Back to reality

A long steep descent (1800m down!) into a desertic landscape and further to Muktinath followed behind the pass (on the same day we climbed it because there’s no accommodation) - it took our remaining energy and we were so glad to finally find a meal and a comfortable bed!

Muktinath is a pilgrimage site for Buddhists and since the hiking trail from Pokhara has been turned into a jeep trail it’s been commercialized. Thus, much concrete makes the townscape now and the bustle was a bit too much for us after two weeks in peaceful little villages.

While we continued to trek down from Muktinath on a beautiful side track to Jomsom, avoiding the jeep track, the landscape changed to flourish green and the apple blossom season had started.
This region is actually famous for its delicious apples (we loved and we will miss the apple pies up there!).

For timing reasons (we got accepted for meditation course in India that we didn’t want to miss), we chose to take a bus from Jomsom to Pokhara, it’s 150km and took incredible bumpy 13 hours including rockfall and a crash with a jeep on the narrow „road“, sometimes on the debris in the riverbed - our conclusion:

A bus ride on this road: never again!
Trekking in the Himalayas: again and again!Read more