Saturday, October 17: Disappointment & Amazement

I'm not quite sure where Friday ended and Saturday began. This was supposed to be the day that we woke up early and trekked to the top of Poon Hill to watch the sunrise. Friday night, right around the time I went to bed, my stomach started to feel a little weird. As I lay there trying to fall asleep, it kept getting worse. On top of that, I became very cold. At the elevation that we were at it was pretty cold, and the rooms had no heat. As the night went on, I wound up putting on as many clothes as I could.

My stomach got to the point where I thought I was going to throw up. I felt sorry for the lady in the room by the bathroom. I went there to try to throw up once or twice, and the walls were so thin, I could hear her roll over in her bed. I heard her make a comment to her guide in the morning about people in the bathroom in the middle of the night. I really thought my stomach was upset because of something I ate, and if I threw up I would feel better. I'll spare you too many more details, but I did wind up throwing up sometime in the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, this did not make my stomach feel better. We later decided that I got Giardia which is what Phillip had when we were in Bangladesh. Fortunately, Phillip had some medicine for this. Unfortunately, I didn't know this in the middle of the night, and I started to get a little worried. What if I got really sick? We were two days trek from anywhere, and we don't have any extra days to take to get back. I'm sure the lack of sleep made me feel worse than I really was.

I did manage to get a couple of hours of sleep before we were supposed to get up. I was feeling better after I woke up, but I decided that I should stay back while the rest of them go to the top of Poon Hill. After the sunrise, they were to come back and eat breakfast before we left. It takes about 45 minutes to trek from Ghorepani to Poon Hill. After dad and Phillip left, I tried to get a little more sleep. I eventually gave up on that and went outside to watch the sunrise from town. The view from Poon Hill is amazing as you can see by the pictures here, but the view from Ghorepani was almost as great. I walked up a few flights of steps in town and found a good spot to watch the sunrise.

The picture right above was taken from Poon Hill.
The picture below was taken from Ghorepani.

Ghorepani and Poon Hill are amazing in that you can see to separate ranges in the Himalayas. To the northeast is the Annapurna range that we could see from Pokhara, and to the northwest is the Dhalagiri range. The mountains were dozens of miles away, but they still looked huge. The two panoramic pictures above contain he 7th and 10th highest mountains in the world. Can you guess which two? I'll post the answer below.

We were supposed to make a large loop on our trek, and go to Ghandruk next. This would be about an 8 hour trek and would be the longest day of the entire trek. With me having been sick and dad being exhausted each day, we decided that we would go back the way we came. The first couple of hours weren't too bad. We made good time, and dad and I both felt better than we expected. My stomach still felt bad, and I didn't have any appetite, but I didn't get weak or tired. Dad did great until we stopped for lunch at the last village before we got to the 3,280 steps that we had to go down. It wasn't very long after we started going down these steps that dad started struggling. His knees are bad, and he began having trouble with one of them. He got to the point where our guide was helping him. As we got further down the steps, he lost all his strength in the knee, and Phillip had to help him as well. We did eventually make it to Tikedhunga where we stayed before. We spent the rest of the day taking showers and napping before going to bed early. In the morning, we would finish our trek and go back to Pokhara.

Did you figure out which two peaks in the pictures above are the 7th and 10th tallest mountains in the world? In the picture below, Dhaulagiri I is the large peak on the left. It is the 7th highest at 26,795 ft. high. Annapurna I is the 10th highest peak at 26,545 ft. Of the two peaks on the right, it is the rounded one on the left. The pointed peak on the right is Annapurna South which is 23,684 ft. high and the 101st tallest mountain in the world. In the Dhaulagiri range on the left, you can also see Dhaulagiri II in the far distance just to the left of Dhaulagiri I. It is the white peak that you can just barely see. It is the 30th highest peak in the world at 25,430 ft.