Chapter 1: Car to Pokhara
I saw lots of new things on the way. The only thing that was the same from Telluride was the Manakamana Cable Cars. I saw lots of bamboo swings on the way back. They were big. I also saw mini bamboo swings.
Enormous bamboo swings — my Mom’s turn!
Chapter 2: Map
Our first lodge was Tikhedhungga. Our next lodge was Ghorepani. Our next lodge was Tadapani. And our next lodge was Ghandruk.
Chapter 3: Things I Saw on the Trek
In my binoculars, I saw the first wobbly bridge that we went on. It was made out of metal and string. I saw lots of cairns – they are stacks of rocks and the rocks are really really flat. And when I saw cairns, I saw a big one and then I said to my mom, “can I make a cairn?” And then mine was really small, but then when my dad and sister and brother and my friend Dan came then we all made lots of cairns. On the last day of the trek I saw a horn of a buffalo. It was on the path. Lots of horses too. One time the horse whacked its tail into my eye.
Sumanth next to the cairn he built
Chapter 5: Games that we played
First we were playing this game that we should not get seen by anybody. Even the people in our trek. Then we played another game which we were all shooting everybody, but not the Nepalis. In the last lodge which was called Annapurna Lodge, we played this game that someone was the Zombie and if the Zombie or the guy who had the stick touched you then you had to be another Zombie. Then we played a game which was wrestling.
The End
by Sumanth
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Day 1
On the first day we had to walk along the river for the whole day. There were lots of switchbacks so there was lots of shortcuts. The trails were very bumpy. There was one river and there were lots of waterfalls coming into that one big river. We had a nice lunch then kept walking and fell asleep in the lodge in Tikhedhungga.
Trail following the river
Day 2
We woke up after a quiet sleep. Our destination on that day was Ghorepani. The second day we had to walk half jungle and half not. Later on we saw some monkeys in the wild that looked like they had a long stripy tail of black and white and they were hanging on trees and jumping from tree to tree. There were even some little little ones. The monkeys’ faces looked extremely round. He had a very long tail. There were trees in the middle of the path so you could go around the trees in two different directions. Then we kept walking and slept at the lodge called Hungry Eye in Ghorepani. It had a fire so it was a warm lodge.
Day 3
On Day 3 we woke up at 4am. Then we put on lots of layers on us because it was very cold. It was dark so we used head lamps. I was one of the first people so when I looked back I saw a stream of head lamps. It was beautiful. On Poon Hill, we took lots of photos. On Poon Hill there was a flat cloud on top of a mountain so that made the mountain look like it had a flat top. The sunrise at Poon Hill looked like the same sunrise as Lion King with purple clouds.
Sunrise at Poon Hill…
The mountain children and how they survive up there is very interesting. Because there is basically nothing up there like toys, paper, clothes, swings, electricity, education, cars, bicycles, buses, trucks – they just have to get around by foot, everywhere. We don’t use the nature much as much as they do.
Day 4
On Day 4, we walked from Tadapani to Ghandruk. It was so short. The snow capped mountains looked very steep. We kept seeing the same set of snow capped mountains from different places and different elevations. The porters were very entertaining to the little kids. We ate lunch at the lodge. We did not do much walking so we had lots of time and lots of fun in Ghandruk. We played a game called Mille Bornes, a French auto car racing card game. We also played a wrestling game with the other boys in the grass.
Dan and Sajjan playing the Mille Bornes card game
Day 5
On Day 5, we walked from Ghandruk to Kilyu. We took a jeep from Kilyu to Birethanti. We ate lunch there and then walked to Nayapul and took a bus back to Pokhara. We walked 41 kilometers in total. Our highest elevation was on Poon Hill at 3210 meters from sea level.
by Sajjan
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My First Trek
In my family there are three kids — me, Sajjan and Sumanth. All three of us wanted a video game called Wii. Our parents had explained to us that we had to walk 1,000 kilometers to earn the Wii. We decided to go on a trek. It was my first trek! I was very excited to walk a lot of kilometers and so were my brothers. At last, the first day of the trek arrived. We were on our way to Pokhara. In the car, I saw so many beautiful and interesting things. I saw a lot of brick factories, flowers, trees, forests, and even a few snow-capped mountains! We also saw some roads that were decorated for Dashain. It was like silver streamers hanging from long strings which were tied to poles next to the road. It was really beautiful.
Sparkling Dashain decorations
After looking out the window, we watched a movie. The car that we were riding in was the first car that I saw in Nepal that was able to play movies! We all crowded around the screen as we watched The Lion King. I loved it. Then we stopped to take a walk on a bridge, over a massive river. We had to take stairs down to the bridge which I found very slippery. The bridge was huge! We only walked halfway across it before we came back.
One pedestrian bridges across the river along the drive to Pokhara
Then we got back into the car and drove to Gorkha, an old town. We ate lunch there at a restaurant called Rest and Test. We all ordered noodles which were very spicy. A man brought us tomato sauce and chili sauce. I wondered why he brought chili sauce when it was already so spicy. After that, our father told us a story about how the king of Gorkha united Nepal. It was very interesting. Finally, we reached Pokhara. We settled down in our hotel called Splendid View. Then we walked to a Punjabi restaurant for dinner. On the walk, I noticed a lot of differences between Kathmandu and Pokhara that I wasn’t expecting. The roads in Kathmandu are a lot busier than the roads in Pokhara. In Pokhara, there are a lot more tourists than in Kathmandu so there are more hotels, taxis, travel agencies, tourist buses, and many more things for tourists than in Kathmandu.
