupees for the room no bathroom attached but we did have the bathroom was next door no shower but we did pay for a bucket shower and I will note that this was the last shower until we made it through the pass as we get higher in altitude it was not as much an option for like running water in a lot of The Villages that we stayed in from here on out at this point too the truck was getting a lot more challenging I was more tired after days and days and days of trekking so I did start implementing a mantra for myself and it was simply one step at a time one breath at a time every time I felt my anxiety creeping every time I started feeling like I couldn't do this like I couldn't finish one step at a time one breath at a time one breath at a time one step at a time [Music] so the next day as we started leaving and saying our goal was to hopefully try to get to the wrong pedi but we knew that we it was going to be quite the distance so our plan was to make it to let Dar to stop for lunch along the way and so that and then we would reassess how we were feeling and if we would continue at that point so at this point the trails started going a little bit narrower a little bit wider a little bit narrower and we're definitely walking along the hillside we definitely had to share the road with some people and some some locals and some animals I would definitely walking around the Yaks at this point lots more Yaks we're seeing here and winding through some other villages [Music] there these two Villages were very very close together so this is yaki and within the next like 20 to 30 minutes we were in La Dar so I started getting excited that we were there already but we weren't so we had to keep on going this was a fairly flat piece part of the Trek for us which was a great reprieve after a lot of the switchbacks from the day before and the little bit of the treacherous so it was a little bit more of a relaxed part of the Trek again surrounded by like the beautiful mountains and hills and like starting to see some more of the color in the flowers and the in The Greenery it was just it was amazing to see [Music] thank you the last little bit coming up to let Dar we did see a few more of the return of the switchbacks so it was a little bit tiring [Music] uh Crossing this bridge we left Yak khaki and I apologize if I'm butchering the names of these Villages trying my best and it's based off of what I heard other people along the way pronounce so or if a local villager had pronounced it to me [Music] there are tips too as far as when you're passing a yak if they're laying on the track like that never go downhill and pass try to pass uphill in case they do but we never saw it we never witnessed it and I was never afraid it was going to happen but that is the tip that they recommend when it comes to passing the yak [Music] we did get to ladar fairly quickly we think we made it there before 11 A.M which was a surprise a pleasant surprise at that [Music] this was probably one of the longest bridges and a lot of times for like crossing over if like that bridge wasn't there we would have to like and we had at some point going all the way down to the water to cross over and then go all the way back up and you can kind of see on the other side that's what we were going to have to do at this point as well there it is going down to like a lower point where there's a more stable Bridge [Music] we did reach after lunch at Le Dar we decided to keep on going towards throng Petty we like I said we got there at 11 we had a nice long lunch and we were out the door we were ready to go we only had 5K to go to get to the wrong Petty we did pass some pretty crazy Landslide warnings and they were no joke we basically had the trail kind of shrunk down to about two three feet and it was primarily the these Shale very flat Shale stones foreign [Music] Petty which was amazing we got a nice room we were able to get some good food and hang out for the night and we decided that we were going to make the push to further on pass the next day it was on the fence whether we were going to make the push for it or if we were going to stay and acclimatize in the wrong Petty for another day we getting up at three in the morning was hard and hiking in the darkness with our headlamps which is a must was interesting because we were surrounded by Starlight which was kind of romantic but then we were hit with constant switchbacks and I was a lot of breath and I was definitely feeling the altitude we pushed through and we made it to the pass it was very overwhelming I would say that I definitely got very emotional about being able to accomplish this goal and being successful with it we did then start working our way down fairly quickly because we knew the downward truck was also going to be quite the challenge so I think this took us about 5.5 half hours we did stop in one of the last Villages before throng pass to get some more water out this is the first time that I bought an additional water bottle just because I knew it was going to be a longer day and coming down it was very the top part was very dangerous with the ice in the snow so I wish that I would have bought or rented the grappers for the bottom of my hiking boots coming right before we reached monctonath there was a part where we stopped for lunch and there was a series of probably like five to six different restaurants and a lot of people that's where they were stopping as they were coming down from the past we basically decided that yes we decided from oxnath we were going to try to get back to bokara hindsight we probably should have just stayed the night that night in monctonath because it was a great town and we didn't end up making it all the way to parkour that next day we had to wait the next to the next day so we drove to another town stayed the night and then drove thanks for coming along and I hope that you found some tips useful and some of our recommendations please feel it's free to follow us or comment or ask questions we'd love to hear them [Music] foreign thank you

Channel: Traveling Butler

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Keywords: annapurna circuit trek, annapurna, nepal, backpacker, walking, experience, cinematic, how to, what to do, guide, self guided, tour, nepal trekking, throng la pass, himalayas, trekking tips, backpacking, solo, hiking, adventure, travel, travel adventure, stunning views, high altitude, himalayan mountains, tea houses, cultural experience, trekking route, annapurna trek, annapurna vlog, porters, guides, trekking, solo vs group, walk, visit, sightseeing, trail, path, 4k, annapurna 4k, exploring nepal

Id: FiuWQJP-Knw

Length: 37min 54sec (2274 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2023