Annapurna: Learn metric

Dec. 20, 2008

As I write about my trek along the Annapurna Circuit I'll include the distances covered and altitude changes. My dad tells me I should write these measurements in miles and feet so folks back home can truly comprehend these numbers. But I've been traveling outside the United States now for four months and no one besides us stubborn Americans uses these old fashioned measurements. All the maps I have are in meters and kilometers.

Also weight is in kilograms instead of pounds. Along the trails I saw Nepali women and men hunched over bearing 50 kg sacks of rice, or fertilizer or stone dust. 1 kg = 2.2 lbs. That's 110 pounds! My own pack weighed in at 15 kg, so I was shouldering just over 33 lbs.

Although I've been thinking in terms of metric, it wasn't until I converted some of these numbers into miles that I truly comprehended just how high I was walking. Thorung La pass, the highest altitude pass in the world is at 5,400 meters. That's 17,800 feet above sea level, or about 3.4 miles, more than three times higher in elevation than Denver.

Where possible, I'll make these conversions. But it takes time, and everyone knows time is money, especially when you're paying for relatively reliable internet in a third world country. Go to this site for help with metric conversions if you need it.