I have a confession. I am terrified – petrified – of suspension bridges. To be honest, I don’t really like being on any bridges, and if I happen to be in a car stuck in some gridlock on a bridge even that will make me a bit uncomfortable. I don’t consider myself as someone who is afraid of heights, but there’s just something I don’t quite feel safe about bridges. And needless to say, if a modern car bridge makes me uncomfortable, a suspension bridge – particularly a wooden one – is a real life nightmare, even worse than going to bed with a closet door cracked open and I don’t even have the time get into that issue, probably ever.
So, while on the last day of the Annapurna Sanctuary Trek (nearing Naya Pul) in the Nepalese Himalayas, I looked down and spied this little beauty, at which point my brain started screaming you must be f****** kidding me here.
bridge or death trap – you decideLuckily, I was spared as we didn’t need to cross it to get where we were going, but that doesn’t mean that I went the whole trip without forcing myself across a suspension bridge. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photograph of it, but there was a horrific little wooden suspension bridge that was unavoidable when approaching Himal Qu.
And it wasn’t enough that it was wooden, but it also had to be like, cattywampus. The worst. The bridge was tilted to one side and I think some planks were missing? It was a bad scene.
The Annapurna Sanctuary Trek – not for people afraid of bridges or lazy bitches who don’t like walking up steps.
TRAVELAUREL 
hey laurel it’s maya- can you email me? mayajadehallett @ gmail
Very impressive way of building such bridge. Its really tough to build one especially to the kind of place that you’re building.
I remember that bridge. I did the Anapurna Sanctuary trek back in 97′. That looks like a newer bridge than the one I crossed. I was told that a few years later our guide, Gopal Sharma was killed crossing a bridge that fell when he was leading a trek. I wonder if that was the one. Your fear is a wise one…
Just finished the AST and there is a wooden suspension bridge that no one should cross. I was the only one of a few dozen trekers in sight who even thought about that bridge – every one trips happily across the spongy or broken slats, bouncing, stopping, taking pictures, crowding the middle – while I couldn’t get off that thing fast enough. That bridge will fail soon enough – tour companies should re-route. Yikes. (And we won’t get into the landslides or the 20 miles of steep stone steps with a cliff on one side, etc.) Glad to be home in one piece.
I can relate… while I haven’t been in a position to have to walk across a wooden suspension bridge, I do get the “you must be f****** kidding me” feeling as a passenger going over most large bridges! You capture the feeling!