Day 39: Ghandruk to Pokhara

Trip Start Sep 21, 2006

228

Trip End Jun 01, 2007

Loading Map

Map your own trip!

Map Options

Show trip route

Hide lines

Where I stayed

Marigold Hotel

(Pokhara hotels)

Flag of Nepal Pokhara, Nepal
Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Annapurna South and Machapuchare are, it seems, within touching distance from Ghandruk this morning. It is the last day of the trek and Nar gives me the option of the four-hour downhill walk beside the river or a seven-hour hike down the valley, 400m down and up the next hill, then up, down to Phedi - a tougher but more beautiful route. With days to recover, I take the hard option down steep steps, often damp and slippery with cow dung, and up a grinding staircase to Landruk. It's worth the effort, for steaming forest, creaking with insect life, for terraces thriving with the rice harvest, farmers erecting mounds of straw and drying soy beans and millet in the sun.
We pass another checkpost, this for TAAN, an attempted trekking guide union, another opportunity to extort funds from tourists. We ignore it. Nar claims that none of the money reaches the guides and porters.
And then, with the sound of car horns in the distance, a bumpy descent over worn slabs, it's over

01 Last day - Nar and me

. I drink a bowl of pumpkin soup and, with a lump in my throat (not the soup), hand over my trusty bamboo cane before taking a taxi to Pokhara (travelling without moving my legs seems odd.)
Set beside a lake, surrounded by green hills, with the peak of Fish Tail Mountain to the north, Pokhara is a scenic, low-rise home for tired trekkers to unwind, or, with its wealth of fake North-Face stores, to prepare for a new expedition. Like Kathmandu's Thamel, it's a mine of cyber cafes, German bakeries, souvenir stalls and Nepali/Indian/Italian restaurants. These lie along a lakeside road punctuated by painted Boddhi trees festooned with prayer flags, motorbikes parked in their shade.
I bid farewell to Nar here and hasten to a barbers' to rid myself of the affectation that is my Annapurna-Circuit beard. I go for the full works and get a trim and strong back massage for 750 rupees. Ah, civilisation!
Opposite my hotel a crowd gathers. An old woman has been knocked over. Westerners try to keep the crowd back but even roofs are filled with curious parties till the ambulance arrives.
My room at Hotel Marigold proves to be shared with all sizes of cockroach. I stomp several and try to sleep. For just over two pounds a night, I can bear the mild revulsion for a short while.