Annapurna Circuit Day 15: Tatopani to Ghorepani

My alarm went off at the usual time, around 6 am, and I woke up fine but I could barely open one of my eyes … “What the hell is going?” This was something different. Instantaneously, I also went on to bite my lip because I could tell it felt weird. It was swollen and sore. Throughout the night I had myself wrapped up in my sleeping liner so tightly that you could literally not see anything but my face 😀 but as it turned out, the monstrous mosquitos had managed to find something to bite on despite my burrito wrap … the victims were my eyelid (of all things) and my lip.

I knew the beautiful lush gardens of the Dhaulagiri guesthouse I stayed at that night would come to bite me and they did … literally. The back of my legs hurt the moment I stood up, my toes were a bit sore from yesterday’s trek and now half my face was on fire. But what can you do! I put on some clothes, the same socks from the day before because none of the rest had dried out, pretended I hadn’t just seen myself in the mirror 😀 and went off to grab a tea before heading to Ghorepani.

Honestly, though, I was sipping on my tea, writing up my journal, seeming totally unbothered but I couldn’t help but get frustrated that nothing was drying up at this altitude. Even a pair of socks was taking about 2 days to dry out properly. On day 15, having just put on the same unwashed pair of socks because all the rest were damp, I wasn’t just looking forward to properly washing everything, I was dreaming about it!!

I knew today would be hard, I had to hike 17km and go up 1,670 m! I could feel my body wasn’t 100% with it so I took my time in the morning. To be honest, I was just grateful that I had made it this far, physically and mentally. I had a brief conversation with another girl travelling alone who was waiting on a jeep to get back to Pokhara. She had gotten sick at Tilicho lake and couldn’t continue. A few people were cutting the trek short and getting a ride to Pokhara or taking a day off in Tatopani to recharge. It sure was looking like barely anyone was tackling the trek to Ghorepani that day!! It was about 7 am and not a single other trekker was getting ready to leave.

Even the mystery guy I briefly met the night before was taking his time that morning. Coincidence or not though, when I asked the girl if she knew anyone at all trekking that day, she went on to talk about a solo Dutch guy who was taking the day off to rest and apart from him she didn’t know anyone else planning to hike to Ghorepani. “Was she talking about mystery guy?! Maybe she was! Maybe he was Dutch , he did look European. Hmmmm! What a shame he’s taking the day off ” – a shame or not it was time to pick up my damp laundry, pack up and get going!

Just before getting out of the village, I did my usual turn around for my symbolic Goodbye and I got completely stunned! Now I get it! Now I know why so many places around were called Dhaulagiri something. The mountain was peeking right in front of me so clearly I genuinely couldn’t believe it was real. She was soooo damn beautiful! At that point, I had seen the Himalayas not just once but never before did I feel so close to the mountain like I did at that moment. She was so so clear and so massive that I felt like I was right at its base camp looking up. Just look at her!

I was overwhelmed, I truly was. I stood there and just stared, trying to get it over my head how something so spectacular could actually be real. How could there be people waking up to THIS every single morning? You might think I’m just exaggerating here but honestly, I could feel goosebumps travelling down my entire body, every sensor was like on steroids (not that I would actually know what that feels like 😀 ) but I felt almost outside of my body with admiration, happiness and gratitude that I was actually standing right there, able to see what I was seeing.

Eventually, I had to turn back around and continue on. I checked at the ACAP check-in point and was pretty pleased that I was the second person to get on the trek that morning! I could (just about) handle one person trekking ahead of me 😀 It actually felt so liberating to know that, unless I was taking ages throughout the day, there was literally gonna be only one person ahead of me. Talk about solo trekking in full force 😀 LET’S DO THIS!

Tatopani to Guthre

I took the trail to Sikha, getting on the first bridge after the check-in point and quickly starting to go up. Construction workers were already hammering through the trail, making way for the new road. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Huge trucks were trying to move up and down the swamps as they were transporting masses of mud and stones away from what was gonna be the new road! Freaking outrageous. I was trying not to get angry but it was so damn difficult. The quest to run away from the construction was ON the minute I got on the trail. Seeing how disrespectful and unappreciative the locals were of the natural beauty they had literally right at their doorsteps was disappointing and truly painful to watch. Bulldozers were hammering into the mountain as if it wasn’t the one thing that was making this country as phenomenal as it truly was! I couldn’t watch any longer so I rushed off to go pass this whole charade and went on to look for trails to get off the mud.

It was getting hot and steep and hotter and steeper but luckily finding actual trails wasn’t all that difficult although it was making me a bit uneasy because the construction had changed the accessibility of the trails making it virtually impossible to rely on Maps.me for directions which has been my saviour for the last 14 days.

I found myself looking out for locals more often than any other day. Not because I wasn’t absolutely loving the fact I was barely seeing anyone, I was loving that, but I needed some reassurance that I wasn’t totally going off-trail. My general rule that day was to keep walking up! If I see stairs going up, get on them. If I see a bunch of trails going in the same direction, take the steepest one! Tatopani was at an altitude of 1,190m and Ghorepani at 2,860m so I knew I had to be going up wherever I could. It had to be the right way.

