NEPAL 041212 Trek day #7 Ghandruk to Syauli Bazaar

Dear Friends.

            Today one of Life’s Great Questions was answered on the trail just a bit below Ghandruk.

The Annapurna Hotel’s fifth floor roof made an excellent perch for the dozen or so photographer-trekkers who emerged at dawn to record the sunrise over two of the five noble Annapurnas and the sacred, unclimbed Machapuchare. Although I made some photos with more sun on these massive mountains, this one captures more of the magic, if not the chill, of the peaks as they emerge from the darkness.

Dawn brightens the Himalayas East of Ghandruk

NEPAL 041012 Trek Day #5: Tadapani to Ghandruk

Dear Friends,

This morning we got up at first light, about 5:30 AM, and stepped just outside our rooms onto the deck of the Hotel Grand View to watch the sun light up Machapuchare and her neighbors Hinculi and Annapurna.  Here is my first shot of the day. 

Machapuchare at first light

NEPAL 04.09.12 Trek Day # 4 Ghorepani to Tadapani

Dear Friends

This day, which turned out to be our longest and most difficult, began with a knock on our door at 6:00 AM from Jawane, who urged us to come out in front of the Nice View Lodge to watch the sunrise light up the Himalayan peaks to the north.  We were already dressed, one of the benefits of an early bedtime. I grabbed my jacket, headlamp, and iPhone and hurried downstairs, through the dining room, and outside.  The sun had just begun to lighten the sky from behind Annapurna south.  Other huge peaks were being gradually revealed from west to east, with a pink light first illuminating the southeastern face of Dhaulagiri.   

The first morning light illuminates the formidable Dhaulagiri

NEPAL 041112 Trek day #6: A Layover in Ghandruk

Dear Friends

Our layover day began with a move next door to the “Himalayan View End” of the fourth floor corridor of the Annapurna Lodge.  You will be glad to know that I, in a fit of modesty and with a slight embarrassment over the lack of precision, did not add the elevation gain and loss of the many trips up and down to and from the 4^th floor to the elevation gain and loss statistics for our trek.

After breakfast, Dick, Maisie and I set out with Jawane and his right hand man Tsering to explore Ghundruk, a handsome village of 270 Gurung families.  Our first stop was the Gurung Traditional Museum which featured interesting collections of household, hunting, and farming equipment displayed on the first floor of a typical two-story home.  We browsed around and learned that the design of the equipment we had been seeing in use in the terraced fields along our trek had not changed for decades, maybe even centuries. As if to confirm this observation, later in the day we saw a man driving an ox down one of Ghandruk’s many stone paths and carrying a WOODEN plow over his shoulder.  The only metal on the plow was a thin strip on its “cutting-into-the-soil” edge. When we returned for lunch, we saw a line of four colorfully dressed women harvesting wheat with sickles on a terrace next to our lodge.  As they chatted and/or smoked cigarettes, they sliced off the grain-bearing heads of the wheat plants ONE-AT-A-TIME and dropped them into baskets.  An elderly couple using the same sort of small sickles followed the women along the mini wheat field and cut the wheat stalks off near the ground for bundling and removal, perhaps for bedding of animals, or maybe straw mattresses for people (I am happy to report that we did not personally experience this possible form of rural Nepali bedding.).

An overview of Ghandruk showing its typical handsome slate-roofed buildings, the village Gompa in the top center, farm terraces in the center, the Kushal Guest House with its satellite dish at the bottom, and a cell phone tower on the hilltop in the upper left.