Trekking – got to experience to understand

“Who the heck suggest taking a holiday like this?” A comment made typically after four hours of walking up and down the mountains. The answer was, well, I did actually.

We trekked in what is called the Jomsom trek in the Annapurna range – small part of it, basically following the Kali Gandaki river upstream. From Kathmandu we took a car and raft (yes, a bit of rafting in Trisuli river) to Pokhara (about six-seven hours including three hours of rafting – cool!), then a jammed-packed non-odorless public bus to Beni and started walking from Beni to Jomson for four days.

Got to admit that this medium difficulty level trek is harder than I thought. But who am I to know. Never done such trekking in my life. I have just one tip to give you: keep walking.

Nevertheless, walking is great (yeah, right, now I can say that).

The scenery is breathtaking. Not only that, because we relatively going uphill all the time, the scenery changes everyday and so does the vegetation. Day 1 – is almost like any other forest you see in tropical countries, then the vegetation got thinner until we arrived in desert.

I must give you the statistics to let you have a better idea on the terrain we faced, both in terms of approximate distance (not calculating the (horizontally and vertically) winding roads) as well as the climb (sigh). The number in the brackets denotes the position of the town above sea level.
Day 1 – Galesor (?m) to Tatopani. Distance: 16 km
Day 2 – Tatopani (1190m) to Ghasa Distance: 12 km
Day 3 – Ghasa (2120m) to Tukuche. Distance: 13 km
Day 4 – Tukuche (2590m) to Jomson. Distance: 13 km
Lunch at the apple capital city of Nepal, Marpha.
Day 5 – Jomson-Kagbeni-Jomson. Roundtrip: 16km. Six bloody hours of horse riding through a wind-mad desert. It hurts – you know where. All I can say is: now I understand why cowboys walk the way they do.

From Jomson, we return to Pokhara. Using what? Small probably 20-seater aircraft. For how long? Ooh, just about 20 minutes flight ☹ Four days of trekking equivalent with 20 minutes air flight. Geez.

What to have: good trekking shoes and socks, (waterproof) jacket, extra clothes incase it gets chilly, hat, sunglasses, walking stick (yes, a must), waterproof rucksack with lock and a daypack, camera, water, and tons of sun lotion. Oh and good friends who can laugh on just about anything plus a good guide and a strong porter. AND a good sense of humor.