Annapurna Area Escapades Day 4: "Broken"

October 26th, 2018

We woke up for the last morning at Dobato. Breakfast was normal - roti, tarkari, boiled egg, tea. Honestly speaking, we were getting bored of it by then. I tried changing my breakfast to a western one, but the hotel dai said breads were hard to get by and we should've informed them earlier. Too bad we were busy resting our exhausted bodies. After viewing the morning sun hit the Himalayas from so close for one last time, we started off towards our next destination - Ghorepani. 

We had to descend from 3426 m to 2874 m, but descending in the mountains doesn't necessarily mean just going down. It is an adventure full of walking downhill, climbing and sometimes treading on a straight path. Sometimes when we would get tired of all the walking, we would just look at Ghorepani, which we could see from most of the path we were walking on, we would always joke, if only there was this bridge between here and there (Ghorepani). I mean how difficult would it be? (only very difficult)

At first, the way wasn't very hard. We could still see the mountain range even though we were getting further away from them. Of course the perks of walking in the mountainous region is that, you can have different and yet beautiful vantage points for different mountains. While we could see Annapurna South clearly from Dobato, we found that we could see Machhapuchhre bigger and grander further south. 

As usual, our group got dispersed along the way and somehow, at one point, I found myself walking solo with no-one to take my pictures (no-one to help me with my extra bag) and no-one to talk to. And fortunately, no-one to listen to me complaining of wildly aching joints every time I had to trudge downhill. And boy, was there so much of it. There was this jungle of rhododendrons that I had to walk through (again making me imagine being there in spring time) alone and the only thing I could hear in my mind was this Bollywood movie dialogue that goes along the line of "akeli ladki khuli hui tijori ke jaisi hoti hai" (a girl by herself is like an opened treasure - meaning anyone can come get it/her; sexist, I know, but what can you do?) I had to stop catch my breath because the jungle was never ending. And soon after, I could hear my loud friends from afar and we took off together.

We met some trekkers at the bottom of the hill, who were on their way to Dobato and we felt bad to break the news to them that the path that awaited them was frighteningly strenuous. We wished them good luck on their journeys and parted ways.

We had our usual lunch of daal, bhaat, tarkari at Deurali (3200 m) and lazed off an hour soaking up the sun. I finally saw a dog and a couple of cats at Deurali which I hadn't in days. The journey felt relatively easier from there on just like it does every time we near our destination. We also started meeting a lot of Nepali tourists after we crossed Thapla (3165 m). 

We reached our hotel at 4 pm. The whole journey took us 6 and a half hours (including lunch break and numerous other breathers). We stayed at Super View Hotel from where the view was indeed super. Ncell was still not working. I tried to use the Internet on the sketchy wifi but I only managed to get unlimited frustration. Also, our room was located on the second floor so getting to the room felt like a daunting challenge. But at the end of the day, a warm hearth was all I needed, not connection with the world. Dinner was same for us but some of our friends opted to change their meal a bit. All because it was possible. We had reached a very touristy location indeed. The hotel even had en-suite with hot water. Oh luxury, how I had missed thou. 

We set our alarm for 4 am the next morning to go see sunrise at Poon Hill. Getting up super early wasn't a problem, walking down the stairs and again, hiking to the top of the hill was. So I went to bed super excited and super nervous.