On the up and up

It is a glorious sunny and practically smog free day. We set out thinking that we had left the steps behind us, but it was not so. We climbed another 1000 metres today, but it was only a four hour walk. We stopped for some lassi on the way, and walked through some rainforest and passed some lovely waterfalls. Ray befriended a Belgian firefighter and harangued him for the next few climbs about what is wrong with Nepal. Suresh and I just thought he was doing a Ratna. There's nothing wrong with passionate people.

We arrived in Ghorepani for lunch. It's very much a tourist village with the best views looking out to the Anapurna range. We were organized to walk up to the Poon Hill lookout (just another 400 metres straight up, involving about 1 million steps) at 4 pm as the weather was good for a viewing. Otherwise we would have had to get up at 5am the next day to walk up in the dark for sunrise. To fill in time, we went for a tour of the village which took about two minutes, and then discovered the bakery which sold espressos, so we took up residence in the sun and chatted to two other hikers, one from Germany and one from Singapore.

It is an amazing view from Poon Hill. Did I mention the steps? We were looking out onto peaks that are over 8000 metres. We were just over 3200 metres, which is the highest we have been, outside of a plane. Once the sun set, it became very very cold. I had on my thermals, a jumper and a jacket and even though we set off down the hill at a cracking pace I was still freezing. They haven't heard of heaters, electric blankets or insulation, so we are now in bed with all our clothes on, including beanies and making use of our recently bought down sleeping bags.

Only four days to go on the trek. I think we are hiking over the top of the mountain tomorrow, which will involve about five hours of mostly up, and a little descent. Hopefully we won't freeze to death overnight.

Pics and Ray's comments to come...