Day 15: Tatopani - Ghorepani

Woke up at 6:30am and experienced an uneventful breakfast and morning packing.  We were sad to leave our oasis at 7:45, but gleeful to successfully avoid the ACAP and TIMS checkpoints, because they are so annoying.  At the slightly sketchy looking suspension bridge, there were two men trying to wrestle a group of donkeys to cross the bridge: they managed to get two to cross, but the others balked.  One man grabbed a donkey’s halter and one of its front legs and was pulling at the poor beast, but he was not successful and the others kept trying to make a break for it when the second man wasn’t looking.  Eventually, the men gave up and took the donkeys further down the road and crossed a short wooden bridge and it was our turn to cross the bouncing bridge.

Day 15

Nilgri: 23,166ft

We then began a very hot climb up a dusty trail; I could understand how the trekker from yesterday had passed out from the heat.  A group of men were walking several cows up the path, but one of the cows, her udder exceedingly plump with milk, kept sitting down: she did not want to move at all and they were having a difficult time.  The animals in this area seemed to be incorrigibly stubborn.

At 10:00am I ran out of energy as we hit the next village and met Johnathan briefly; I began to trek very slowly.  The trail was all up, up, up and miserably hot: the dusty trail turned into a rocky trail, with strange flat rocks made out of some sort of mud stone.

Super cool blue bird was tricky to photograph.

After I had eaten both my boiled eggs and the toast I’d brought as a snack, we stopped, reluctantly, at noon for lunch at a tiny teahouse dining room that was suspended over the valley on stilts.  The place was infested with flies – we ordered simple vegetable soup, because we didn’t want to spend much time there and desired to be on our way quickly.  However, this was not to be, because our food took an hour to arrive.  Included with our meal was a slice of apple pie the trekkers at the table next to us had ordered, but it was whisked away to the proper table once the mix-up was discovered.  Lunch was finished by 1:15pm and we began trekking again.

It was humbling to be struggling up the never-ending stone steps and have school children traipsing along and passing us like we were standing still.  They were cute in their uniforms and we eventually passed their school, shaded under tall trees.  The landscape changed again, and now the trail was wet in places and there were a lot of pastures and fields.

A storm picked up, earlier than usual, at 2:15pm and the rain and hail fell through the forest canopy.  Thunder and wind turned the hot sunny weather into an experience that caused us to think we wouldn’t be able to continue our trek.  Branches crashed to the forest floor and rocks tumbled down the sloping creek drainages.  We passed a Nepali family of hikers who were on vacation and we shared a common thought about the weather, but we all continued our trek.

Looking back down the steps we just climbed.

Random fancy creek crossing.

Thinking maybe we shouldn't be outside with the thunder and lightning.

The weather cleared, just as suddenly as it had begun, and the afternoon was fine as we climbed our way through the rhododendron forest.  Bumblebees of gigantic proportions zoomed here and there and were simultaneously fascinating and frightening and the scent from the wet earth and the flowers was intoxicating.

Needs a bit of trail maintenance.

Donkeys headed down the trail without their human.

So much pink.

My fake smile, because I'm tired of climbing.

We finally entered the vacation destination of Ghorepani at 5:00pm and met Johnathan standing on the stone steps, as if waiting for us.  So we all entered a teahouse and got rooms, luckily, for I later heard that most of the teahouses were completely booked.  There were tons of people in Ghorepani, not just trekkers, since it is another vacation destination place, because of nearby Poon Hill, which is climbed to admire the mountain range as the sun rises.  Our teahouse was enormous and reminded me of a ski lodge, with a large wood stove located in the center of the main room that served as reception/front desk, dining room, meeting room, and lounge with long wooden benches situated around the stove and the perimeter of the room.  We found ourselves seated at a long wooden table for dinner and I gorged myself on pizza, fries, fry bread and peanut butter, and hot cocoa, to the amazement of our table companions: my insatiable appetite had me eating everything in sight and I have been constantly hungry since descending Thorong La.  I made friends with a Nepali guide who was impressed Sam and I were trekking “solo” and we chatted until 9:30pm with him and the other trekkers seated at our table: trail stories were shared and there was a considerable amount of map viewing and comparing, once the dinner dishes were cleared from the table.

Sam waits for me in Ghorepani.

Our room’s walls were a single thin plywood thickness and were worthless for soundproofing the rooms.  It felt as if we were really sleeping in an enormous dorm with a hundred other people.  I am hoping for decent night photos once the electricity goes out again.

The view from our window of Annapurna South, 23,684ft.

Data

Starting elevation: 8,117ft

Ending elevation: 9,429ft

Distance: 10.5 miles

Weather: variable