We were met by our porters at Hotel Dream Pokhara at about 7:00 am and by 7:30 am we were on our way to Nayapul in a vehicle. We reached Nayapul around 9:00 am and by 9:30 am we had started our hike towards Ghandruk. After about 15 minutes we reached the check posts and after completing formalities we resumed our trek. It was a nice easy walk for first one hour or so, then we stopped for lunch at 11:30 am after a short but steep climb. For the Chennai girls it was their first taste of what lay ahead. My Bangalore friend, had done practice hikes with me to Nandi hills and has been praticising some really tough power yoga for about 3 months, so she was fine. Infact over the course of the hike, she came to be known as the Iron Lady (IL) since she had no pains or aches or any other health issues during this short but tough 7 day trek.
One of the Chennai girls earned herself the name of Chatty Damsel in Distress (CD for the purpose of this blog - explanation on the name will come later) and other one was Perennially Cold and hence we will call her PC (not to be confused with Priyanka Chopra though)
After lunch the rain gods started playing hide and seek with us and finally the downpour began. The destination for the day seemed really far and honestly both IL and I found it really tough towards the end to keep going. By about 4 pm we reached the Annapurna Lodge - our home for the night. The views of the range from this place were beautiful. Now that the rain had stopped, we changed into comfortable clothes and stepped around and about to enjoy the views. We were all starving thanks to the tough hike and hence decided on an early dinner (6:45 pm).
Between dinner and retiring to our rooms, we had conversation with our porters about next day's hike. Couple of us wanted to go by the longer route to enjoy the hot springs at Jhinu Danda (per original itinerary) and the others wanted the easier route to Chommorong. Finally IL convinced everyone including porters to go through Jhinu Danda and we retired for the night by 8 pm.
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| Views on way to Nayapul |
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| First hour of the hike - mostly flat |
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| The real hike - almost 4 hours of this first day itself! |
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