Poon Hill

When I read about this trek before we left on the trip, articles considered this one of the “easiest” treks in Nepal that a 6 year old could do. Well - that 6 year old better be in some crazy good shape because we just spent 4 nights and 5 days getting crushed (in a good way though) by the Himalayas!

The Ghorepani-Poon Hill trek was an amazing and truly remarkable experience that I will forever cherish. We had a guide, Santosh, and two porters (each one carried a backpack - one with clothes and supplies and the other camera gear!). These 3 men made the trip for us - helped us every literal step of the way, helped us with finding delicious and authentic food, lodging, and were crazy patient with us as we walked usuallly up hill around 5-6 miles per day. We spent so much time together: ate together and laughed together - and they watched some of cry together.

This “tour” is not a luxury tour by western standards - we trekked during the day, stopped at open air guest/tea houses that served lunch, usually filtered our own water using our grayl water bottle, then trekked a couple more hours before we spent the night in a tea house which is a combined hostal/restaurant (all menus the same at each tea house in the region)- that have no heat other than furnace on the main level that everyone sits around getting warmed up by the heat and warm masala or lemon ginger honey tea. It was rough, cold and challenging — but that is part of what makes this so amazing and so worth it.

The food was amazing (lots of Dal bhat and veggie curry with rice and chapatis and Tibetan bread). The tea was divine. The duvets were super warm as long as an extremity didn’t poke out by accident in the middle of the night- even having my jacket covered shoulder exposed sent shivers through my whole body. Showers only happened once in 4 nights…

But we did it!

On day 3- we woke up at 430 am to hike in the dark to the summit of Poon Hill - if you can imagine walking up stairs non stop for an hour up the side of a large mountain in the dark- that’s what we did. The views were stunning the whole way up as the rising sun decided to slowly display ever changing colors across the sky. Brian and Maddie went up first and katie and I a bit slower - the views were stunning and we did it!!

We had our share of experiences with critters- between dogs and cats that jumped into the girls laps to their delight to Maddie and I separately finding ENORMOuS spiders (no joke - 5-6 inches across) in our bathrooms within 20 minutes apart at night, resulting in multiple frantic yelling out to our guide and having him laugh after lifting up and proudly showing us the very large dead bodies of the gargantuan spiders that are apparently common in this part of the country. We did not sleep well that night!

Anyhow were back in Pokhara now, got a deliciously warm shower, are back to school work, and will head back to Kathmandu tomorrow - overland rather than fly -because after our last flight we learned that the same airline (Yeti) AND route we flew on last week crashed 2 months prior to our trip. We hadn’t known that when we booked it, so decided to be on the safer side! So tomorrow we’ll drive between 6-8 hours to get back to Kathmandu.

We hope you are all doing well and hopefully enjoying the beginning or end of spring break back home!!

Next Stop: Cape Town, South Africa!! We leave on Monday.

Below is the overview of our trek- feel free to read or not but I wanted to remember some of the details for myself and the book I’m going to create from FindPenguins…

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overview of our trip:

Day 1: we drove an hour and a half from Pokhara to our trekking starting point (funny we thought those views were amazing at the beginning - little did we know!). Santosh had us drive a bit further up the trail than they would normally for adults since we had kids. It was appreciated!! We still walked uphill several hours. We stayed in Ulleri at night at a simple tea house with delicious food and masala tea. We taught Santosh Uno and had a woman from Spain join us - we got to practice our Spanish! We had our own bathroom in our room. It was cold! First time girls spent the night in a separate room from us.

Day 2: all day trek from Ulleri to Ghorepani and stayed at another tea house with stunning views of multiple snow capped enormous mountains. Basic room was freezing at night but very warm duvets!! Girls had to change clothes under the covers! 🤪 it worked well. We got to meet some fluffy sweet dogs and a very cute kitten that jumped on both girls laps - made their day. We also met some really nice people from Ireland that night who were super sweet in listening to a lot of kid dog and gerbil stories about back home! Kids had pizza - B and I ate some veggie thali- so so good!

Day 3: ugh - woke up at 430 am - could see our breath in the room. We got our head lamps out and began the early 5 am trek to Poon Hill. - an hour or so trek up - hard but amazing! Santosh got us some warm tea at the top and had helped encourage Katie the whole way up! Then we came back to the tea house for breakfast (delicious), warmed up near their large furnace and trekked the rest of the day (5-6 hours) to Tadapani. Santosh recommended a pony for the first hour of significant up hill trekking for Katie toward Tadapani - which ended up being a great idea because she was so exhausted and loved being on the horse! Tadapani ended up being awesome because even though we ended up at a tea house with a shared toilet for 20ish people, we met two French families living in Dubai - there were lots of kids and they got to play!!

Day 4: tadapani to Gandruk - girls said goodbye to their friends and we finally got some downhill but then realized our muscles got more sore from downhill than uphill! 3 hour trek to Gangdruk.

That night in Gandruk - my least favorite - I saw the biggest spider of life. So did Maddie - not cool but at least they weren’t poisonous!

Day 5: Gandruk to Pokhara - we trekked downhill only for over an hour and then car brought us back to our hotel (2 more hours). Long warm showers followed just about the second we walked back in here and we haven’t left the room since other than to get food downstairs !

It’s been an adventure!!Read more