Trek The Unknown

Leaving Out Chame in the morning let’s you enjoy a pleasant walk, except of one climb before reaching Bhratang. We left Chame at 7:25 in the morning and reached Bhartang at 9:05, total of one hour and a half. The road goes along and reaches Dhukur Pokhari, we were there two hours and 10 minutes later, the walk was still nice and easy.

At this day you reach a dryer part of the Annapurna range. The vegetation is thinner and less trees are around.

Sometime later we reached Lower pisang ( Acap map show that you 1st reach Upper Pisang and then Lower Pisang, but on the way we took which was shorter it goes the other way around ).

the trails inside lower Pisang are a little big confusing. There is one split on the way that goes to Upper Pisang, from there the road continues to Ghyaru.

A shorter way would be to keep go straight on the road until you see a big prayer wheels wall. From there you get 2 choices. The harder and nicer one would be to turn right towards the end of the well and cross the bridge. If you want the easier ,less scenic way just keep walk straight. This is a pretty straight road with no ups and downs going all the way to Manang. We chose the harder one and turned right.

When you cross the bridge after turning right you will see Upper Pisang on your right (even when you are in Lower Pisang, you always see Upper pisang on the other side of the river). Take a left turn right after the bridge. This is the way to Ghyaru.

The way now is very easy with short climbs up. You will walk by a small clear lake and right after it there is another bigger lake (The clearest one I’ve seen in my life!Beautiful!). In order to enjoy it’s view, leave the trail and go along the shore. If you keep go along the lake shore you’ll bump again to the trail so don’t be afraid loosing it.

Again…walking is fairly easy now…until you reach a bridge. Cross it…and look up…Ghyaru is up there. The Climb is long and took us almost an hour ( I think it was around 50 minutes). But I must say after almost a week of walking I felt this climb was easier for me to climb than I thought it will be. Your body will get use to these kind of climbs and walks.

The view is more beautiful from each moment to another. When you reach Ghyaru you see a few of the annapurna range tops. From left to right you are able to see: Annapurna II, Annapurna IV, Annapurna III, Gangapurna and Tilicho Peak on the far right.

It’s truly amazing!

We started our day on a microbus going from Kathmandu to Besisahar (300 Rupee). We’ve been told that if you take a bus it cost less but takes an extra 1-2 hours. we decided to pay the extra. We left at around 6:30 in the morning and arrived at around 13:30. From Besisahar it’s possible to save a few hours of walking and take another bus to a village named Bhulbhule. The ride goes through another village named Khudi. Since there were no seats inside to bus, we were sent straight to the roof. Hey, it’s Nepal!

Here are the friends I was traveling with on the roof. It’s very amusing at the beginning but then your a*s really hurts. It’s not really a road but more close to a VERY bumpy trail.

This bus costs 50 Rupees (no discount If you had a roof ride!). When walking there aren’t too many ups and downs so the hight of Besisahar and Bhulbhule is around the same and walking isn’t hard. Distance is 9 KM. We’ve been told it would have taken us 3 hours to walk, It took around half of the time to drive.

We ended the day in a guest house in Bhulbhule. It’s a nice village which is built on to sides of the river, and a bridge over troubled water is hanged over it. We were very excited, to begin our journey the day afterwards.

The “Annapurna circuit” AKA “around Annapurna” is one of the most popular treks here in Nepal. Being around here in Nepal, everybody are talking about the “around”. It’s a pretty hard trek, but more because of it’s length and not because of the climbing skills you are required for (no climbing skills required!).

It can be done in 15-17 days, depends on your pace. I heard of people doing it in 10 days (nowadays, it’s possible to get a jeep and drive some of the way and save a couple of days) and older groups of people doing it in 24 days.

Views in the trek are magnificent, it’s surrounding one of the Himalaya beautiful ridges.

The starting point of the trek is in a town called Basisahar (can be spelled in some other ways, depends on the map you are using) and ends in either one of 2 places, Beni or Nayapool. It’s all depends on how much walking strength you have

Basisahar is in the middle way between Kathmandu and Pokhara, so you can begin your ride from either of the two cities.

These 2 places are where it’s possible to take a bas back to Pokhara after finishing the trek.

In each and every day of the trek you have the possibility to sleep in a guest house, so camping is really not necessary and there is no need to carry a tent with you. If you do want to do some camping, you are most welcome. Tent, stove and all other additional equipment is then required , of course.

Many people say that living costs on the trek are very expensive. well, if you did stay in the Thamel for a couple of days, costs would be around the same.

Room charges are relatively low and gets to their pick almost at the pick which is high camp guest house at high camp after throng phedi. it’s the same price you will pay for a a guest house in the Thamel area in Kathmandu (320 rupees). The deal is that you pay almost nothing to the guest house for sleeping but in exchange you buy your food and meals from them. If you decide to eat your own food, room charge will be higher and sometimes double.

Get ready because this trek is going to be one of your major life experiences! not every day you get a chance to be out of civilization for 2.5 weeks.

One very important thing, these days a road is being built to most of those villages around the trek. In 4-5 year most of the circuit could be done buy driving and not walking. I’ve been told that the trekking committee or other Nepali organization are looking for new trekking routes in order to overcome this problem.

So…go now!

If you have some more questions on this trek, just add the questions on the comments, I’ll add it up to this post. I might be forgetting some points you are pondering about.