Trekking In Nepal: Headed Down the Valley (Part V)

It was a decent night's sleep by the time I woke up at 4am, but I dozed in my sleeping bag until almost 7am.  The temperature was about 35 degrees F in the hut, so it was with reluctance that I got up, got dressed and walked over to the tea house lodge.  We sat at a table in the corner and the large windows framed up an incredible, cloudless view of the Himalayas to our north and west.  After some ginger tea, cheese omelet and Tibetan fried bread with jam, I was ready to get on the trail.  We packed up and started back down the valley at 8:30am with the plan being to go back past Ulleri and down the 3,200 stone steps to a tea house by the river, a drop of over 6,000 feet of elevation.

The weather was nice and I quickly took off a couple of layers as the day warmed up.  After going through the forest a bit and making good time, we stopped at a small tea house with a great view of the "Fishtail," a sacred peak with a split summit.  Some ginger tea and cookies made for a nice morning snack before we continued down towards Ulleri, the village where we had spent our first night of the trek.

We made it to Ulleri just before noon and stopped at a small restaurant with a large flat area overlooking the upper valley and Annapurna South.  My appetite was completely recovered and I enjoyed some vegetable fried rice.  We rested at a table under an umbrella as the sun continued to heat up the day.  After an hour, we semi-reluctantly got back on the trail.  I say semi- because we were enjoying the hike, but didn't look forward to going down the 3,200 steps. 

You might think that going downhill is easier, but it works the front of the legs and the calves - different than the muscles needed for going uphill.  My trekking poles came in very handy for ensuring balance, as the steps were irregular and required a lot of attention.  After an hour of the steps, I was feeling it in my legs and in one of my ankles that I've sprained in the past.  However, we made good time and got the the bottom by 2pm.  Making it to a nice tea house where we would spend the night, our reward was a snack of Everest beers and Oreos while sitting at a picnic table next to a river.  It was relaxing and replenished my carbs.

After talking for a while, I went to my room and laid down for about an hour to get off my feet.  We went down to the tea house lodge for dinner about 5pm and put in our orders.  There was a funny sign that basically stated guests could not bargain for dinner prices (most goods can be bargained for in Nepal).  Vegetable fried rice was good for lunch, so I ordered it again along with ginger tea and some fried potatoes.  We were low enough in the valley that there were monkeys of some kind playing in the trees nearby.  After talking until 8pm, we went back to our rooms and I laid in the dark.  The room walls were the thickness of a sheet of plywood (okay, they were sheets of plywood), so conversations (and snoring) from adjacent rooms kept me awake until I drifted off about 10pm.

Next up: We complete the trek with a half day of hiking back to Nayapul, and then drive 90 minutes back to Pokhara for a relaxing lunch and a short afternoon flight back to Kathmandu.

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