📸 — Day 3: Annapurna Circuit, Nepal

Our Little Detour🌏✈️ 👫
A Little Detour
Published in
6 min readApr 16, 2019

After a good night’s sleep, we hiked through the same village we did an evening stroll through. We decided to hike a new trail that opened just recently. So we went up into the rice fields and crossed several tiers when all of a sudden, Sonam started giving Prem a hard time in Nepalese… we didn’t understand why.

Prem pulls out his phone and starts calling people… we start walking back and forth when it starts to feel like we are lost.

Yes, we are lost.

After the road was built, alternative hiking trails were built and sometimes they are not as clearly marked as they could be. Prem was calling the locals from our tea house and asking where the trail is supposed to be. Sonam was carrying both our bags up-hill for 45 min and after we retraced our steps all the way back to the beginning, we met some school kids who helped direct us in the right direction.

We were lucky — kids go to school Sunday to Friday. So the fact that we were hiking on a Sunday and had some locals help show us the way was pretty awesome.

As we got back to the trail, we realized that we had hiked so far up the rice fields, that we were only one or two tiers away from the trail.. but didn’t see it so walked all the way back to the beginning.

Sonam was mad at Prem and officially called “friends off” for a few hours walking ahead. But when we got to lunch, it was a joke and all of us laughed at the 2-hour detour we made.

The rest of the hike was generally a plateau with the exception of a huge hill we climbed at the end of the day to bring us into the beginning of the altitude zone.

Day Three Summary:

Start time: 8:45am
Total distance: 20.3 km
Gherma → Tal

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Falling asleep to the sound of the water fall was pretty awesome. There was a hike you could do directly to the front of it, but after a day of hiking we decided to hang around, read and relax for the night.
The smog in the skies started to clear, I assume is it left overs from Kathmandu but it usually cleared about around later afternoon.
This is the moment we got lost and found all the school kids walking to class. We chatted with them and they got us going in the right direction.
You walk up and down for 20–30 min at a time into the various villages perched on the canyon walls.
We hiked along the road (the original Annapurna circuit trail) as well as the new trails that went up higher into the canyon. We saw hardly any cars so it wasn’t too bad at this point, plus the views were hard to beat.

We met some girls in a mountainside village and I taught them how to make funny faces in pictures.

Many people never get a good printed photo of themselves — so you will see some printed and hung on the walls with such pride. Next time I come I’ll bring a Polaroid so I can give them to the kids as we pass by.

They were so cute and talking with all the hikers that passed by as their daily entertainment.
As you walk by the villages, they list out all the tea houses you can stay at along the way. You could stop as frequently as every hour or two.. or make it to key destinations to keep your trek on a timeline.
Maeghan ordered spring rolls… and these behemoths came out. They were twice the size of a hot dog each!
So many animals all around — goats and cows walk freely along the canyon but only have bells to notify local farmers where they are at.
The bridges are made of cement, chainlink fence and a metal crate type flooring. We crossed many, but they are still terrifying and often quite long to cross.
This picture hardly does any justice to the stones.. but today on the trail, the path was covered in these rocks that shine like crazy! They break up and the dirt looks like someone spilled sparkles along the trail! It was awesome.
The road on the left, hiking the new trail on the right.
Maeghan is not a fan of hiking specifically when it comes to uphill ascent. But this trip she only complained a handful of times as she worked her way through. What an achievement! She must be getting in shape :P
Towards the end of the day, the weather changed to be a bit less tropical, and cooler. The trees started to change with that landscape too.
Our first big mountain to ascend — hiking up these rocks for an hour trying to beat the coming rain.
We reached the rocky top and entered the high altitude trekking zone.
Lots of construction along the trail — there is a new airport being built in Pokhara, roads being developed and many new tea houses being built.
We got to our tea house, and I giggled, the menu is pretty big, but always the same everywhere you go. Sometimes they have fewer veggies so it may be more diverse in the beginning and then by the end of the trek only include one or two veggie types. But in general, this is what you would eat.
This is when Prem introduced us to the local game of Ludo. It is kind of like Trouble, or Sorry — but all locals have this game on their phone or a big board they play with. We decided to start an evening competition between the four of us.
Rooms still pretty nice, we have a seated toilet in our room and cold shower (The gas hot shower was in the main area).

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Our Little Detour🌏✈️ 👫
A Little Detour

hi there! Maeghan & Oli here — we’re checking in from our around-the-world tour. See pictures here, read content here 👉www.alittledetour.ca