Altitude: 2,710m Climb: Descent: 700m Time: 1hr 30m Daily Cost: 2,400 rupees ($25/£15) That morning we left the lodge around 8:30am. The path led down into the forest. We were walking at a good pace and Harry was just behind us for most of the time. It was nice walking through the forest, but the rhododendrons were gone, so not as nice as the day before. The path was on a reasonable slope and the going was easy. We passed a few lodges on the way, filled with people having a break and a cup of tea. After only an hour and a half we reached some buildings and a proper paved footpath. It looked like Ghandruk but couldn’t be, we’d only walked for an hour and a half. Ghandruk was supposed to be two and a half hours. We asked Harry and he confirmed it was Ghandruk. Wow, we’d walked it in a little over half the time it was supposed to take. At the point the Swedish lady we’d met the day before caught up with us. We decided to go to the bakery in the village and get a snack. But it was only 10am and nothing was fresh. They hadn’t learnt that bakers should get up in the middle of the night and bake fresh for the day. But then again, demand wasn’t exactly high so why bother. We bought a drink then continued the walk down towards the road. From there we could hire a Jeep or get the bus back to Pokhara. It was a 45 minute walk to the start of the road. As we approached the bus was about to leave. We were surrounded by young guys trying to get us on the bus. I asked prices for a Jeep, they responded with statements like, “The Jeep is expensive, get the bus”. And, “Whole Jeep is 5,000 rupees”. They pressured us to get on the bus, every question or statement was responded to with something about the bus leaving and get on the bus. It was cheaper than the Jeep and was leaving immanently, so I cracked and got on the bus. It was 350 rupees each because I hadn’t really haggled the price. Stupid me! On the bus we were bouncing down the hill, getting thrown everywhere. It was really uncomfortable. The person next to Annemarie said they’d taken the bus there too and it had taken 4 hours! Whoa! The Jeep was about 90 minutes. I began to regret my decision and thought I should’ve got the Jeep. We could have got the Jeep for about 2,000 rupees, the...
Read MoreAltitude: 3,600m Climb: Descent: 890m Time: 6hr 15m + 1hr 45m breaks Daily Cost: 2,840 rupees ($29/£17) We woke at 5:50am to see the sunrise. We quickly got dressed and stepped outside to see the view. It was still a bit hazy but the sunrise over the Dhaulagiri Range looked great. The Khopra Danda ridge was fantastic. Everyone flocks to Poon Hill to see the sunrise over the mountain ranges, but the Khopra Danda was better in so many respects. Poon Hill is only at 3,200m, we were over 10% higher. Poon Hill was also behind us, they had to look over the Khopra Ridge to see the mountains, we were closer. At Poon Hill there’s a 45 minute (well over an hour for the slow people) climb from Ghorepani to reach the summit before sunrise, we simply had to roll out of bed. And best of all, no crowds. There were 5 people on the ridge. When we climbed Poon Hill on a cloudy and pointless day there were a few hundred people up there! We watched the sun rise over the mountains for about an hour, before going in to eat breakfast. After breakfast we set off around the hillside and down the path we had come up on. The morning was clear and the sun was on us. The toilet visits in the middle of the night had left me feeling weaker and tired. Downhill was fine but any uphill was difficult. We walked down to the small lake and then continued straight along the edge of the hillside. The path was wide enough for two feet side by side, nothing more. Off the edge was a long and steep slope down into the forest. We followed the hillside for a couple of hours, mostly flat with the occasional downhill switchbacks. A few streams followed the downhill section and they had dug valleys into the hill, meaning that we would usually go down to the steam, cross, then climb back up the side of the valley. This way the path pretty much maintained the same altitude for most of the morning. We then had a large drop in altitude as we rapidly descended down the hillside. From here we hit a large rhododendron forest. The forest hadn’t flowered yet, but it still looked good. Along the hillside we went, down a bit, up a bit, down a lot more, up a bit. We never seemed to go down very far and every time we went down we gained it again almost immediately. We reached Bayeli at 11:15am. We knew there was another lodge between here and...
