Yeti Hikes: How Expensive is the Annapurna Circuit?

Nepal has two “big” hikes–the Everest Base Camp and Annapurna Circuit.  (And lots of other, probably more worthwhile and certainly less touristy choices.)  With some of the best mountain views in the world, great chances to meet trekkers from around the world, plentiful and delicious food, and comfortable beds each night, these treks have earned their status as world-class.  But although they are on many hikers all-time wish lists, for the average person a trek to Nepal can seem rather expensive and overall unattainable.

Some costs are unavoidable.  You’ll need to have boots, fleeces, noncotton shirts, and a backpack.  Airfare is what it is (though you can fly from London or LA to India for less than 600 bucks).  Once you are in Nepal, though, it’s cheap as chips.  And the hiking is cheaper than that! (Yes, even cheaper than chips.)

Handy Signs Abound

And if you relied on the internet for checking prices, you’d be forgiven for believing the Annapurna Circuit costs the equivalent of Sierra Leone’s yearly budget.

How much does it cost to hike Annapurna?

World Expeditions charges $2890 for 24 days in Nepal.

The bandits at REI charge you $3000 to hike the shorter Sanctuary Trek for a total of 14 days.

EXPLORE seems like a relative bargain with charges of $1980 for three weeks

These places aren’t cherry-picked; it’s pretty much $2000-3000 dollars to hike the Circuit if you book from abroad.  (Which, for a variety of reasons, you should never do.)

Early Days

Even the indy route seems scary–these guys are pretty indicative—17 days (with porter and guide) cost them $1455.  (Tangent alert: Stay tuned for another post why hiring porters is an asshole move.)

It’s Much Cheaper than this.

As mentioned above, you need airfare and hiking equipment (which, if you don’t have, can be purchased cheaply in Kathmandu or Pokhara.)  And then you have to buy the permits.

It costs 40 dollars for your ACAP permit and TIMS card.  (ACAP is still, despite a recent government takeover, largely a good organization.  Click the link for more on how they affect the region.)  TIMS is less so—you are paying a subsidy to the trekking agencies who threw a fit at how many trekkers were going alone.  But what are you going to do?  It costs 20 bucks or more to get into some American National Parks.

100 rupees = approx $1 USD

The bus from Pokhara, depending on how well you negotiate, should be about 6 dollars.  It will be cheaper coming back, as you are much closer to Pokhara at the end.

And then there are your daily expenses.  These include breakfast, lunch, dinner, room, drinks and snacks.  Also included are things like toilet paper, band-aids, wipes, moisturizer creme, etc.  Ours varied (prices increase as you climb higher.)  On our best day, they were as low as $18.20 (total) and our most expensive day cost $34.15.  We didn’t really limit ourselves on tea, sodas, or meals, but we didn’t drink any beer on the trek.  (Caffeine and alcohol aren’t recommended when climbing that high.)

In total, for 14 days of hiking for food, accommodation and various sundries we spent $341.89.

Add in transportation to and from the trailheads, and the ACAP and TIMS permit, and our total cost was $444 dollars.

For those not great at math, that’s $222 each.  $111 per week.  Just over $15 dollars a day.  Not the cheapest you could live for, by any means, but a far cry from REI’s rates of $214 per day.

The payoff

In other words, if you’ve dreamed of hiking in the world’s highest mountains, eating lentils 3 times a day, riding a Yak, or spotting a Yeti, don’t let the costs stop you.  Cheaper than chips is cheap indeed.

A Day in the Life: Annapurna Circuit

(Note: hiking Annapurna was nowhere near as monotonous as this post makes it seem. The people change, the scenery changes, the altitude changes. But, over the 14 days of hiking, you do tend to get into quite a same-y routine)

Alarm rings at 6:30 or 7.

Get up. Hopefully, you packed your bag last night– stuff in anything still lying around.

