Recently, I had the pleasure of hanging out in South Park
and interviewing two seriously awesome and hilarious friends, Brian Chang and
Paris Winfrey, about their twenty-five day journey to Nepal to go visit this
beast, the Annapurna, via the Annapurna Circuit.
Not a tiny mountain range.
You
know when you have a conversation with someone and before you know it, two
hours have gone by? That’s exactly how I can describe my time with Brian and
Paris. They answered the zillions of
questions I had for them, and also kept me on my toes by constantly cracking
jokes and bantering back and forth. Their laughter was contagious! Brian and I
just met, but quickly bonded over our mutual love of musical theatre, traveling
Europe, and red pandas. He’s also an amazing photographer – I am beyond excited
to see his photos of Nepal. Paris and I have known each other since we were
freshmen. We lived in the same residence hall and trained to be Adventure WV
leaders during Spring 2011. Nowadays, our apartments are a thirty second walk
from each other. He began our meeting by snatching my microphone and trying to
sing the Star Spangled Banner into it. I’m glad that our friendship hasn’t
changed much over the last four years.
Paris is studying business and economics at West
Virginia University, and Brian works for the university. Although Brian is actually
now Paris’ advisor (we teased Brian a lot about how he will hopefully write
Paris a really great letter of recommendation after this trip), the two first
met through Adventure WV. Brian was volunteering as an academic advisor on the first-ever
Explore trip for Business and Economics students in 2011, and Paris was a
leader on the trip. When I asked about how they met, Paris joked that it was “love
at first sight.” I think anyone who meets these two buddies on their journey
will find them as entertaining and intriguing as I do!
Read on to learn more about their travel plans for
Nepal, what they think yaks look like, and what Paris and Brian are hoping to
take away from the trip.
This photo was taken on Paris and Brian's first international adventure together! They did plenty of cool things on the Adventure WV New Zealand trip, including eating this ginormous plate of seafood.
O:
Tell
me about the trip that you are doing.
P:
We
fly out of Pittsburgh International on the first of July, and we will be
landing in Kathmandu on the third of July. Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal.
From there, we’re going to be taking a bus or a plane, we haven’t decided yet.
We were advised to fly. We heard it’s less sketchy than the bus ride.
B:
It’s only two hours away, but the bus ride takes six hours.
P:
[The
bus ride takes] six to eight hours because of traffic and road conditions. From
Kathmandu we’re going to be flying east to Pokhara. Pokhara is the base camp
for the Annapurna, so from Pokhara, you can walk to the trailhead of the
Annapurna and then hike from there…the [Annapurna Circuit] trek takes anywhere
from fourteen to twenty days.
B:
It’s
July 1st to the 25th, so we’re going to try to have some
leeway between.
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This is a map of the Annapurna Circuit, the trail Paris and Brian plan to
take.
P:
We
have like four days to mess around with here and there. Once we get to Pokhara,
we’re going to hang out there for a little bit…and then hit the trail. We’ll be
trekking through the rainforest for probably the first six days. Once we get to
Manang…that’s where we start to break the tree line and get into alpine
stuff. So, the leeches will be gone by
then, hopefully. [Laughs] The way that the trek is laid out is there are
villages every three hours on the trail, so you could stop in a city and just
hang out for a day. We’ll be in fairly low elevation up until we get to that
checkpoint before The Pass, and then once we get to that point, that’s a good
place to acclimate for a day. There are some museums. After a day there, The
Pass is like 18,000 feet at the highest point, so you camp out, and then head
back down. There are only a couple days where we’ll be at super high altitudes.
On the way down, one thing that we read about was that the place is becoming
developed. They’re turning the trail into roads from both sides, and are going
to eventually connect them. It’s controversial locally because they benefit
from the commerce and ability to trade easily, but also the biggest part of
their economy is tourism, and people are shying away from that area, to the
Annapurna especially, because it’s becoming developed. Purist backpackers don’t
want that experience. From what I hear, it’s kind of an unpleasant experience
once you get past The Pass and you get closer to the end of the trek. It turns
into a dirt road and there are Jeeps flying by, dust, and a bunch of stuff in
the air.
O:
How
long would you have to deal with that?
P:
I’m
not exactly sure. I know the road is getting longer and longer each year. So,
hopefully we don’t get there and it’s all road. [Laughs] So, we get to the
road, back to Pokhara, chill in Pokhara, go to Kathmandu, get our tattoos,
catch a plane, gone.
O:
So
that’s the whole trip?
P:
Pretty
much, yeah. Maybe a couple days in Istanbul. It’s one of our stops on the way
over there. I’ve never been to an Islamic country. It’d be cool.
O:
Are
you guys both getting tattoos while you’re there?
B:
I
don’t have any! ...I think I’m more worried about cleanliness than anything. We
did do some research on it though.
P:
We
checked into it. The studio is called Mohan’s. It’s one of the best in Nepal;
everyone recommends it, so we’ll check up with them and probably see. I’ve
contacted him over Facebook already, and he asked for designs, but I don’t have
any idea of what I want yet. I’m just going to tell him, “Hey, we’re going to
go on this trek for twenty days. When I come back, I’ll have this idea of what
I want.”
B:
Yeah,
I want to live through it first and figure it out.
O:
And,
are there really leeches? What other kinds of crazy things did you hear about?
P:
Japanese
encephalitis! [Laughs]
B:
That
was on the whole list of things to get vaccinated for. The leeches are the big
thing that we keep reading about.
