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Published: January 11th 2015
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October 8th - Tadopani (2630m) to Ghandruk (1940m) - descent of 690m We left Tadopani this morning knowing we had an easy, pretty much all down hill trek, to the lovely Ghurung viallage of Ghandruk.
We said our goodbyes to the staff at Magnificient View and headed off for what would end up being about 3 hours of walking. The path started descending straight away, with small ups and downs along another goat trail through the jungle. We now had the mountains behind us and would soon begin to have views of the gorgeous valley we were descending into instead.
After a while we hit steps again and started to descend steeply. I was so glad at this point that we were going down and not up! We had jungle on either side and hoped to see some monkeys, however apparently they normally come into view either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. We had more chance of seeing leeches! Oh well!
Stuart and the boys caught up with us just as we started climbing again - about 1/2 an hour before we arrived. We walked together from here on and soon found ourselves
On the way to Ghandruk
Gorgeous village paths entering the outskirts of Ghandruk. It's such a pretty village and I'd really been looking forward to today and staying tonight. We knew we'd have the best lodge of the trek so far based on past experience. Dende and Stuart's porters didn't let us down. They'd once again gone ahead to find a lodge for us and had found an awesome one! I can't remember the name of it but the rooms were lovely. We were upstairs with rooms all next to each other with a massive balcony and great views of the peaks to one side, the village of Landruk on the opposite side of the valley and the village below. We'd arrived around lunchtime and it was nice knowing we had all afternoon to just chill and enjoy each others company.
After dumping our bags and showering we sat down and enjoyed shared plates of momos, chilli chips (these were amazing - basically hot chips that are then stir fried with hot chillies, capsicum and onion) onion rings, popcorn and of course nice icy Everest beer! Mmmm, so healthy!
After lunch Mia and I went for a wander to explore the village a bit. There were
Ghandruk
Our new friends in the best lodge so far! gorgeous flowers everywhere so Mia pulled out the camera and started snapping away - she took some great shots thanks to having just completed photography lessons at school...
We found a German bakery and bought a handful of delicious, straight out of the oven, chocolate croissants to take back for everyone. Once back, the games came out and Jonathon taught us how to play 'Pass the pigs'. I think he was just thrilled to have some new victims to play it with as his brothers were over it!
We spent the rest of the day playing lots of different card games, chatting and generally just chilling out together. The weather started turning and it was nice to be undercover instead of out in it.
That night after dinner of dal bhat again (I really miss my dal baht now) we pulled out the marshmallows, gathered Dende and Stuart's porters and guides and Mia taught them how to play 'Chubby Bunny'! It was hilarious and so good to see Dende and the others having fun!
We had spent a part of the day trying to decide where we'd trek from here. I'd been wanting to trek back
Ghandruk
Outside local bakery towards Chomrong, then cross the valley to the Jhinu hot springs, before then trekking back along the opposite side of the valley we were now on. This would have meant another 3 days of trekking and I wasn't ready to get off the mountains yet. However I was coming down with a cold, Mia wasn't feeling 100% either and Gav wasn't overly keen to continue as he was getting home sick after spending 3 weeks in Thailand prior to meeting up with us. Due to this we decided to save Chomrong and the springs for when we come back next year and trek to ABC (Annapurna Base Camp/Sanctuary).
It was sad knowing that tomorrow would be our last day trekking for this trip, but we'd had a ball, some of the best views we'd ever had due to the season, and knew we'd be back soon...
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