Read MoreAltitude: 2,200m Climb: Descent: 1,400m Time: 3hr 30m + 1hr 30m breaks Daily Cost: 4,020 rupees ($41/£24) In the morning the sun was shining and it was warm. We set off, back through the school playground and onto the trail. The good news is that the trail is well marked with blue and white markers. This section was all in forest and the shade kept us cool allowing us to walk fast. We soon caught up with a group of Americans, they were the people who had been camping in front of the other lodge. I forgot to ask why they were camping when there were lodges on the route. Why not camp elsewhere, such as Dolpo, where there are no lodges and it’s camping only. They were going to Khopra Danda, although they were staying the night at Chistibang and getting there the next day. Then they were going over to Annapurna Base Camp. They knew the UK well and even knew Ilkley (about 10 miles from where we lived). We left them and continued up. We knew we had 1,400m to climb so we were prepared for plenty of uphill. The only bad bits were when the shade ran out and we had stretches of uphill in the sun. The forest was nice and the path was in pretty good condition. At about 10am we reached a lodge. It was hot, but we didn’t feel like having a drink. We sat in the shade and ate one of our trekker bars (basically a muesli bar) and drank our water. The lodge owner told us Chistibang was a little over an hour away and Khopra Danda was about 4 hours walk in total. That was good news. With that we left the lodge up a very steep path. We continued walking steeply uphill through the forest for about 60 minutes. It was hard work but enjoyable. The area seemed deserted. We knew the French couple we ahead of us and the American campers were behind us, but we felt totally alone. We emerged from the forest to a clearing on the slope with a couple of lodges dug into the hillside. We stopped at the first one, ordered some food and cooled off in the shade. This was Chistibang (labeled as Sistibang on our map for extra confusion). We were now at 3,000m above sea level again. Only 600m further to climb today! The lodge was basic but looked OK. The food took an age to arrive though! We had arrived at 11:15am and planned an early lunch. It was around 12:30pm by the time we left. The...
Read MoreAltitude: 1,190m Climb: 1,010m Time: 3hr 30m + 1hr 30m breaks Daily Cost: 3,300 rupees ($34/£20) We ate breakfast and left the lodge at our usual time of 8:15am. Out of the village we crossed a suspension bridge and saw a sign pointing up the hill for Paudwar. We knew that route led to Khopra Danda but everyone had said Paudwar had no lodges and to climb 2,500m in a day seemed to far for us. We continued on the main route towards Ghorepani. The road went up a steep hillside and the sun was already hot. This was going to be a tough day! We followed the to road, then cut off the road onto a path which lead directly up the hillside. There was partial shade now and again, but mostly we were in the hot sun. We climbed for a while until we reached a section where the hillside turned to rock. The rock was bright white and looked like marble. It reflected the heat making this, which was the steepest and hardest part into the hottest part too. Up the steep stone side we went until we reached the road again. We’d been little more than an hour and we’d already climbed 400m. We were dripping with sweat and boiling. Luckily there was a tea shop on the corner. We got into the shade and ordered some drinks. Whilst waiting we stuck our heads under the tap to cool off. From here we could see up the valley where we would be walking for the rest of the day. The valley had a road linking the many villages together. Harry pointed out the village of Shika, it was about the furthest village we could see. That was where we would have lunch. At just before 10am we set off into the heat again. The path up the valley towards Ghorepani wasn’t too bad. We didn’t struggle with it or feel tired. It was just hot. Luckily the amount of shade did increase, which helped us a lot. We passed through many villages at a good pace and made good time to Shika. We found a lodge on the edge of the ridge looking down over the valley we’d just walked up. The view was pretty good even though the haze obscured most of the valley. We asked the owner about a route to Khopra Danda and to our delight he told us the exact route to get there. He told us that after a short walk we should follow the road left, then up to Swanta. That was not much over an hour from Shika...
Read MoreAltitude: 2,520m Climb: Descent: 1,330m Time: 6hr 30m + 1hr 30m breaks Daily Cost: 4,300 rupees ($44/£26) This was planned to be a long grind of a day. There was nothing of interest marked in the guide book. We knew that dropping in altitude the haze would be back and obscure the views and the temperature was going to rise to make this a hot day. We left the lodge at 8:30am and walked through Kalopani on the road. Just after the village we turned left into the woods. Walking through the woods was nice. It reminded us of home. After the woods the landscape opened out to grassy fields with dry stone walls. This was eerily similar to walking in the Yorkshire Dales (ignoring the 7,000m peaks in view). This was a nice start to the day and we excitedly told Harry that with the exception of the mountains this was pretty much what walking near our home was like. We joined the road and walked along it for probably about an hour. We reached the village of Ghasa and walked through. At the end of the village was a checkpoint for our permits. It was also a tourist information point. I’d read in the Lonely Planet about a side trip which have great views of the Dhaulagiri range and the Annapurna range, but it had no details out route. I asked about the Khopra Danda trek and the guy asked me where that was. Oh well, I’ll ask in Tatopani about it. Just after the village we reached a split in the path, down to a suspension bridge or straight along the road. We stopped to wait for Harry. After 5 minutes he didn’t arrive. We waited another 5 minutes, still nothing. I decided to walk back up the path to the lodges we’d past. He might have needed a drink, or the toilet, or just a rest. But he wasn’t there. I went back down to Annemarie. We decided there was nothing we could do but continue and hope we meet him in Tatopani. We walked down and crossed the bridge and walked along the path beside the river. Then we saw Harry. He was sat beside another suspension bridge about 200m away. He’d walked on the road and crossed this second bridge while we’d followed the markers to the old bridge. From here we walked along a good path beside the river. The river which had had a gorge half a mile wide was now squeezed into a gorge of 100m metres wide. It made a lot more noise now! Walking down here was hot...
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