P:
They’re
everywhere.
B:
Apparently.
O:
Is
there any way to safeguard against that?
P:
Leech
check. Every five seconds. [Laughs] You can’t even feel them because they have
antiseptic [when they bite you]. So that’s probably going to be the biggest
hurdle. Also, the altitude is something we’ve been advised about. Having good
cardiovascular fitness preemptively is good just because your body is able to
adapt quickly, but if you’re in decent shape you could be just as good at
acclimating as the next person. So it’s going to be a trial by error thing when
we get there to see how we acclimate to the altitude.
B:
Alice
[Vernon, a friend of Adventure WV’s Director, Greg Corio, who has traveled Nepal]
said if we get snappy at each other that’s when we know [we’re having problems
with the altitude]!
O:
What inspired you to do this trip?
B:
It
was a joke. [Laughs]
P:
Well,
after [we went on Adventure WV] New Zealand, we were so like “International
travel! Oh my gosh! Let’s do it!!” And then we kept thinking of awesome places
that we should go.
B:
Something
more epic. Something different. We talked about Machu Picchu in Peru.
P:
I
think it was you [Brian] who mentioned Nepal. Like, “Dude, I really want to go
to Nepal. Look how awesome this is. Look at all these pictures.” All the sudden
we were talking about it one day and we were just like, “Let’s do it.”
B:
We
were joking about Mount Everest and about how much it would take to get trained
and certified to climb Mount Everest. We could either choose between the
Annapurna Circuit or the Everest Base Camp 1 Circuit. We asked a few people,
and they said if you want to see [authentic] Nepal, you want to do the
Annapurna. Because, while you could do Everest, anybody who can pay enough can
do Everest.
P:
It’s
definitely a more physical challenge to get to Base Camp 1, but like Brian was
saying, the cultural experience is in Annapurna.
O:
What
other kinds of cultural stuff have you heard about?
P:
They’re
a completely eastern culture compared to us. They’re very minimalist – from my
interpretation, obviously… but, these people in these mountain villages,
they’re so far away from everybody. Pokhara is a city, and Kathmandu is
massive, but it’ll take us twelve days to get to Manang [from Pokhara]. These
people in Manang, if they want stuff, they have to walk this trail to get back
to Pokhara to get anything. It’s just the most rural of rural.
B:
I’ve
traveled around a lot, but this is the first third world country I’m ever going
to do. So that’s going to be different.
P:
Yup.
And one thing I was really curious about was their main, like, stuff you would
go to Annapurna to buy for your friends. Like what they do, what they make
well, what their crafts are. Nepalese rugs are very sought after. Buddhist
prayer rugs are super expensive, even with the exchange rate they’re still like
$1000. And they have really awesome leather, I guess. They have yak leather.
O:
Yaks?
I don’t even know what a yak looks like. I know it’s a beast…like a hairy cow.
P:
Isn’t
it like a llama, but with horns?
B:
It’s
more cow-ish. We joked about how hard it would be to bring a yak back through
customs.
Dr. Seuss was almost spot on.
P:
Dude, definitely. If I see a red panda on the way…
B:
Oh,
red pandas! They’re from that area. And
I am obsessed with red pandas.
P:
I
really think you should get a red panda tattoo. Just sayin’.
B:
I’ve
seen one before, I’m not sure that I want one. [Everyone laughs.]
O:
What
are the biggest things you want to take away from the journey?
B:
A
tattoo is definitely one thing I’d like to bring back. And, this is something
that Forrest [Schwartz, Adventure WV’s former Assistant Director] said in New
Zealand. “Nothing really means anything until you’re hurting after a hike.”
P:
You
can’t get anything unless you give something to the trip.
B:
Any
of these trips that I’ve done with Patagonia, with New Zealand - they were all
life-changing in a different way. I think life is finding more about yourself
every single time. There’s no one trip where you’re going to figure it out… I
am excited for the unknown.
P:
Any
time I leave the routines I’m stuck in and do something completely different, travel,
and experience all these new things, the one thing I always take away from an
experience like that is a renewal of my soul. I really find myself when I’m in
the wild. All the BS goes away and I can focus on what I want to focus on. And,
like what Brian was saying, just being tested. Everyone wants to know that they
have what it takes.
O:
You
realize you can do a lot more than you thought.
P:
One
word of advice that I got from one of my friends is that a lot of people go to
Nepal and the reasons that they get hurt or don’t finish their trek is that
they go to conquer it, to beat it, and the one thing he said to me was “Respect
the Mountain.” You have to respect where you’re at, and understand that
whatever the mountain gives to you, you have to deal with. I think one thing
too, is being able to connect with nature again, as corny as that is. As the
days go on, you’re slowly more aware and centered… I hope that this is a good personal time.
B:
Yeah,
and every day we talk, and we’re both struggling with our own things in our
lives, and we’re so excited to get out there and get re-centered.
P:
Being
the only two people who speak English in our immediate distance, I think we’ll
learn a lot about each other.
B:
And
aside from each other, we’ll learn a lot about ourselves in our own
introspective way.
***
Follow Brian and Paris’ journey on their blog at ru5hh0ur.tumblr.com.
Wish them good luck on their travels today (feel
free to leave something below in the comments)!
Oh, and expect a follow up interview upon their return on July 25th! These two are way too much fun for me to only interview once.
Namaste :)
Olivia
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