Sisterhood of the Orange Shag

It's a trick of the guides to say the hike to the next village is less than it actually is, so they get further on down the line faster. Dhanu claims it's a five hour hike from ABC to Dovan, because probably had I known it was seven I would have stopped earlier. But she tells us she has sent a runner to reserve our rooms and urges that we get there. I consider it a reason to slow down, breath and enjoy since we'll have rooms waiting. Down from the heavens we trek, through the damp clouds that have now settled into the valley. It was hard to leave the glory of the Annapurna bowls behind. We arrive late in Duvon at 4 p.m. and there are no rooms.

“What happened to the runner and our rooms?” I ask annoyed, my knees slammed, ankles fat and swollen like my old aunt's, and exhausted beyond food or drink from over seven hours of head-down hiking.

“Maybe there weren't any,” Dhanu offers.

"But you said you sent the runner out early,” I eye suspiciously thinking it was a ploy to move faster toward home. Again we're offered the dining room which isn't an option when the cook starts up at 5 a.m. Feeling snarky and smelling ripe I'm still not going to sleep with sherpas or someone's morning porridge.

“What about the other guest houses?” I ask.

“I don't know them,” Dhanu quips as I trot back up stairs to plead with lodge owners for a room. The first lodge gives us a clean, no frills room for a fraction of the cost and will feed Dhanu too. It was dry with three beds and I was gloating in my refusal to accept the pattern of guides and guest houses, now realizing that the trail is just a method to funnel as many tourists through the trekking food tube for as much as possible in the short two month season. It was completely understandable since Nepal's tourism waned for years while the Maoists raged. Now that they're in government, the trail extortion falls into the laps of the lodges.

Day seven. You know what you'll find there. The Dreaded Steps of Chomrong. We leave Dovan at 8 a.m., body still screaming from the grueling seven hours of torment a mere few hours prior. I daydream of hot showers and sweet smelling clothes. Leaping up the stone stairmaster at Chomrong are young singing boys with the normal huge loads on their backs and as usual I have to stop often to breathe and I'm not singing after two hours of climbing to the village at the end of the day's hike. But there is a glorious hot shower waiting at the Lucky Guest House on top and I wash some clothes on an outside stone like the village women.

We order pizza, pasta and Coke, a carb feast to commemorate the day. Outside, the lodge owner is hammering out his bakery pie pans, flattening them into pizza pans since the other eight guests also ordered the same thing and the kitchen didn't have enough pans. Dinner is hours late but who cares... we're showered and toasty. Annurpurna South and Fishtail still loom impressively large as the sun sets draping them in pink clouds.

The Sisterhood of the Orange Shag Coat is parting ways this morning. I watch Gabby gracefully amble up the path, walking stick in hand, to Poon Hill as I head down to Landruk, a different route than the one we came up. There are many comrades on the journey. Some are destined to meet again and I had a feeling Gabby would be one of those, still, it was a teary farewell as she trekked up to the right and we rambled down to the left on the other side of Chomrong steps. Past stone walls and tiered fields of millet and rice. Crosby, Stills and Nash are my morning meditation as I sing along in the sun not yet hot enough to melt the skin off my arms. Through banana and palm trees, down to the river bank, the path is easy for most of the morning.

Dhanu's shoe disintegrates, the sole completely falling off and in conversation discover that the taxi driver who dropped us off at the trail head makes more for our hour round-trip than the $50 (4000 rupies) Dhanu is making for her ten days of laboring up and down mountains with a thirty pound pack. Guides only make twenty-five percent of what Three Sisters Adventures charge. I wonder how that is empowering women, the Sister's credo, when men are still making more for less work... and it infuriates me. True, Three Sisters runs a school, orphanage and guest house, giving the girls an opportunity by training them and the girls make more than they could anywhere else − but why should the trek service's cab driver get so much more? All I could do for Dhanu was tie her soles back on with a leather shoelace and a promise to buy her new boots when we returned to Pokhara.

The next couple of days dissolve into each other. My sleeping bag is funky, toes a fungus farm, my stomach is over the iodine water and food cooked in dirty kitchens with goats and chickens running through next to squat toilets.

“How far is it to Phedi from Damphus?” I ask Dhanu as the clouds gather.

“About one hour,” she says, “But we stay in Damphus tonight.” She was worried about getting paid for the full ten days.

“Don't worry, I'll pay you for the last day,” I had already decided to pay her more than the salary the company would give her for this trek. The moment I said we're heading back early, Dhanu was like the cliche horse to the barn... I couldn't keep up with her as the sky broke loose, rocks and mud became a greased path - I lost her twice when the road split off. In the final hour down to Phedi, the pick up point, the stairs become steep rock cliffs and I fall three times. It is, undoubtedly, the worst of the trail, which is why everyone starts off on the Nayapul side. Down the final flight of stairs I slide to the taxi like a runner to home plate.

Knowing a shower and a hot meal will make me human, I hand all my clothes to the launderer at the guest house and head off for a drink at the Moondance Cafe, victorious and still in awe of the experience of the Annapurna mountains.