Day 139 - 1200 Metres Elevation. Ghasa to Tatopani

I am feeling much better, though still not entirely up to snuff. The path from Ghasa to Tatopani follows the Kali Gandi river valley. We are well back into semi-tropical forest, punctuated with banana, orange, and lemon trees. Parts of the trail are marked with recent landslides - one having happened within minutes before our arrival. After our experience going to Thorung Phedi this makes me a little nervous, but we truck on. Further nervous-making is the state of some of the bridges. One that we crossed today was missing most of the fall-preventing mesh along its sides, tilted precariously, and lacked about half of its support cables. It was relatively low - a fall would have hurt, but not resulted in death - so we crossed our fingers and crossed the bridge. It held, and we arrived in Tatopani without incident.

Tatopani literally means "hot water", and the town is named for its natural hot spring. After our ascent and subsequent descent, we were all ready for some serious soaking. The water in one pool was very hot, the other pleasanty warm. We alternated between the two until our fingers and toes were good and pruny, then wandered back up the hill to our guesthouse.

Rather than rooms in a big building, the guest lodging consisted of tiny stone cottages set into lush gardens. The dining area was a deck surrounded by shrubs, lemon, banana, and orange trees. When we ordered juice with dinner, it came freshly-squeezed from the trees in the garden. It's hard to believe we are in such cvilization on a trek.

Tomorrow will be another long and hard trek. Poon Hill boasts the most gorgeous views of the Annapurna for sunrise, so we are going to push to Ghorepani, which is at 2800 metres, in order to make the sunrise trek up an additional 400 metres for the view. Yup, that is a 1600 metre ascent, plus the 400 metres to the tip of Poon Hill the next day, followed by a staggering 1800 metre descent to Naypul. What we do for the views is just incredible (or just plain crazy).