After about an hour, I got to a place where a few trekkers have gathered to rest. They all had porters and guides and were clearly taking it slowly, slowly! “Come take a rest!” – one of the guides said to me as I evidently wasn’t pausing for a break. I didn’t know where all these people had come from. Couldn’t have been from Ghorepani because only one person had checked-in before me. Either way, I sure wasn’t gonna wait for them to catch up so I thanked the guy for the sweet offer and rushed ahead but then … I paused. I had to! Not to take a break though, but to let the view that opened up to just completely dazzle me. And it sure did! Gone was the mud, the construction, the bulldozers … they had finally made space for lush green fields, woods and forgotten villages filled with happy kind people. Down the valley, just a few meters away was Guthre.

I couldn’t wait to meet the locals and wander around the village so I took a left to continue towards the village (and not on the main road which had annoyingly reappeared) so I could pass right through it. Trees were lined up from both my sides, flowers were hanging from the fences and the houses, birds were making the only occasional noises I could just about hear. It was so peaceful and so beautiful!

“Come stay with us” – a family called out after me as I passed by their house. “Come, come!”. A group of at least 7-8 Nepali had gathered under the flowers of their home just by the side of the trail. Kids, babies, older people, girls roughly my age .. they were all just chilling together, seemingly not doing anything. With the view they were fortunate to look at all day every day, who could blame them for preferring to just stare at it than actually be active and do something 😀 Chilling was a legit all-day option around here and people were going for it haha

Guthre to Sikha

The trail was starting to transform into a horrific series of stairs one after the other. The weather was getting hot and I was slowly starting to look forward to reaching Sikha so I could grab lunch, rest for a bit and just enjoy the views without rushing ahead.

Eventually, I made it to Ghara where I got totally lost. The village was so spread out that I couldn’t tell the right way. Maps.me gave up on me at that point either but luckily there was a family that turned out to be pretty interested in the all covered in sweat, sunburnt trekker that I had quickly transformed into. What a better chance to get some directions and pause for a minute. The whole family gathered by their house fence which I sat on as I asked for directions to Ghorepani. After a bit of a discussion between themselves, they pointed me to the trail I had casually passed by a few meters down the road.

I thanked them and as I was getting up from the fence, they all started giggling, grannies, kiddos, everyone 😀 Hmmm, that’s an interesting way to see me off. I looked down and I laughed at myself way more expressively and loudly than all of them combined. My bum had left the perfect sweat imprint on the fence 😀 “I’ve really lost some weight though” haha (that was my reality check after 15 days with no proper mirrors)! A few years back I probably would’ve gotten embarrassed and would’ve rushed to get lost as quickly as possible but now I just laughed at myself, thanked the family for their help, giggled together some more and continued on not even slightly disturbed by my left-behind 😀 I was a sweaty trekker, so what LOL

I passed by more villages on my way to Sikha. Some painfully rural, others slightly more upgraded with fresh paint on the houses and blooming flowers on the fences. Whilst some were doing the laundry and others were putting food out for the cattle, an older lady was taking her time diligently putting a watch on her wrist followed by a few check-up looks to make sure it looked good on her.

“What does she even need a watch for up here? – I wondered! “Time has literally stopped here anyway“. – I stood at a distance observing her for a couple of minutes trying to figure out what she was doing. There really was no need to know what the time was. There was nowhere to rush for, nowhere to go, no shops, not even more than a couple of other houses around. Yet, she was getting her fingers through her long grey hair checking up on how pretty her hand looked with the watch now put on her wrist. In a place so isolated, I guess you gotta hold onto the little things to keep going even when sometimes there really is very little point in doing what you’re doing.

There I was though, a few steps away from Sikha. Finally, it was time to just sit down and relax. But wait, “was that a snake” – it went passed in front of me to hide in the bushes so quickly, I didn’t even have time to register it or get scared. I grew up with an unreal phobia of snakes and haven’t been so close to a snake literally in over a decade. Yet, I didn’t even shiver, panic or run ahead. Now, that was strange. “Where was my fear gone, seriously!” She was tiny, maybe that was it. She was black, thin, less than half a meter long and she was fast. She was crossing the step I was just about to put my foot on when she crooked a few times and was gone in the bushes. Welcome to Sikha 😀

It could be home to snakes but this village sure was charming! The houses, the people, the views, everything was begging me to stick around for longer, so I did. I had a brief chat with a lovely local who gave me a good speech on the use of dry corn in the Nepali kitchen and how locals made their flour, tsampa porridge and cornbread from it. That explained why there was so much corn left out hanging to dry pretty much in every house. It was their staple food and they sure were taking the drying process very seriously.

To my new friend’s recommendation, I headed towards Serendipity hotel to grab lunch. I was the only customer, as pretty much everywhere so far, so I had to literally go wake up the chef 😀 But hey, that’s all part of the experience. I put my charm to work and despite their “I’m still sleepy” look, the host lady made me a yummy Dal Bhat whilst I was jotting things down in my journal.