Gobble a snickers. Splash cold water (if running) on face. Sunscreen. Nivea creme (to counter effects from yesterday’s sun). Redress blisters (or check whether band-aids are still hanging on) and put on boots (bummer).

Check under beds. Leave at 7 or 7:30. Trek for 4 to 5 hours. Sometimes high, sometimes not so much. Sometimes climbing. Actually, almost always climbing. Stop, wait, rest. Eat coconut cookies (30RS). Take pictures.

Stop for lunch at whichever restaurant says ‘Namaste! Lunch?’ first in the chosen town. Usually at 12ish. Eat momos, spring rolls, chow mein at increasingly steep prices. Make the most of the hour-ish wait by removing boots and pack, and putting feet up. Read, re-read, re-re-read maps until they’re dog-eared and falling apart.

Put boots back on (double bummer!). Keep going. Most days finish by 3 or 4. Find guesthouse (cheapest, closest to water station, or closest to the end of town to minimize tomorrow’s hiking).

Take boots off. Explore, if there is anything to see. Read (ration kindle battery), journal, order dinner early, drink tea (if cold), hang out, sleep at 9pm, at the latest.

Sleep and repeat!

Yeti Lands: Kathmandu, Nepal

The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Kathmandu was quick and eventful. We had some extra ringgit left over, so our plane snacks were a bit more elaborate than usual. Air Asia doesn’t have any entertainment, but at this point a 4.5 hour flight is like driving a few miles to the store—it doesn’t feel like anything. The first thing we noticed stepping off the plane, was the lack of humidity. It was sunny and warm, sure, about 30/88 degrees. But without the oppressive mugginess, there was no instant sweating, no totalitarian humidity.

You can get a visa on arrival in the Kathmandu airport. So you fill out a form, stand in line for a while (one of you can go convert some money while you do this.) Finally you hand over your arrival card, visa form, passport, passport photo, and 40 USD and then your passport is visa’d, in a process that takes 3 people and seems overly complicated but doesn’t take too long. Rach and I start talking to another backpacker, a lady from the UK, who is just as excited to be in Nepal as we are. We agree to share a taxi.

Collect your bags (Kathmandu is the only airport I’ve been where they check the luggage tags to make sure you haven’t stolen a bag that’s not yours, an ominous security measure), walk through customs (who, to be honest, don’t seem to stop a lot of foreign backpackers) and then it’s time to get into the city.

You kind of know that the first couple cabbies that come up to you are going to be a bit shit. We tried to walk past them all, but a persistent guy kept following us. “Come with me. Taxi. 500 ruppees” (100 rupees is, roughly, equivalent of 1 USD). The price should be 250, so we ignore him.

“Come on, how much you want?”

“300 hundred,” we say, thinking this low price will drive him away.

There was no hesitation. “Okay, 300 okay. Let’s go.” This should have been a warning sign.

We walk out of the airport, across the parking lot to his OLD car and he says, “I am not taxi driver. I am hotel driver. You stay at my hotel and taxi is free.”

Our friend already had a place booked. We didn’t, though I knew where I wanted to head. We could have still said no and found a taxi to take us into the city. But sometimes it’s easier just to go with the flow. As we talk, we are surrounded by 10 or 12 people who seem not so much curious about the conversation or us but just really interested in seeing how well they can surround us.

“How much is the room?”

“Very nice room. You will like it.”

“I do like very nice rooms. How much is it?”

At this point in our trip, Rach and I are both pretty aware of the twinkle in his eyes as his brain conducts some advanced algebra to figure out a price that lower than we will pay but not so high that we just don’t leave.

“Ten dollars,” he says. “Very good room. Double room, big bed, attached bathroom, just stay one night and go somewhere else tomorrow. Good room.”

Ten dollars is about 850 rupees, which is a fair bit more than we were hoping to pay. But it’s very cheap in the overall picture, and, hey, free cab ride. They promise to drop us off at the hotel, then take our friend to her guesthouse, free of charge. We agreed.

