Day 9: Hiking in Pokhara
Today we headed off to do some hiking in hopes of getting better views of the tall Himalayan mountains. We had talked with a couple of trekking companies last night, so we headed to one this morning and told them where we wanted to hike, and that we wanted to be gone about six hours. We planned to hike from Dhampus to Hemja along a mountain ridge, and soon we were off.
Fishtail Mountain in the distance as we drove.
As Dhampus was not along the highway, the first portion of our hike involved climbing up to the town. That meant stairs. Lots of stairs. Then some more stairs. Thousands of stairs. An hour and a half of nothing but stairs. Needless to say, we were unable to climb continuously for that amount of time, and had to take many rest breaks. Our climb was quite steep, so we soon got very good views, as there was nothing but cliff to the side of the yard wide steps. Several times I partially tripped when my feet did not lift high enough to clear the next step. When we finally reached the top, we took a nice, long break to catch our breath and cool down.
Greg climbs some stairs, a few of the thousands.
Resting for a few moments.
Unfortunately, none of the big Himalayan mountains were visible, thanks to thick clouds in the distance. On the other hand, there were no nearby clouds, and the views of the valley were spectacular. Furthermore, once we had climbed all of those stairs, the rest of the hike would be fairly easy. From then on, we walked easily on roads and trails, and through rice and corn fields. While walking through one corn field, several women working in the field invited us to come help, so we went over and said hi.
We were invited over to come work
All along the hike, there were sheer drops off the sides, either right beside the stairs, or beside the road. Such drops were rather intimidating, but provided great views. Also, the flora of the forest was surprisingly like a jungle. Everything was green, there were ferns everywhere, and some kind of green moss grew on the dirt making it very slippery and hard to walk on. Near the end of the hike, we reached a good overlook of the valley from another angle, giving an awesome view of the river and the cliffs next to it, which we found impressively large. If you come back in a couple million years, you may find a nice canyon here.
Overlooking the valley
We finally reached the end of our hike, which was much more relaxing than the beginning, and headed back to the hotel. In the evening, we went shopping and found some things for the folks back home, before packing up our stuff for a long day tomorrow. We leave Pokhara at 8:50am, landing in Kathmandu at 9:30am, where we have to wait until 4:30pm for our flight to Delhi. From Delhi, we fly at 11:00pm to Hong Kong overnight, landing in what looks like will be a Tropical Depression. In essence, don’t expect a very exciting blog post tomorrow.
Riding the bus
Gotta get it all in there.
Grandma said to tell you that she loves reading your blog each day! It looks like you & Greg got to see a lot in Nepal. It’s neat that you have got to visit the small villages, mountains, and farms where you could experience the real Nepal.
I can’t believe the views! Spectacular. Just the power of the beauty is remarkable. Those steps looked intimidating! Never could I have made those! This is becoming a very physical, get in shape kind of trip! You are probaly going to put this all together in a well illustrated book, not to mention your wonderful way with words. It would certainly sell! I keep thinking of all the times as kids we would have to write about how we spent our summer! This would be great! Keep it all coming! Love LL By the way it is 96 here! But I have AIR conditioning! Yes
Turns out “the climb” was about 600 meters vertical (1,970 feet) over a little less than 3Km (1.8 miles). Hence Michael left out a few stairs, stairs, stairs, stairs and more stairs. Somhow tt only took us 1.5 hours on the climb with all the rest stops. We did worked a “slight” sweat yet some how our guide was not even breathing heavy and did not sweat. So we asked him what he did to train. He said nothing but walk. Then he told us before he got his guide license he was a very low paid porter (I wonder just how low paid he was as we paid him just under $14USD for the day as a guide). In that job he would carry 20-25Kgs (45-55lbs) of his clients gear plus all of his own stuff on 20 day long treks. These would involve walking between 6-8 hours each day and over passes that where 5000+ meters (16,400 feet) in the cold and snow.
The real shocker was the next day we did not have any blisters or sore muscles.