Trekking day 1: Phedi to Pothana

We are back in Pokhara after 9 glorious days in the Himalayas. For me it is a little bit of culture shock, even though Pokhara is a nice transition town. I apologize for the numerous entries, but this blog site will only allow me to upload 5 photos per entry, and there were just too many beautiful sights to edit that severely.

Trekking was more expensive than I anticipated. We returned to Pokhara with 115 rupees ($1.55) between Noah and me. It was a little scary when the first three ATM machines were not working, but the fourth worked fine.

We had planned to go on a 4 to 5 day trek, but with each day we decided to go higher. We were prepared for only a low level trek, bringing only tennis shoes and wind breakers. Luckily we could get blankets along the way at the guest houses, and there was hot water for showers at the end of each day, except for at Machhepuchre base camp (though I was able to buy a bucket of hot water there). It turned out there was not much need for all the expensive, specialized gear that REI and North Face want us to believe we need.

The trek started with one million steps up the mountain side to Dhampus, then a beautiful walk through the rice terraced hills to the sweet town of Pothana.

View from half way up the one million steps

rice terraces

Noah wanting a photo of a water buffalo

the town of Dhampus