Just back from a 3 day trek in the foothills of the Annapurna range of the Himalaya. The plan was to go from Phedi, through Landruk, onto Gandruk and back to Pokhara via Syauli Bajar. We started with a 1 hour ride in a death taxi to the starting point of our trek. Phedi 
sits at an altitude of 1,130m. The first couple of hours were quite a struggle and took us to Dhampus via steep stone steps, gaining approximately 500m. Looking from Dhampus it was easy to trace the route of the trek winding around the side of the mountains.
Throughout the trek we would gain hundreds of meters only to lose them again, before having to gain them again. The destination on our first night was Tolka (1,700m) which we reach after 6 hours and having lost another 400m in altitude thanks to another set of steep, declining, stone steps. We passed a group with a couple of children coming up the steps. The look on the kids’ faces told their own story – they weren’t at all chuffed to say the least!
The next morning it was up early again ready for the day. After an hour or so we reached Landruk and at this point the weather started to turn. The sky was heavy and unfortunately the clouds prevented us from having a decent view of the mountains. A thunder-storm was brewing so we decided to miss out the climb to Gandruk and head back to Pokhara. This involved descending another set of killer stone steps to the river, 500m in all. Our destination was Syauli Bajar, which we reached after a further 3ish hours. We spent the night there, more Dal Bhat, before heading back to Pokhara this morning.
A couple of hours trekking, a nose bleed for my troubles, taxi drama, then a 2 hour death taxi ride back, safe and sound, ready for the bus tomorrow to Chitwan and hopefully some tigers.
Note: I’d like to upload more picture but the broadband speeds here in Nepal are prohibitive. I’ll do the best I can for now and post the balance on Flikr when I return to Scotland.
