Wednesday, December 8, 2010

5/10/2010 Saturday Day 16 ABC (Annapurna Base Camp) to Jhinudanda



I had the worst sleep in days last night, a combination of being too hot in my sleeping bag, Ollie’s night terrors and the constant opening of the door into our room by the lodge operators getting blankets, as our room was the store room.  When morning finally came around I was glad to get out into the sunshine and view the surrounding mountains dominating over me.

Porridge for breakfast as well as our usual lemon tea and we were off at 7:35 back towards Chhomrong, the downhill made the journey somewhat faster than yesterday’s trip in. We got into Chhomrong at 13:15 after 5 hours and 40 minutes. We had a cheese and tomato pizza in a restaurant 100 or so metres before our hotel where we had stashed the bikes. After our pizza and second/third beating of Ollie at chess we got to our bikes and did a quick repack and headed down the steep hill towards Jhinudanda. We planned to get to Jhinudanda to re-live our hot pool experience of Tatopani a few days earlier, however after arriving in Jhinudanda and finding a nice hotel the hot pools were still a 15 minute walk down to the main river of Modi Khola.



Making the walk down only further built my anticipation of getting into the hot pools and drinking a nice cold coke. However when we got there the pools were not quite the boutique pools we had imagined. The pools were smaller, colder and were packed with tourists; and worst of all no drinks for sale, BYO was available but I wasn’t going to walk for 30minutes back up the hill to get a drink.  Oh well we still soaked it up, first in the colder pool which would have been in the mid to high twenties and then in crowded hotter pool.  This pool also had a couple of pipes coming out of the ground  with heated water, this proved to be very nice to sit under as the power shower it was would massage your back and shoulders. 

We then made the walk back up to the hotel and finally got my cold can of coke that I had been craving for the last few days. This was quickly followed by a second refreshing can. I enjoyed the rest of the evening watching the sunset through the broken climbs and reflected on my time spent in Himalayas.  I felt somewhat sad as tomorrow was our last day on the track and tomorrow night we would be back to third world civilizations.  

Statistics: 4130m to 1780m 2350m descent.

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