Annapurna Trek & Pokhara

It is actually not too easy to find a short, but still attractive trek in Nepal as most of the really spectacular ones last between 10 and 28 days - no wonder with all the terrific Himalayan mountains they have around.
However, we found the Annapurna Panorama Trek which is a 5-6 day circuit south of the peak with supposedly beautiful panoramas of the Annapurna range. Additionally, it was rated as an "easy to medium" hike which was important for me (Moni), but an easy 5 day trek carrying my own luggage, I felt confident enough to do it.
Folks, I swear to you, if I ever find that guy who rated the Panorama Trek as "easy to medium" (source: Lonely Planet, Trekking in the Nepal Himalaya) I am not sure what I will do to him!! Least of all, drag him to Nepal, make him do the trek with a 7kg backpack on his shoulders and tell me afterwards if he is convinced his "easy" rating is still appropriate. Literally none of the passages we did was "easy".
Just as a comparison: the Everet Base Camp Trek that Alex did was rated "medium to hard" and Alex said in all those 13 days they never had such steep and awful paths.

So we aimed to leave Pokhara at 7 in the morning, but ended up only leaving at 7:30 because we picked the take-away café with the slowest and most incompetent staff in town (as the only one open). Our taxi then brought us to Naya Pul, the starting point of our trek. It was an easy walk on a dirt track, used by Jeeps, to Birethani where we had to show our 2 trekking permits (TIMS for registering independent travelers and ACAP for the Annapurna Conservation Area).
By the way, we had opted to walk by ourselves without a guide and without a porter as it was only a 5 day trek, so we took a minimum necessary and were able to carry it by ourselves. Even though the routes were not really marked and indications were rare we still managed to find the correct way :).

The first day we were facing a climb of 900m altitude. From Birethani (1022m) it was still a pleasant walk up to Syauli Bazar. The valley we hiked was really steep (realized only later what that means exactly) and was full of rice terraces on each side. The fields were super lush and green and ready to be harvested in October. Never seen such beautiful colours on rice fields. So we arrived in Syauli Bazar, had a quick tea and continued. And  then hell started...

The "last" 700 meters of altitude on the way to Ghandruk we had to walk up were only stairs! 700 meters of altitude on stone steps of different sizes, heights, lengths,... It was wet, muddy, slippery,...  Even though the sky was cloudy, with the heat and humidity I felt like Kung Fu Panda on a mission impossible and wanted to stop after around 5 minutes (that felt like 3 hours though).
Alex, however, tried to motivate me and somehow managed to convinced me to climb up the rest of the 15.000 stairs! Even though I had the feeling I was partly walking backwards (I was REALLY slow!) we arrived in Ghandruk (1940m), our first stop, after about 4,5 hours in total. It was a tiny little village built on stone steps - what else - with plenty of teahouses to spend the night. You must be climbing at least a 1000 stairs between the entrance and the exit of the village, that's how steep the hill is!
This is one of the big luxuries of trekking in Nepal: on most of the routes you do not have to bring camping gear, but you can sleep and eat in the numerous teahouses/lodges/guesthouses on the way. The rooms are of course basic (4 walls, 2 beds, 1 tiny table) and we usually opted for the shared bathroom (it is still shoulder season so we did not have to fight with tons of other trekkers for toilet and shower), but we had hot shower and sometimes even wifi!

After an early end of the day, we had an early start the next day because the best time to see the mountains is usualy between 6 and 8am. The first 2 days, however, we would not have even guessed there are some 8000m peaks around as they were hidden in the clouds all day long. On day 2 we climbed from Ghandruk to Tadapani (2650m) through pine and rhododendron forest along idyllic rivers and waterfalls and guess what: 80% of the way were again stone steps... As we left early, we had a short day and arrived in Tadapani around midday already. That was good because an hour later it was pouring rain! Given the still wet season, the creeks were powerful and the waterfalls impressive.

The next morning we were finally lucky and around 6:30 we had breakfast outside with a view on Annapurna South (7219m) and Machhapuchare "The Fisthtail" (6993m).
Already an hour later, they were covered by clouds again. We hit the road for a rather long day to go to Ghorepani (2880m) via Banthanthi Pass (3180m). The landscpae was again very beautiful with lovely gorges, rivers and waterfalls in lush green forests, but the climb (again a big part on steps) was super steep and exhausting again (at least for me, Alex is a machine and therefore not to be taken as a yardstick!).
We arrived in the early afternoon and yet again before the pouring rain started. We made our preparations for the next day, which was a big one again.

At 4:45 we planned to hike up from Ghorepani to Poon Hill (3210m), a viewpoint which is very popular for sunrise. As the cold I have been carrying with me for days had turned into a nasty sinusitis and it was still raining in the morning, I decided to stay behind and Alex went to see the sunset alone (apart from all the other trekkes who did the same).
The clouds lifted and he got some pretty good views on the Himalayan range. When he came back for breakfast the view was even getting better and as it was sunny, we both hiked up to the viewpoint again and got some breathtaking panoramas of Hiunchuli (6441m), Annapurna South (7219m), Annapurna 1 (8091m), Nilgri (7061m) and even tremendous Dhaulagiri (8167m). It was a specifically bright and clear day as we enjoyed the views until almost 9:30.
Then we returned to Ghorepani, picked up our backpacks and hit the road to Tikhedunga (1540m), which meant a descent of around 1300m. Fortunately, the upper part was mainly a normal path without too many steps and pleasant to walk. The last hour and 500m descent were yet again some steep stairs - people claim it is around 3.300 steps, but after we had already done 15.000 steps on day 1... ;). Knees and calves were suffering a lot (at least for Moni), but we made it.

The last day was for a change a really short one with hardly any steps. We were again down in the valley enjoying the super green rice fields, powerful rivers and lots of sunshine. We arrived at Birethani at around 10am, checked out at the checkpoints and went to the bus stop. As we had plenty of time we wanted to take the cheaper option back to Pokhara. The taxi drivers, however, really wanted some business and finally offered to take us back for just a little more than the bus option. So it was more comfortable and a lot faster to go back.

In Pokhara, we went back to the accomodation where we had left most of our luggage behind, took a long shower (it felt sooooo good) and put our stinky clothes to the laundry.
The coming days we will just hang around in Pokhara, walk to the World Peace Pagoda, do some yoga, get a massage (oh yes, our feet and legs definitely need one , I am still walking down the stairs like a drunken penguin!) and enjoy life. We'll then take the tourist bus back to Kathmandu (yes, a proper and comfy bus with AC and no stupid fans and dirty seats :D) as Alex has not really seen much of the city yet and on 30th September we already leave Nepal and head to Vietnam with a short stopover in Bangkok.

We'll give you some news from northern Vietnam as soon as possible - but as usual depending on the availability and quality of the wifi ;).

In the meantime have fun checking out the mountain pictures!
Take care and talk to you soon,
Alex & Moni