One of the primary reasons for any visit to Nepal is trekking, so once Ayu and I were committed to going there after India, I started researching treks and trekking companies. I was initially discouraged as most popular Nepal treks are rather lengthy (2+ weeks) compared to what I wanted to do (3-5 days). After some research, I decided that the five-day Ghorepani-Ghandruk (a.k.a. Poon Hill) trek was perfect, as it fit within my time limitations, left from and returned to Pokhara (where Ayu was doing her six-day yoga retreat), and offered plenty of natural beauty. Since I didn’t feel comfortable trekking by myself, I wanted to find a company that could set me up with a guide and possibly some other trekkers. My research approach was to visit the website for every company mentioned in Lonely Planet, check if they offered the Ghorepani-Ghandruk trek (a common option), and then submit an email inquiry about the price and schedule. After waiting about 48 hours for all the replies to trickle in, I settled on Nepal Social Treks, as they were one of the first to respond and also the least expensive, by a couple hundred dollars!
Over an early-morning breakfast, I met my guide, Sandip, and the other members of our group, a couple of Danish girls who were traveling parts of Asia during their gap year. After breakfast, I climbed into a van with the others for the 90-minute drive to Nayapul, a small town by the Modi River that serves as the starting and finish line for this particular trekking loop.
After Sandip handled some registration paperwork at the local trekking office, we were on our way by 10:00 or so, heading up a gently sloping dirt road that ran alongside the river and through several villages, offering great views of the valley, terraces cut into the hills, and foot bridges spanning the river.
The dirt road gave way to a stone pathway/staircase which would become our “yellow brick road” for the next five days. This trekking style, sometimes referred to as “teahouse trekking”, is relatively easy and convenient, even if you don’t have a guide, as you’ll never walk more than an hour or so without coming across a cluster of lodges that offer hot meals, hot showers, and a safe place to stay for the night. The stone pathway is the only link between the villages in the mountains, so it’s shared by Western tourists, Nepalis carrying crops or rocks or wood in baskets on their backs, and trains of donkeys either carrying fresh supplies uphill or empty burlap sacks and propane tanks downhill.
The first day was relatively easy; we trekked for only three hours or so and made it to Hile, our final destination for the day, a bit after noon. Before doing anything else, we sat down in the restaurant and all had a lunch of dal bhat, a traditional Nepalese meal that is popular throughout the entire country (and even neighboring countries) with pretty much everyone, local and tourist alike. The dal baht I had along the entire trekking route was very reliable: a mountain of rice (how appropriate!), dal (lentil soup), curry potatoes, greens, spicy sauce or Nepalese kimchi (always referred to as “pickle”), and a piece of papadum. It makes for a perfect trekkers’ meal, and a great meal in general, since it’s tasty, nutritious, and very filling. And the best part? Unlimited seconds! Every time I finished about half of my meal, someone would come around with a pot of food and ask if I wanted more. Even though the portions in Nepal are massive to begin with, I found myself easily eating two full plates every day for lunch; somehow, Nepalese rice goes down much, much easier than rice from Southeast Asia. Each lodge along the route is family-run, so each dal bhat is a slightly different recipe, adding a little bit of excitement to my mid-day meal. After eating huge amounts of it for lunch for five straight days, I still wasn’t tired of it.
After lunch, I went through what would become my daily routine upon arriving at our lodge for the evening: I checked into my room, soaked myself in a hot shower, hung up my sweaty clothes on the clothesline, put Tiger Balm (still in my bag from one of last year’s trips to Thailand) on my shoulders, and changed into dry, warm clothes. The days were sunny and warm enough that I’d get sweaty during the trekking, especially with a backpack, but once I showered and emerged from my room into the cool mountain air, warm clothes were definitely necessary.
The rooms at the lodges on the trekking route tend to be pretty standard: four walls and a door, two twin beds with hard mattresses, a small bedside table, windows that don’t fit properly in their frames (leading to a great bicep/tricep workout when I wanted to open or close them), and a single light bulb. No sealing, no insulation, no heater, no outlets, and no attached bathroom. Basically, think of a shed, then add a shared squat toilet, a shared shower closet, and an outdoor faucet that offers only freezing cold mountain river water. The one thing that prevented hypothermia during the cold mountain nights was the multi-inch thick blankets that did a remarkable job of keeping me warm despite the fact that the temperature in my room was the same as the temperature outside.
After accepting what my lodging and “amenities” would be like for the next few days, I was able to take in the environment and really begin to enjoy the setting, which was amazing. Hile is lower in the hills (an elevation of about 1,500 meters), so we were surrounded on all sides by tall, lush valley walls dotted with houses and plumes of smoke among the trees and terraces. The sun danced through the clouds and the green canopy overhead and somewhere below, out of sight, the constant, calming white noise of a rushing mountain river could be heard.
The four of us knocked down cultural and language barriers by spending the entire afternoon playing Uno in the restaurant, then having dinner (momos and Nepalese beer for me) once the sun went down. I had the very gratifying revelation that food is so much more satisfying when I have to work hard for it; trekking for a few hours was much more physical exertion than I’m used to having these days.
