Dharapani to Pisang

With bearing the previous day's rain, we were rewarded the next day, with our first "clear" view of snow capped peaks... stunning.

Leaving Dharapani, we set out before breakfast to reach the town of Chame (2670m). Not because of the distance, the decision to leave before breakfast was simply because of the service from the tea house we stayed in the previous night, was terrible (probably the worst on the trek). Instead we decided to stop for breakfast at the next town of Bagarchap (2160m), which according to the guide book use to be the popular over night stop, that is until a landslide devastated the town, wiping out several tea houses & people (including some trekkers). There is apparently a memorial, but we did not pass it.

Next we did a quick climbed up to Danagyu (2300m), were the route splits into a "lower" & "upper" route, the "lower" route being easier, but is apparently plagued by landslides, while the "upper" just translates to more climbing. Anyways, when in doubt, follow the donkey trains, so upper route it was.

Apart from the stunning scenery and just the exhilaration of trekking, the day was reasonably uneventful (well, in my opinion). So we reached Chame, sometime in the late afternoon and just making it before the rain set in. Chame, is a pretty big place (apparently it is the district headquarters of Manang), it even has a bank! I managed to find an Internet connection, but at about R20 for the 1st 10min and about R1 a minute afterwards (on a slow connection), I thought better of it.

The next day we left Chame with the goal of making Ghyaru (3670). On this section of the trail the path curves into the "Manang valley" and the views are definitely worth the walk. It really always amazed me how the scenery on the trek changes constantly, depending on the valley our in, similarly so do the people. When we reached Lower Pisang (3200m) the weather had begun to set in, so we decided to bed down for the night. With remaining day light hours, we some of the more energetic of us decided to run up to monastery on top of Upper Pisang (3300m), which turned into climbing another 100m, up the rest of the hill. The views of Pisang and the valley below definitely made the slog worth it (and it was a lot easier without backpacks).

I feel that at this point I should mention something about altitude, as I've been diligently including each towns altitude. First, just for interest, 3200m is enough to set off the first signs of Altitude sickness (i.e. head aches, loss of sleep / appetite) for some. The point however that I want to stress is that because town A is at Y meters and town B at X meters, it does not mean you are going to climb up Z meters, due to the formula X - Y = Z (i.e 3500m - 3000m = 500m), that would just be too easy. From my estimates, I figured that for each 5 meters we went up, we had probably dropped 1.5 meters. Hence to work out the average total "ascent", the formula looks something like this ... 1.5((X - Y) / 5) + (X -Y) = Z (i.e 1.5((3500m - 3000m) / 5) + (3500m -3000m) = 650m). Some days more, some days less, hence I recon this is average (though I've probably under estimated the initial ratio, will have to revisit this in a later post).