No more mountain sunrises, just a busy, dead end street. It’s literally the end of the road. Goods headed for the guesthouses and homes up in the mountains, including all the propane needed to cook and boil water, must be transferred to mules or porters.
Birethanti at 6:30 in the morning
I could not figure out what this woman was doing on her roof at 6:30 in the morning.
A woman working on her roof
It was a short 1/2 hour walk, including one last suspension bridge, to the main road where our taxi driver was waiting.
One last bridge
As we neared Pokhara after about 1 1/2 hours, we stopped at a Tibetan refugee camp.
Tibetan Buddhist temple near Pokhara
Tibetan woman spinning
By 10 a.m., I was settling into my hotel room at the Four Seasons in Pokhara. I spent the day shopping, eating a hamburger and French fries in the garden at the Boomerang with Monica and Cash (my new friends from the Netherlands), and just relaxing.
Street sweeping in Pokhara; my back hurts just looking at him
Where do you keep your cow?
Hanging succulent
Brahminy starlings near my hotel balcony
My trek in the Himalayas was over, but I was not yet done with the mountains. A flight-seeing trip to Everest was still on my agenda after returning to Kathmandu.
The trek was neither as long or as hard as the John Muir Trail (three weeks in the California Sierras), nor was the food nearly as good. And those steps–give me a switchback any day. This was an entirely different kind of trek. It involved walking between villages and among fields with overnights in rustic guesthouses rather than camping in the wilderness. It was much more a cultural experience rather than an outdoors experience.
BUT, the Himalayas are the tallest (and youngest and largest) mountains on earth. If you’re a mountain lover, you have to go.
The Modi Khola valley leads to the Annapurna Sanctuary
The mountains tower over you
The sun rises really late
When you reach the Sanctuary at 13,000′, Annapurna at over 26,000′ still looms over you.
In the Sanctuary
Mt. Whitney at 14,500′ doesn’t compare.
Mt. Whitney from the desert floor