Seat of Our Pants

Our seventh day walking was an easy one, relatively speaking. The day began bathed in sunlight, a welcome change to the previous night which we spent avoiding the misty cold. Our morning view helped us realize just how close we were getting to some of the impending giants (notably Annapurna III and Machhapuchare in the below picture, taken from our hotel).

View from Tadapani

The day’s walk began in the luscious Nepalese Rhododendron forest, a place so infused with green that you would swear the color was invented there. Moss covered tree branches hang above velvety, fern-covered forest floor in a veritable orgy of green. It’s the kind of place that the Cheshire Cat or Harry Potter hangs out in – a forest of someone’s fantasy, come to life.

Nepalese rhododendron forest

We left the forest, sadly only about an hour after entering it. The remainder of the day was spent traversing up and down stepped mountainside terraces. The people that colonized this area must be one tough bunch, indeed. Entire mountainsides are covered in terraces, a testament to the Nepalese work ethic, if nothing else.

The hike time for the day was just 3 ½ hours, divided equally between accent and descent. It was such a short day, in fact, that we arrived at the day’s destination, Chhomrong in time for lunch. Chhomrong, seen in the picture below, sprawls across a mountainside. We opted to stay in one of the guesthouses toward the top of the mountain, which afforded us a great (or scary, depending on how you look at it) view of the following day’s climb.

Chhomrong - as seen from our walk on day 8

Our evening was spent with good food, excellent dinner company (a mixed bag of Swedish, American, German, Brazilian and French) and a truly trekker-only dessert: deep-fried Twix bar, bathed in pudding. Yeah, that won’t be happening again

Yummy yummy - 5,000 calories for my tummy.

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