I tent to give out the impression that I’m easy to talk to (which just so happens to be true 😀 ) so from having no one around when I sat down for lunch, a few minutes later I was suddenly surrounded by an Indian hiker who also stopped for lunch, a local English teacher, the guesthouse host and his friend all wanting to chat. And we did, for everything and anything. The conversation went from chatting about the local school system, to how the Indian couldn’t handle any spice to the point where he was tearing up from the dal bhat (like WTH 😀 ) eventually to the cheeky comments on how they’d all join me to Ghorepani (haha hell no). I wasn’t worried to continue the 2-hour trek to Ghorepani on my own so just like the mosquitos who had come to bite me the night before and had vanished only leaving their trace, I was gone before the idea of tagging along had grown some wings.

Sikha to Ghorepani

The trek from Sikha to Ghorepani honestly couldn’t have been much worse. It was going up the whole way to the very end, going through rainforests, rocky sections and lots of, lots of stairs. The trail wasn’t particularly clear and I was kinda getting in the middle of nowhere with spotting locals becoming less and less frequent. My phone battery was dying, my legs were getting exhausted, my toes were starting to rub at the front of my boots from the constant going up and I was starting to actively feel every step I was taking.

Occasionally, I was bumping into huge cows blocking my way and instead of some preservation mechanism switching on, I was actually getting excited to see a living thing 😀 Be it a gigantic cow, a few times my size that could easily take me if she ever wanted to have a little play. Luckily, they were all so lazy, they could just about bother to keep breathing! Winning 😀

I was checking Maps.me, over and over and over again. It was starting to feel endless, it was the freaking Ice Lake trek all over again. I couldn’t see marks for the trekking trail. Maps.me was going all crazy not able to find me on the map. There were no locals to ask if I was even still walking in the right direction and to top it all off, my legs were seriously starting to give in. I would take a step, they would just tremble. I would take a quick break and my shoulders would start pulling me down from the weight of the bag which, at that point, was feeling like at least three times its actual weight. I was ready to be done for the day.

I near teared up. It was never ending! When I saw the gate to Ghorepani, I got ecstatic. Only to find out a few short seconds later that the village was nowhere to be found. “What the hell had happened” – right after I went passed the gate, what was supposed to be the village was looking like this.

I panicked! “What had happened here? And where is the village” – I genuinely couldn’t find the village. All that I could see was destruction, fallen or hanging trees, chopped off wood and something that looked like the beginning of a road construction but seemed more like an earthquake aftermath. It was shocking! I was walking up and down, looking around, trying to figure out where the village could be. There was no one to ask, my phone was gone and I was running out of options. It had to be somewhere here.

But where!! Suddenly I saw something that looked like stairs hidden to the side of the excavation. It was a path! A horrible, unclear, covered up in stones and bushes but still a path.

I was relieved! For a few moments, I had seriously started to question whether I wasn’t lost or if I’d actually be able to make it to Ghorepani on the leftover energy that was dripping out with every step. But luckily, I made it!

But wait for it! As if the thousands of steps leading up to Ghorepani weren’t enough, the whole freaking village was in stairs, literally! Stairs and guesthouses. The first place I saw was a huge luxurious hotel building which got my eyes to pop. How could they have actually built a place like that up here? Like literally? The road was only just starting to be built so I was expecting a tiny, authentic, pretty basic kinda place. Instead, of all the places I had stayed at on the trek, this was the most developed and most disappointing of all! Concrete was everywhere I turned my eyes to. Flashy hotels with cows and horses walking about in front of them .. the comic scenes were everywhere 😀

I was on the edge so I headed to a place called Nice view determined to stay there whatever it would cost and whatever the conditions. I couldn’t move a single limp to check out a different place so this had to be it. Luckily, I got a decent room which even came with a nice view, as the name of the place suggested. Immediately got out of my boots, took a shower and went for dinner.

Out of the last 15 days, this was the day I just couldn’t get full regardless of how much I actually got to eat that evening. I had burnt so many calories that the soup, rice and omelette I had didn’t even begin to cut it, so bring in the momos please 😀 No wonder my bum imprint had gotten so tiny haha Literally though, all I had energy for was to hold my Kindle and my fork and just look out the window to a gorgeous sunset which put on a colourful show! I was drained but there truly was no other place I’d much rather be! I was content and nothing else mattered! At about 9 pm I was gone, I couldn’t keep my eyes open if my life depended on it. The thought of having to set up the alarm for 4:30 am for the morning trek to Poon Hill was frankly making me sick but I wrapped myself warm, headed to bed and let myself recharge before the big finale to Nayapul the next day.

Daily Costs

• Room – RS 200
• Tea – RS 50
• Dal Bhat – RS 400
• Momos – RS 550
• Soup – RS 300
• Omelette – RS 250

Day 15 Tips 

• Watch out for thin, black snakes!!
• Don’t rely on Maps.me too much today. Get locals to guide you and whenever in doubt, keep going up.
• Get ready for a long, hard, stairs day! And bring food to get the energy up when you start to totally lose it.
• Enjoy and stay present! Namaste 🙂

Day 15 Gallery