The next day, we took a boat ride to the bottom of the hill that the World Peace Pagoda is on. It was very beautiful. There was also an amazing view of Pokhara. It looked a lot like Kathmandu does from Swayumbhu (a temple in Kathmandu on a hill) except for a big lake in the middle of the town.
World Peace Pagoda in Pokhara, built by the Japanese
Then we ate lunch at a restaurant called Sweet Memories. We also went to Devi’s Fall which is an enormous roaring waterfall. There was a lot of mist which felt very refreshing. Then, we went to our friends’ hotel called Hotel Temple Tree. Our friends’ names are Maanav and Zoya. Maanav is 7 and Zoya is 2. We went swimming with them.
The next day was the start of our trek! We quickly ate breakfast and went to Hotel Barahi to meet our friends. There were four girls and seven boys – eleven children total. The girls were Charlotte, Maya, Riya and I and the boys were Sajjan, Sumi, William, Olli, Dan, Jack and Nicky. We all got into a bus and drove to Nayapul. On the way I saw a lot of goats walking down the road. What would happen is about 100 goats would come with 1 goat herd at the back. The goats would split in the middle and about half of them would go on one side of the bus while the other half would go on the other side. It was very cool but I wondered why the bus never stopped when the goats were passing. I found it extremely interesting because I never saw that many goats before.
At last we reached Nayapul. We trekked mostly next to the river. There were a lot of bridges that we had to cross to get over the river. They were very wobbly so what I did is go on the bridge and move around a lot and then the bridge would swing a little bit. It was very hot but there were a lot of waterfalls so we could wash our face in them. The water was so clean compared to the water in the rivers in Kathmandu. You could actually see through them! One time, we passed such a big waterfall which was flowing across the trail so we had to take our shoes off to go through it. It was so fun but suddenly a bunch of goats came to cross the river so we had to rush to the other side of the waterfall and move to the side because we heard that if you get in a goat’s way, he will push you. The expressions on the goats faces were so confused. Some of them were about to jump into the next waterfall. It was so funny!
Crossing the trail in 8 inch deep water – see the goats on the other side?
We continued going until we reached the lunch spot. I had fried rice and so did my brothers. I really liked it. The meals are so different from the USA because whenever we hiked there, we always picniced for lunch but in Nepal there are teahouses in the middle of the trails so we stop there for lunch. Saddly, when we continued to Tikhedhungga, Riya felt sick so she had to ride on a horse. I wish she wasn’t sick because Charlotte, Maya and I weren’t able to keep up with the horse. At the lodge, the girls and I played a lot of hand games. We played Concentration which is a hand game where you keep saying words that have to do with one topic and you cannot hesitate or repeat words. We also played a hand game that we made up and we kept making up different versions and were silly about it.
The next day was the hardest day. We had to gain 2,756 feet of elevation. Riya, the lead guide and I were the first to reach the lunch spot. A few minutes later, Ollie came with his porter and then some other porters came. And then a long time later, everyone else came. I was really proud of myself because I got to the lunch spot first and I had never reached first before. In the beginning, it was hot so I wet myself a lot in the waterfalls. But when we started gaining more elevation, I started feeling cold and sick. After lunch it started raining. That made me feel even worse. FINALLY we reached Ghorepani. The porters were the people who carried our things such as clothes, sleeping bags, medicines, small toys and some other things that we didn’t carry. They were men who carried big bags of our stuff on their heads with a little string. It was so amazing how they climbed all of the steep steps and went across all the waterfalls with those heavy bags on their heads.
Our porters were in their late teens or early 20s
The next morning we woke up really early to climb Poon Hill and see the sunrise. I was SO tired. Riya and Maya both didn’t come, so it was just me and Charlotte. At the top, the sunrise was beautiful and we were surrounded by snow capped mountains but I don’t think that it was worth climbing Poon Hill because it was dark when we started climbing and I was tired. We came back to Ghorepani and had breakfast. Then we went to Tadapani and on the hike we climbed up and down steep hills. I was VERY tired. I bought a box of Pringles and ate it as I waited for my friends who were behind me. When they reached, we made up a silly song called “My Butt’s Rubbin’ on the Wall”. We sang it until dinner time and then a few more times before bed time.
The next day was the easiest day. I hiked at the back of the line with Charlotte, Maya, Riya and William. We all pretended to be different people and change our names. Charlotte was Georgina. William was George. Maya was Clara. Riya was Ashley. And I was Molly. We started talking about things that were made up. I found it very funny. When we reached Ghandruk we had lunch. Then us girls went into the “girls room” to write songs. We wrote a lullaby and a Jungle Song. We preformed the Jungle Song with singing, dancing, acting, mouth noises, costumes and props. Then after dinner we sang the lullaby around our only camp fire on the trek. It was really fun.
Charlotte, Maya and Janani performing the Jungle Song
The next day we were going to Nayapul. It was a long way but it was all downhill. On the way, we saw a bamboo swing. In Nepal, when it is Dashain, Nepalis build bamboo swings. The one that we saw was gynormous! It looked like it was as tall as someone’s house! It was really cool. We walked a little more and stopped to catch a jeep because we were too tired to finish the walk. The jeep ride was very bumpy because I was sitting with the three other girls. When we reached the restaurant we wrote a song while eating. We planned to perform it in Kathmandu. After lunch we walked to the bus which went to Pokhara and the next day we drove home.
I’m really glad that my friends came because when they were with me I felt like I walked faster because I was having fun. One other thing I really liked about the trek was the horse bells. When I saw horses passing by, they had bells on their necks and even though some of them were with the same shepherd, all of their bells were different. It sounded really nice when one would come after another and as they would pass by me, their bells would all make different sounds and it sounded like a song.
PS – Next time I want to go on a longer trek!
by Janani
five in the foothills 