The basket.

Porters are machines. That is the only possible conclusion of the day. They get up at an ungodly hour, grab our bags and carry them, strapped around their forehead with a plastic ribbon, to our next destination. When we arrive, exhausted and with painful muscles, they are singing and dancing as if they just had a day off.

Today, though, was not an ordinary day. One of our group members is suffering and struggling to come downhill from Annapurna Base Camp and halfway through the day the inevitable happened. He was not going to be able to make it to the next destination, and thus the porters had to come to the rescue. While I was still stumbling towards our guesthouse, they took off in the opposite direction to pick up the unfortunate. They lifted him in a bamboo basket, strapped it around their forehead as if it were a piece of luggage and transported him downhill, taking turns every ten minutes, but not without jumping, laughing and cheering with 80 kilograms tied to their body. Porters are absolute machines!