Annaurna Circuit Trek: Days 12-13

I was very happy to leave Jomsom and get back onto the Tibetan desert plateau, although the novelty of it had worn off. We passed through the town of Marpha, which is considered to be one of the loveliest villages in Nepal and wished we could have stayed there instead. The walking was pretty tough - rough roads, very dusty. There was nothing interesting about the landscape that we hadn't seen before. The best part of the day was a particularly good dal bhat lunch in Tukche and trying the apple cider there for which the region is so renowned. The afternoon was as tough as the morning and by the end of the day I was definitely flagging. We'd been putting in a lot of long days. We stayed at a simple but friendly lodge, again the only guests. I finally tried a deep fried Mars Bar, which I'd been eyeing up on almost every menu since we'd started the trek, but wanted to wait until I really felt I'd earnt it. It was every bit as delicious and coronory inducing as I'd expected.

Day 13 was another long one, but at least it's warm again and we were back to my kind of scenery; the Kali Gandaki was by now a fully-bodied river and there were plenty of trees around. Mountains seem to rise out of nowhere - we can see the snow-capped peaks but the bases are obscured by the haze and dust.

We were still walking mainly on dusty roads but they were smoother than the previous few days. (I forgot to mention in my last couple of posts that from Muktinath until Tatopani (the endpoint of Day 13) we were walking on roads with cars which threw of dust in our faces whenever the past, an unpleasant change from the Manang side.)

We had lunch by the splendid waterfall at Rupse, the only one in Nepal to be featured on one of the country's postage stamps. In the afternoon Maria and I got separated from the boys but made it successfully to Tatopani despite going a different way. We're getting on really well.

We checked into the Dhaulagiri Lodge and, after a couple of nights with just our group, I was delighted to be back with many of our trail buddies - cute Maria, Jolie, Paul, Patrice and Gord were all there. Tatopani, like the other place called Tatopani that I'd visited near the Tibet border, has natural hot water springs, in which my leg muscles and I enjoyed a good soak. Afterwards, I went to a local hole-in-the-wall with the aforementioned guys for deceptively strong apple brandy and meat (the photo I posted earlier when writing about the people I met on the trek was taken on this occasion). Returning to the lodge in a rather tipsy state, I enjoyed a good dinner (the lodge has a reputation as having the best food on the trail) and playded a merry game of rummy with Maria, Henry, Vivek, Dil and Ram (the photo I posted of us was taken then) and I there was a good group spirit.