Day 4 - Manaslu trek

Unfortunately, today was not a good day to begin with for me. We had a tasty breakfast in our dining hall and then headed out. The trail began with most of the morning on a steep uphill, and I was not feeling strong today. It felt like all the energy had gone from my muscles, and my feet felt like lead. I'm a slow walker and usually at the back, but today I was really falling behind. At one point, I had a wobble and burst out crying, thinking I couldn't do it. "This is so hard, why am I doing this?" But once I'd dried my eyes and received some amazing encouragement and love from James, I was able to carry on and put those negative thoughts behind me.

For lunch, we stayed at a very picturesque tea house with babies and children playing as we ate, who were really sweet to watch and interact with. We also all took the opportunity to take off our shoes and re-energize after a long walk. The afternoon passed much better for me; even though it was still uphill, I got into a rhythm, popped in a podcast, and was able to steadily tackle any incline. We passed through some beautiful forests and walked next to the rushing river rapids.

When we arrived at that evening's tea house in Namrung, at 2,600m, we were all thoroughly pooped and looking forward to peeling off our socks. We also met up with our old guide from Langtang, Dil Man, who was related to our guide and from the same village. We caught up and found we'd be walking with his group from Canada for the next day.

We ate a delicious dinner, pizza for me and Dal Bhat for James, and then enjoyed a large slice of homemade apple cake we'd purchased from the trailer earlier. Afterwards, after no Wi-Fi or signal since starting the trek I managed to tether off our guide's tiny bit of data and let me family know I was alive and likely wouldn't be contactable until after the trek.

With it starting to get colder we snuggled down into our sleeping bags and went off to bed ready for a early start tomorrow.Read more