Mark and Jo's Nepal Mission Trip: Treking (Ghorepani

Three months in Nepal and we have finally managed to sneak away for a weekend of trekking! We spent the four days of the Easter holiday doing the Ghandruk-Ghorepani circuit. This was a very welcome break from our language study. The first day we picked up our guide from lakeside Pokhara and caught a taxi to the start of the trek. We walked for about four hours up to Ulleri which is a nice little town nested on the side of quite a steep hill (see the picture below). Our guide seemed to know all the really nice quest houses and within the Annapurna national park the prices for food and accomodation are all fixed so there is no need to worry about how much it might cost.

The second day saw us walking for about four hours to Ghorepani. We arrived at about lunch time so spent the afternoon exploring the town and wondering on to the next town down the valley. Ghorepani has amazing views of the Annapurna's and the Dhaulagiri mountains. We got up the next morning at 4:45am (or stupid o'clock as we call it) and hiked up Poon Hill (3200m above sea level - just a hill in these parts but it is higher than Mt Ruapehu!!) to watch the sun rise over three of the ten highest mountains in the world (eight of which are in Nepal); Annapurna I, Dhaulagiri I, Manasalu. Even if you tried you couldn't take a bad photo!!

The third day we walked to Ghandruk which is a really nice old Gurung town nestled on the side of a steep hill (similar to Ulleri). The guest house here was very swish. We were thankful for our porter as we never would have found it otherwise. We were wide awake at about 5:30 in the morning so got up to watch the sun rise of the Annapurna's from a different angle. We then climbed down from Ghandruk to the river below and walked out to the trail end. It was very tempting to turn around and head back into the mountains but there is always a next time. Bring on the Annapurna circuit and Annapurna Base Camp!!!

Most of the terrain was steep mountains and there are two ways to get there - up and down stone steps. At one stage the map said that there were 3280 consective stone steps! We were either travelling through barley and rice fields or rhododendren (very tall compared to NZ) and oak forests with the mountains always nearby. There were many waterfalls due to the steep cliffs.

There were many porters and mule trains used to take food, gas and tourists bags to the required location. many of these porters were carrying at least 40-50kg either by a doko (bamboo basket) or with rope, both have a strap that goes around the head - no shoulder and waist bands around here!! The party of porters that we have included in the photo were chatting away while half way up a 1000m step climb!! The fitness of some was incredible.