This portion took 4 days. We started gaining a lot of altitude here. From Tal we spent a good portion of the day walking about as fast a fully loaded mule is inclined to walk...if he doesn't feel like walking. Trail was narrow and sometimes blasted and hand cut with a sledge and iron bar into the cliff...so it wasn't easy getting around the mules. The government and army has decided to built a basic road from Beisisahar to Manang, it's too bad, they did this on the Jomsom side (after the pass). On the positive side they are literally doing much of this by hand, foot by foot and rock by rock with occasional blasting, so they won't finish anytime soon. After Pisang we started to get our first really good look at the mountains. Annapurna II, III, and IV. Everything is carried by hand or mule, chickens, rice, tourist supplies, wood, crops, rock, water, steel pipe and rebar. All ages carry incredibly heavy loads using a strap on the top of their head- some of the loads are obviously exhausting. Our porters use the western straps for our backpacks, but many will use a strap for their head instead. Food ranges from good to simply filling, we treat all our water with iodine and purchase some at safe water stations build by a bunch of Kiwi's to cut down on the plastic bottle waste here. Toilets on this side of the pass are all Nepali squat style...you either just embrace this fact or you don't. We stayed in Manang for two days to help aclimatize since we're now at 12K feet+. Our porter Qumar, who basicaaly laughed his way around this trek, all of the sudden begins speaking very passable English, much to our surprise on day 5.
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