On to Ghorapani

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November 1, 2008 Saturday Ghorepani (Horse Water) Day 12

We relaxed in the dining room (which had a fire under the table - so our feet got quite warm - nice) most of the afternoon and early evening. We met a young woman from San Francisco who is trekking alone. She is on a 3 ½ month unpaid leave from her job teaching pharmacology at SF teaching hospital. She spent a few wild intense weeks in India, and then decided on the spur of the moment to go trekking in Nepal, so she got on a train to Kathmandu, found a trek and a guide through some storefront agency and here she is. They told her she didn’t need a porter - maybe they meant her guide would double as porter (many do). But this one wasn’t and she was getting rather nervous about continuing to manage ok. She seems to have a love/hate feeling about India and plans to return after her ‘relaxing’ trek. Then she goes to Vietnam and Thailand. We also talked to 4 young people from Singapore and some Germans.

This morning Dilman woke us at 6 to see the mountains at sunrise. The sky was cloudless and the mountains, as always, spectacular. We breakfasted and then left for Ghorapani at about 8 a.m. The walk was very lovely, through oak and rhododendron forest. We started going down, then up a little, then more down to a bridge and then a very steep uphill to a pass. (Deurali, where we stopped for tea). We walked along the ridge for quite a while. It had clouded up by then, but there were some good views. We ended with a very steep (mostly stone steps) descent to Ghorapani. We are at the Sunny Hotel - an older hotel which has just added a new addition and in many ways is the most ‘modern’ we’ve been in so far - at least the biggest. The room is clean and has a new 3” mattress.

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