Thorong La is the highest altitude reached by many trekkers in their lifetimes, a few hundred feet higher than Everest Base Camp and eclipsed on the popular-treks list only by Kilimanjaro’s 19,331 feet. October, after the usual monsoon months, is prime trekking season because it is typically the driest month.

For pretty much every trekker in Nepal, whether headed to Annapurna, Everest or any of the other fabulously scenic regions, the preparation starts in the Thamel neighborhood of Katmandu, where every third storefront overflows with knockoff trekking poles, nylon pants and packs at prices half to a third of those elsewhere. (Our guide, a 30-something, thin-mustached Gurkha, called it “Chinese North Face.”) Thamel has no sidewalks, so our every foray into its streets was a tooth-and-nail battle with rickshaws, cars and mopeds.

Then the bus ride from Katmandu: careering along cliffside roads, passing slower vehicles whenever a mouse hole of an opening presented itself, accompanied by a constant soundtrack of honking horns. Essentially, by the time we arrived in the town of Bhulbhule at the start of the trek, the idea of walking around a mountain range seemed downright tame.

The first day started out misty and wet, and although I was excited when after 13 miles our guide announced that the night’s teahouse was around the corner, I was anticipating a bowl of rice and lentils for dinner and a dung-burning hovel in which to sleep. A couple of decades ago, when enterprising Nepalese villagers had only recently begun offering tea and space on the floor to passing hikers  giving rise to the term “teahouse trekking”  I might have been right. But since 1993, over 60,000 people on average have visited the Annapurna region every year, drastically altering the hospitality landscape.

OUR stop that night, the Waterfall View Guesthouse, was a two-story pink and aquamarine motel-like structure and restaurant overlooking a lofty cataract. The double rooms had foam mattresses, pillows and electricity, and the four-page restaurant menu included fresh-baked bread and imported beer. For hikers accustomed to dehydrated meals and wet tents, it was almost too much. I stuffed myself with vegetable lo mein and an Indian potato curry, washed down with Nepali masala milk tea.

The next day the trail began to climb, and we passed pairs of middle-aged trekkers, dropping them one by one with our younger legs. Soon huge masses of schist, granite and sandstone rose on either side of us, daubed with green moss and brown lichen and dripping with cascades of black fungus that grow in the runoff of the monsoon rains. It was as if Jackson Pollock had been given an entire mountainside as his canvas.

That night, it began to rain in earnest. A drenched, forgettable next day took us to Chame, the largest town this side of the pass. We were happy to hang our clothes and dry our boots by the Shangri-La Guesthouse’s stove, which the proprietor finally lighted after much prompting. It poured all that night, too, and with the other guests, we stayed on the following day, passing the time and hoping the driving downpour would stop. It is precisely to avoid rains like this, supposedly rare in the fall, that nearly three times as many people walk the trail in October as in the summer monsoon season. We had caught the anomaly.