BEAVER FEVER AND BOREDOM IN POKHARA

Britnee and I managed to trek for 20 days on the Annapurna Circuit—drinking water from questionable kitchen sinks and random hoses around villages, all purified with a SteriPEN—and not get sick. Yet when we returned to rest and recover in the comfort of a hotel in Pokhara we both came down with giardiasis, (aka. Beaver Fever!). 

For those that don’t know, Giardiasis is a parasitic disease caused by the flagellate protozoan Giardia lamblia, an organism that inhabits the digestive tract of various domestic and wild animals. Where we picked it up exactly we’re not sure as the incubation period for giardiasis is 9–15 days, but seeing as we were personally sterilizing all our water up until Pokhara, that’s where I lay the blame.

Symptoms of giardiasis include loss of appetite, diarrhea, stomach cramps, bloating, excessive gas… etc., and which of these we endured, I’ll leave to your imagination—Britnee is already shaking her head saying “TMI Mark, TMI.” The most bizarre symptom, I will say, was loud stomach/intestinal grumbling.

“It sounds like a little Gremlin is living in there,” said Britnee, after one particularly loud exchange between both our new pet parasites across the hotel room. TMI!

In many ways we should have been thankful the illness showed up when it did, in Pokhara. This allowed us to access the internet, do some research and make our way down to one of the questionable “pharmacies” in town to purchase heavy doses of Ciprofloxacin and Tinidazole. Better that than suffer the symptoms high on the mountain trail, as I’m sure many other trekkers have done in the past, those poor souls.

Unfortunately the “pharmacist” didn’t have any medications to treat the worst of all the symptoms: boredom. Toward the end of our 20 days on the Annapurna Circuit we had both been dreaming of good food, nay, any food other than that listed on the nearly identical teahouse menus along the trek. These included mostly limited variations of dishes including potatoes, pasta, rice and noodles. Pokhara provided plenty of mouth-watering options to choose from for starving trekkers including one wonderful restaurant that friends Paula and Troy introduced us to a day before we got sick—Moon Dance!

What a tasty selection of dishes—both Nepali and western comfort food—drinks and desserts! While some took their time browsing the extensive menu before deciding, my mind was made up when I saw chicken bratwurst with mashed potatoes and vegetables. Then after following that up with some of their famous lemon meringue pie, I was ready to come back each and every night in Pokhara for the exact same meal. But alas this was not to be and while laying in bed, swallowing pills and plain foods, Britnee and I were totally heartbroken with so many delicious and affordable restaurants so close by.

Thankfully the “medication” we bought from the “pharmacy” worked after the “prescribed” five-day dose and we started exploring further along Lakeside at each meal. Our bodies were still starved, craving food after the demanding trek and following illness, but by that point we were more desperate to escape Pokhara than we were to explore restaurants in town. So following one day off our meds, just to make sure things were working like normal, we packed our bags, caught a taxi and started our climb to Annapurna Base Camp.

It was probably a bit rushed having just battled with Giardia, but we packed extra meds and thankfully they were not needed. While on the trial we ended up chatting with a doctor from England about our problems and the meds we took. He ended up reassuring us that most of what was sold at the “pharmacies” were authentic meds produced by legitimate Indian pharmaceutical companies. Even he was happy to stock up for himself when visiting Nepal.

So before we depart Kathmandu for Thailand, we might have to swing by our neighborhood, closet-sized “pharmacy” and ask, “What else you got in there?”