Once in the car, it became evident that we had mistimed our arrival. We had thought it was the day before Holi (a Hindu festival where everyone is happy, covered in paint and powder, and pretty happy to douse you), which meant we had a day to secure some powder/squirt guns/etc. It didn’t take long to learn that we’d screwed up our timing. Many people we saw had facepaint, or colored shirts, or both. It turned out that we arrived at 4 pm on Holi itself, as Nepal celebrated a day earlier than India.

Best laid plans and all that.

I mentioned we had an old car, and it really struggled with the 3 of us in the back seat, 3 big backpacks in the boot, and two Nepali dudes in the front. It kept stopping and one of them would get out and kick the tire or something and we’d rumble forward again. The road did us no favors; it was unsealed, had more potholes than road, and weaved up and down. At last, the brave car came to a stop and couldn’t be revived.

They didn’t say anything to us, but one of the guys took off down the road. 5 minutes later he was back in a smaller car that was equally old but still driving. This car had less room and we threw two of our big bags on the roof. No ropes or anything to tie them down, just rested them there. Like particularly underwhelming clowns, we clambered back into the car.

Even from our cramped positions, Nepal was cool. I had been before, but Rach was really digging how different it feels from South East Asia. We finally got to our hotel. They asked our friend to wait in the lobby. As she did, the cab took off. We were shown a nice room, and nodding appreciatively, we asked

“Ten dollars?”

The guy laughed as though this was a scandalous suggestion. “No, no. This is not 10 dollar room.”

“Then show us the 10 dollar room, please,” one of us said.

He led us to a dorm room, with no attached bathroom. We don’t need privacy or attached bathrooms, of course, and often we will choose these rooms. But we also knew they were taking the piss. We argued a bit, and the upshot was we agreed on the original room for 12 bucks (including tax). At this point, we wanted to go celebrate the last of Holi and just get it done with.

Our friend was still in the lobby. No one would show her to the hotel she had booked. We were caught up filling out forms, and I got trapped into a 45 minute discussion with the owner who really wanted to talk me into hiring a guide for trekking and also thought it was outrageous we were leaving the next day to find a cheaper room. “You will not find something cheaper,” he warned. (Spoiler alert: We did, by more than half.)

So at last we got out into the streets. Our friend had found her hotel, dropped her bag, and came back to join us in the Holi festivities. It didn’t take long to find people who were willing to indoctrinate us with holiday cheer. It was hard to take a picture, as Rachel noted, because there’s always so much going on. Taking a picture of one aspect leaves another four out. Kathmandu isn’t a photogenic city in that regard, but it’s a fantastic one in terms of the vibe.

We saw many foreigners* that had really celebrated Holi, wearing shirts that were all colors or just a blotchy grey from all the colors mixing. As we walked the streets of Thamel, everyone was so cheerful (especially when they saw our red faces and clothes). We must have said and heard “Happy Holi” a hundred times an hour.

*Foreigners in Nepal (and probably India) are a different breed from those in SE Asia. Half have dreads (turns out there’s an artificial way to do this that doesn’t take a year. Who knew?) The remaining have beards, hiking boots, plaid shirts, and trekking clothes. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so much at home anywhere in the world.

And then it was dinner time. Nepal is special in this regard because we can eat just about everywhere. The default food is dahl baht, and nearly every restaurant has veggie springrolls, veggie momos, veggie curries, veggie burgers, veggie veggies! You name it. Even after Malaysia, a mecca of veggie food, it was oh-so-welcome.

The time difference was a mere 2 hours and fifteen minutes, but we’d gotten up at 6 to get to the airport by 9 to catch our flight at 11:30, so the nighttime found us pretty tired. We said goodbye to our buddy, headed back to our hotel, and chilled the hell out.

(When we checked out, they totally tried to charge us too much. We didn’t pay it though, and Rachel found us a sweet place that only cost 500 rupees (less than 6 bucks). Viva Nepal!

