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Published: April 25th 2019
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After breakfast we met with our trek guide Sudarshan who is also taking us to today’s visit to Shivapuri National Park. It took about one hour to drive there but that’s when confusion started. First we stopped at a point on the road going up and Sudarshan said some people hike from this point but he said we could also drive further up in the jeep if we wished. Luckily as it turned out, we opted to drive further up and we started our hike at around 10:30am. Our impression was that the hike to the top would take about 2.5 hours and then 1.5 hours down so we were happy with that but the reality turned out to be much longer than that. The first part was walking gradually upwards on a dirt track but after 100 minutes we came to a much steeper path of steps. It was at this point that Sudarshan said it was 2.5 hours to reach the top, so already the 2.5 hours had changed to 3 hours and 20 minutes. It was very hard work, so before reaching the top we decided to have a good rest and eat our lunch around 13:00. We
then got to the Kamdhenu Cow Stone at 14:20 (3 hours 50 minutes) where we had a short rest before pressing on further. We had mistakenly thought we had reached the top which was still another 15 minutes upwards again so with the rest stops it had taken us just over 4 hours to hike to Shivapuri Peak. After resting and having some tea at the small temple we finally started our descent which initially was a relief and easy but my left knee started to ache and gradually got worse as we continued our walk down. The 90 minute estimate turned out to be 3 hours to get to the entrance at 18:14 and with no car in sight we had to continue walking down until we reached the part of the road where we saw cars coming up. The youngsters had kept walking ahead of us and Sudy stayed back with Vicki and I and at this point we had had enough and insisted that he get the driver to drive up this road to collect us, which he obligingly did. By the time he came to collect us it was 19:30, so we had actually walked another
hour from the entrance. So in total our walk was over 4 hours up and 4 down, very different to the 2.5 up and 1.5 hours down we were told at the start.
On arrival back in Kathmandu we then had to get our jackets fitted (for those who needed them) and also our sleeping bags, which were then delivered to the hotel as we wanted to have dinner. We had another nice meal at a hotel restaurant before heading home to collect the jackets, sleeping bags and duffel bags which the porters will carry for us. It was then a matter of working out what we needed to have access to for tomorrow’s drive and the remainder went into the duffel bags.
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