Trek Day 4

All were exhausted with the trek the previous day and hence the trek began a wee bit late. Within a short walk we reached the checkpost and after the customary verification we continued with our trek.

We were briefed that we should go down the chomrong hill and climb another hill to reach Himalaya and the day would be tough again. The initial part of the walk was quite at ease with us coming down the chomrong hill through stairs. We crossed another bridge similar to the new bridge and then started our ascend. I was pretty comfortable during descend thanks to my compression socks et al but as soon as i started my ascend my walk rapidly slowed down and my breathing was difficult. The weather too did not help.

The air was chilly but due to the body warmth created due to our walk we did not need any jackets. We reached Sinuwa for a drinks break. Words cannot explain the comfort given by the hot lemonade after a 2 - 3 hrs of strenuous walk uphill. After Sinuwa the trek was again downhill to reach bamboo where we had our lunch break.

Bamboo is technically the foothill of the great Annapurna range of mountains. Nepal Government recognises this area as a holy area and is maintained through the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA). Non Veg food is not served in ACA. Our lunch was the standard Nepali lunch of Dal Bhat served with greens.

After lunch we trekked further, henceforth the route was only uphill as we had reached the foothills of the Annapurna range. The duration of

trek was the longest this day. We had a break to refresh ourselves after a couple of hours of walk after lunch at Dovan. After Dovan the route was very scenic and it was a gradual climb through dense forest and shrubbery with a whole lot of Rhododendron flowers growing on the sides of the trek path (Rododendron is the national flower of Nepal). We crossed a small temple as well enroute. We reached Himalaya our pitstop for the night quite late around 6 PM. We had walked around 8 - 9 hours that day and ended a pretty tiring day at an altitude of 2900 Mts (9600 Feet).

At Himalaya the weather changed dramatically and it was very cold. Outside the tea house there were puddles of ice, our first episode of Ice during the trek was at that point of time. We had to take shelter with our jackets and had to give time for our body to get acclimatized to the altitude.