Village of Tadapani

Ghorepani acts as a hub for several different trekking routes, so leaving the city was the most crowded we experienced. It was really impressive to see some of the Nepali porters carrying loads for trekkers. Sometimes I think the packs were as big as the person underneath the load. That concept is foreign to me: to go to a place like Nepal to hike in the Himalayas and then hire someone to carry my stuff. (Well, not to mention hike from village to village staying in nice tea-houses and eating hot food every meal.) But that's not how I grew up backpacking.

Lots of people trekking on a very clear day. Notice the porters
in the bottom left.

Nice view and clear skies. You never would
have thought that we missed our view of the
mountains from Poon Hill that morning. 

Trekking through a Rhododendron forest. The
flowers were gorgeously pink! 

We trekked through a beautiful rhododendron forest, up and down along ridges and valleys, and then descended into a canyon. There was a village in the middle where we stopped for lunch just before it started to rain. Lunch was good: our guides/friends let us order ourselves. In fact, up to that point we didn't even know they had menus at the tea-houses. I immediately ordered a tuna pizza because it looked so good. Plus they weren't serving chicken because they didn't have refrigeration. I'm thankful, but I needed my protein and tuna stepped up to the plate. For the rest of the trek we were allowed to order for ourselves and we tried an assortment of different cultural foods. It was fun to notice though that every single place we stopped essentially had the same menu, right down to the pictures decorating the borders.

I wanted to mention we passed a hydroelectric facility constructed by several villages pooling their resources. While in Tadapani, we had power and lights 24/7 unlike anywhere else in Nepal and really hot water for showering. It is impressive the communities that people have knit here. People not only shared their money but their time and efforts to improve the lives of everyone. I remember back to Ulleri and the thousands of steps we climbed. We hiked along at a similar pace as a young man carrying a 12 ft electrical pole. We were told that each family had to send one representative to the valley bottom to carry up a pole to set up electrical lines to bring power to the village.

I ordered tuna pizza for lunch because it sounded so good.
This was the first lunch or dinner we had in 3-4 days that wasn't
dal-baht.

The trek wound up being our longest day, particularly because we climbed to the top of Poon Hill before sunrise that morning. If I remember correctly we hiked close to 6 hours total by the end of the day.

Playing the saber devices and showing the flip book for an evening
program in the village square.

Once in Tadapani, we set up a program in the center of the village and went around inviting people to come and listen to the Saber players. Though we didn't have as large an audience as we had the previous day in Ghorepani I feel as though we were more successful here. It was more intimate, if that makes any sense. We had a wide range of people too: some came running and some were reluctant to stay and listen and still some didn't understand at first the connection between the pictures and the recording. But we went through the entire program and left those interested with a CD and more flip books. 

The view from our hotel/tea-house in Tadapani. Annapurna
south on the left, Hiunchulli in the middle, and Fish-tail on the right.

The lady in the pink sweater was the owner of the hotel and was
drying a kind of leafy green to serve with meals (and to eat themselves).

We woke up the following morning to clear skies and beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. After breakfast we did a little souvenir shopping and headed out on our way to Gandruk. It was another gorgeous day of hiking, mostly descending. By that time we've settling into a regime of hiking and resting for everyone to stay together. Some of our friends were having a hard time by then, having never hiked that far before. But everyone continued in high spirits!