Trek Days 10, 11 and Holi

Day 10 was another hard slog, 500m down 700m up and another 200m down to get to Ghandruk. All day we were in the cloud so it was very soggy. Nice forests tho...

It rained for the last hour and the guest house we were heading for was full so we ended up in a really run down place.
Ghandruk is by far the largest place I’ve ever been that has no road to it. Over 4000 people.

On the morning of day 11 the weather was much better and we realized it was Holi (the hindu festival of colour, the second biggest in the hindu calendar) as a couple of lads where preparing there paint as we had breakfast in the guest house garden. We let them paint a bit on our faces and headed off. It was a long 5 hour walk but all down hill. Really nice to see all the kids coming the other way covered in paint and often trying to cover us.

Even the man at the national park check post was covered...

I was lucky enough to be in Hampi for Holi in 2002 and the people here seem, for the most part, a bit more polite about painting strangers. Although there still pretty insistent.
We finally reached a road and got a taxi the 40Km (2hours on these roads) back to Pokhara. We had to keep shutting the windows as kids were throwing paint water at the passing cars. As we got closer to the city there were big gangs of paint covered motorcyclist roaming around.

Was all pretty mad to come back too.
I got a new room (pretty plush with balcony and wifi, £3.50 per night) and rested up.
Today I ache a lot.