Yeti Budgets: Myanmar

We expected Myanmar to be expensive. While in most parts of Asia, we’re hoping to spend around $25/each per day (including buses and domestic flights, excluding international flights), for our time in Myanmar, we budgeted $45. Jeepers. Luckily we way over-budgeted, and ended up with a bunch of extra crisp, new hundred-dollar bills.

Accommodation: $24.70/night
I wrote about our accommodation in detail here, but all in all, accommodation was less pricey than we thought, but still a lot more expensive than elsewhere in SE Asia. Our most expensive night was at Mayflower Inn, Yangon ($45) and our least (excluding night bus – no accommodation required! – nights) was at Golden Kalaw Inn, Kalaw ($12).

Food: $15.30/day
Food in Myanmar is so cheap. We had a couple of banana leaf sets in Yangon for 1000 kyatt (about $1.20) and drank our fair share (plus a couple of other people’s) of 300kyatt (40c) soda. Our most expensive was a ‘Myanmar Traditional Food Set’ in Inle Lake– soup, salad, curry, rice, juice, and peanuts for 3000kyatt ($3.50) each. Beer is a lot cheaper than in Malaysia (1500kyatt/$1.75), so we had a couple of boozy nights.

Travel: $10/day
Long distance buses are pretty similar in price to those in Malaysia– around 10,000-15,000 kyatt ($12-$17.50) for an 8-10 hour ride. We also spent a little bit of taxis, tri-shaws, motorcycles, and even horse-carts in Myanmar, as public buses were somewhat hard to find (and figure out).

Miscellaneous: $2.95
Apart from tattoos and Ahimsa’s longgi, the only ‘miscellaneous’ items I remember buying in Myanmar are a couple of entrance fees, and our matching elephant-print pants…

Total: $52.95 altogether/$26.50 each

Getting a Tattoo in a Myanmar Cafe

You know what they say. If you find a place with 10 dollar tattoos, go for it.

When we heard there was an unofficial guy in Nyaungshwe who unofficially gave unofficial tattoos, there was no decision to be made. (Not to worry, he used clean needles and razors and everything.) I have plenty of ideas for tattoos. While I’m saving the rest of my arm and back for Joanne in Portland, I figure there’s room for leg flash pieces. I thought about getting a mastodon, to celebrate my love for megafauna, but then realized people might think it was a reference to the metal band. So Tolkien’s tree it was!

Some of his designs

And more designs

Not sure why, but even though the tattoo took less than an hour, it felt really painful. Maybe I’m a calf pansy?

Filling in the stars. Ouch.

Rach really wanted something too. She couldn’t decide, though, and so she came in while I was getting the work done and sketched a cool design. Half-an-hour later, she was done.

Hello, world!

It was pretty fun, lying on the restaurant floor and talking to the customers who came in. They were from Vancouver, and their favorite town in the world, like me, is Bend, Oregon. It was kind of harsh though–they got beers and ate chips and gauc while I tried to ignore the needles in my leg. Still we were both done in less than 2 hours.

Close in work

 

I’m pretty stoked with it–and even with a tip, it cost us less than 20 bucks total.

We left on a night bus later that night–good thing too, or we might have been back the next day. I’ve totally got room for some megafauna on my other calf.

Pho Cho and me.

 

Photo of the Week – Kid playing Sax, Dude playing Leaf

This was taken at a Rotorua christmas market.  The kid was really good, and deserved every dollar he earned that day.

But I’ll never forget the guy who, upon seeing the sax-playing kid, picked a leaf off the tree and joined him.

Pretty Travel Porn – May

Another month and another set of pictures from pretty places around the world. China keeps popping up–it seems like we seriously underestimate it in the west. The Lake District is a place I’ve always wanted to go, and Chaing Rai is just ridiculous.

Happy May!

Chaing Rai temple

Lake District, England

Pinnacle, Hallelujah Mountains, China