Poon Hill Trek (2)

 These pictures are of the deep gorge we walked through descending from Ghorepani to Tadapani. The yellow colours are autumn leaves.

 We reached Ghandruk about 5 in the evening and this is Annapurna South and Hiun Chuli just before we entered the village.

 This is Annapurna South from the hostel in the very early morning. The little hump stuck on the right hand slope of the mountain is Annapurna 1.

 This is the old Ghandruk Village.

 The paved trail leading from Ghandruk to Syauli Bazaar. Flat here, but ever so steep later on.

  Rice fields en route to Syauli Bazaar. On the opposite side of the valley is Tolka.

 The river below marks our destination for the night. A very steep descent!!

 View from our outdoor dining room at Syauli Bazaar.

My style of walking. En route from Syauli Bazaar to trek end at Birenthanti. 100m drop is about 5 kms,

Poon Hill Trek (1)

 As promised- a picture of all the gore. Note the effect right down to the knee. Katelyn was in her early attempts to staunch the flow. The second shot was the following day and in slightly happier circumstances.

 This is earlier shots of Bhurungdi Khola en route from Birethanti to Ulleri.

 More from the same route. As you can see at this stage it is vehicle accessible.

 This was the view from our bedroom window at Ulleri the next morning. This is Annapurna South and Huin Chuli. If we do the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) trek at Christmas as planned we will get up to 4130m almost directly behind Huin Chuli.

 These are shots from the second day, Ulleri to Ghorepani. The horses are walking up some of the 3000 stone steps that we climbed and later we saw the donkeys coming down from Ghorepani on a less steep section of the track.

 This part of the walk was largely in the shade of the rhododendron trees and so was relatively cool, compared to the heat of the exposed track the day before.

 Ghorepani- or rather Lower Ghorepani. After a visit to the medical centre(out of picture to the left) we had a short sharp climb to our hostel a little way further up.

 These are all views from Poon Hill the following morning. We left the hostel in the dark at 5 and climbed for almost an hour to get to Poon Hill where we joined hundreds of others. It was a beautiful morning though and our efforts were well rewarded.

The little white thing at the top of the hill is the tower on top of Poon Hill where many people stood to see the sunrise. We climbed more than four hundred metres back down to the hostel for breakfast and then nearly as high on our onward route before we took this photo.

Pokhara Update

 At the risk of boring you -- this is part of the view from our rooftop. We have three shots which we hope we can get printed as a full view of the Annapurnas, but this is the left most shot. The close hill to the left is the bottom of Sarangkot. Now the monsoon is over the mountains are often very clear like this.

 These are two shots of Fishtail Lodge on the night we went for dinner. The top is the view as we were being pulled over in the barge. You can just see the rope in the water. The boatman coils this ever so neatly at his feet. The second one is us at dinner. Sue is sitting beside me. Hard to see in the photo but we could see the lights of the "mainland" twinkling across the water.
The following pictures are all of the class trip, first to Fishtail Lodge and then later on  the main part of Phewa Tal.

 This barge is identical to ours without the canopy and is being used to ferry all the supplies over.

 The treasure hunt in progress. My TA keeping them occupied while I laid the trail and then the children gathering round to read the clue together.

 This is part of the path along the lakeside. These are not the boats we went out in.

 Elevenses at one of the pupil's places. What a special part of the day that was, to be able to be there rather than in an open public park.

 All views from the paddling trip around. The children all had their turn at pedaling the boat along, so I had to have a try to. Part way round we realised one of the smaller girls was terrified. There is a small pool of water underneath the pedals and she thought we were sinking. As soon as we had that sorted out and explained she was able to enjoy the trip.

These are all photos from our first day shopping in Pokhara. This is the main street, Chippledunga. It was our first experience of buying vege etc and haggling about the prices etc. Seems a long time ago now. (That is probably the worst lot of rubbish we have seen in our whole time here.)