Five More Minutes
Episode 5: Nine hours up, one misleading ETA, and the room we named Greyhound Bus.
“We are arriving!”
Binod turned around with a huge grin, gesturing ahead to what looked like a cluster of buildings in the distance. Everyone cheered. Some of us clapped. Rey and Gui did a little fist pump.
We kept walking. Five more minutes, another five, and another five.
It became very clear that “arriving” meant something different to Binod than it did to the rest of us. We thought we were stopping at Dovan for lunch, but the lunch spot was actually in Upper Dovan - another thirty-minute climb uphill. No one dared tell Joya. We just kept walking, watching her face as the realization slowly dawned. When it did, she threw a tantrum like a toddler promised ice cream and handed broccoli instead.
We didn’t blame her. Binod’s optimism did start to feel like psychological warfare.
Let me back up.
Today was supposed to be one of the two hardest days of the trek. Nine hours of hiking. 1,100 meters of climbing to reach Deurali. Ratna warned us at breakfast, but we knew warnings don’t mean much until your legs are screaming and your lungs are trying to escape through your throat.
The trail completely transformed today. No more stone steps we’d been cursing for days. Instead, the path turned wild - muddy tracks winding through dense forest, roots snaking across the ground, everything slick from recent rain. It felt like we’d walked into a different world. Strange, hairy-looking plants appeared from every angle, like props from Jurassic Park. The air smelled wet and green, thick with something alive.
Then we hit the avalanche debris.
The path narrowed to nothing, hugging the side of a steep hillside. Below us, massive chunks of blackened ice (old avalanche remnants) clung to the slope at impossible angles. The ice looked ancient, darkened by years of pollution and dirt, slippery as hell. One wrong step and you’d slide straight down into whatever was waiting at the bottom.
Raj moved ahead without hesitation, testing each section before waving us forward one by one. The rest of us followed carefully, boots searching for grip on wet rock and frozen patches. No one talked. Just focused breathing and the sound of boots scraping ice.
It was tense in a way the stairs never were. The stairs were just suffering. This felt dangerous.
But we felt safe with Raj leading us through.
The person I kept watching, though, was Binod.
He doesn’t care if the group is tired. He just marches forward, that relentless rhythm of his, never offering breaks. But every now and then he’ll burst into song - some random Nepali tune echoing through the valley - and you realize he’s trying to lift everyone’s spirits in his own way. He doesn’t talk much. Someone who wants to be seen but won’t ask for it.
His steps are always strong and steady - this calming stomp that pulls you into a trance if you follow him. He’s not fast, but his pace finds the path of least resistance. I started walking behind him early in the day and just stayed there. A lot of us did. There’s something hypnotic about following someone who just keeps going.
That said, he gives the worst ETAs I’ve ever encountered in my life.
Hence, the Upper Dovan incident.
By the time we actually reached lunch, we were starving. The restaurant was packed - probably the only place to eat for miles. The group’s energy was low. Rey looked pale and mentioned his throat hurt. Half of us ordered Shin Ramen with egg. The other half got dal bhat.
I went with dal bhat. I knew I’d need the calories for the afternoon climb - a nearly three-hour uphill stretch I’d mentally labeled the 大魔王 (final boss).
After lunch, we pushed on.
The strange thing was, I felt oddly okay. Better than the first two days, even. My breathing was steadier. My legs felt strong. Maybe my body had finally accepted suffering as baseline reality.
But around hour six, the group started to spread out. Conversations died. Everyone retreated into their own heads, just trying to survive the next switchback.
That’s when Lynn and Gui started singing.
It began with one song - a Taiwanese pop song I vaguely recognized. Lynn’s voice floated up first, and then Gui joined with harmony. The sound bounced off the valley walls and came back to us doubled, tripled. I didn’t know half the songs, but it didn’t matter. The melody cut through the fog in my head like nothing else could.
They told me later that you sing better when you’re exercising because it opens your throat. I have no idea if that’s true, but they sounded incredible.
The karaoke pulled everyone back together. People started humming along, clapping between verses. Joya requested something upbeat. Victor whistled. It was stupid and joyful and exactly what we needed to keep going.
I realized something then. The group wasn’t just nice to have. It was essential. Without Lynn and Gui singing, without Joya’s dramatic complaints, without Binod’s terrible ETAs to laugh about - this would’ve been unbearable.
Alone, I would’ve been miserable. Together, we were something else. Still suffering, but suffering in company.
The scenery grew more impressive as we climbed higher. Towering mountains came into view, and below them, alpine rivers rushed through the valleys - glacier-fed water, milky blue-green, carving paths through the rock.
We passed a small temple on the trail. One by one, we each reached up and rang the bell - no words, just the sound traveling out into the valley. For the first time, it felt like we were actually approaching Annapurna. Not just hiking in Nepal. We were actually getting somewhere real.
We reached Dream Lodge around 5:15 p.m.
The nine of us would be sharing two rooms. They tried to split us by gender at first, but eventually let us figure it out ourselves. That’s when the problem revealed itself: one room was clearly better than the other.
The four-person room was normal. Basic, but fine.
The five-person room smelled like the inside of a Greyhound bus driven by a chain smoker who’d been living in it for six months.
Everyone stood there awkwardly. No one wanted to assign anyone to the worse room. No one wanted to claim the better one either.
Finally, Joya made the call. Rey wasn’t feeling well, so he and Gui would take the nicer room with Eunice and Newton. The rest of us - Joya, Lynn, Ingmar, Victor, and me - would take the smoky one.
We named it 灰狗巴士 (Greyhound Bus) immediately.
We dropped our bags and spent ten minutes rearranging beds, pushing them away from mold-covered walls, trying to create some livable corner of space. Joya layered Lynn’s bed with three blankets since the guides had forgotten her sleeping bag that she rented. Then we headed to dinner.
There were no showers that night. Honestly, I was fine with it. Less to think about.
We hung out in the courtyard after dinner even though it was freezing. The cold bit through my fleece but no one wanted to go back to the rooms yet. We sat around swapping stories and letting the conversation drift wherever it wanted to go. Someone pointed out a star. Someone else said it was a satellite. We argued about it for ten minutes without reaching a conclusion.
Before 9 p.m., we gave up and went to bed. Back in the Greyhound Bus, I cocooned myself in my sleeping bag and tried not to think too hard about what I was breathing. We bantered for maybe five minutes before exhaustion took over.
Lying there, I could hear Ingmar’s breathing in the bed next to mine, Lynn shifting under her three blankets, Victor muttering something in his sleep.
Music drifted in from another room. Someone was still awake somewhere, living their own version of this same strange journey.
Tomorrow we’d push toward ABC.
I fell asleep before I could think about it too much.
Next Up: Episode 6 - We Made It to ABC
The snow finally arrives. Rey pushes through sickness. The fog lifts for exactly fifteen minutes. And we reach the place we came for.
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