retrace: 12.03.2010 annapurna circuit trek-day 2

bholebhole-bahundanda-syange

first real day of trekking-lovely walk.

we started in bholebhole.  we walked past several small villages, with various lodges, still seeing power lines and roads.  but after a short time, beautiful views of the valley that we were walking opened up to us.

the trail is a road for the necessities of life to travel on, to keep the villages along the way sustained.  i am not sure how the effects of having the circuit through this area has changed it, as there were always villages here, and so always a path.  but the infrastructure set up for trekkers is amazing, given the difficulties of distance and accessibility. 

we share the trail with donkeys empty or loaded, depending upon their direction, porters with seemingly unmanageable loads navigating the path with precision in flip flops and the rare other trekker.  it feels as though, seeing so few trekkers, that we have the curcuit to ourselves.  it is a great feeling, and i cant even imagine what it would be like during peak trekking season.  to share the beauty with so many, would surely detract from it a bit....as the silence might be rarer.


we came to our first suspension bridge valley crossing.  over the course of the trail, there were many.  but this was the first.

so as we got farther from bholebhole, the more the beauty became apparent.  as we walked, rice terraces like some human representation of a topographic map, each level of elevation represented by a tier of rice.

so we arrived in the small town of bahundanda, for some reason a town not linked to any area association (each village area is governed by a local committee that establishes fixed prices for trekking amenities such as restaurants and accomodation, to keep things fair and regulated).

lunch was a bit off (bahundanda), and turned out to be the worst taste of the whole trek (better sooner than later).  the infamously horrible dalh bad, which even others we met commented on.  wish i had pictures to capture the various grays that made up the dish.

we continued onto syange seeing the river again, as well as  a waterfall, some last views for the day.