Mountains, part quattro (Poon Hill to Landruk, 8 hrs)

After the sunrise walk to Poon Hill, then back down to Gorepani to get our bags, we set out for the most challenging day thus far.  Most people go from Gorepani to Ghandruk and stop there, but we decided to truck on to Landruk since the walk from Ghandruk to Landruk is intense and we wanted to get over that hump and rest in Landruk.  Gandruk is also a bigger village and we wanted the slightly less traveled path.  Here's us having breakfast at Super View Hotel in Gorepani after getting back from watching the sunrise up at Poon Hill, with the Annapurnas in the backdrop.  Max is sporting his Indiana Jones hat here.  For breakfast I had some really yummy tangy homemade yogurt with museli.  Max had his usual egg and veggie fried rice, and Ryan saw how amazing my yogurt and museli was (i had it for lunch the day before when we arrived in Gorepani as well) so he got the same.

It was so moving to see the mountain tops poking through the clouds from different angles along the trek, and experience the drastic changes in scenery we walked through.  We were hoping to be immersed a blanket of bright colors in the rhododendron forests, but we must have caught the tail end of the bloom, so most of the flowers were peppering the ground with splashes of red and pink, but occasionally we saw a glimpse of some still in the trees.

Lunch and dinner in the mountains in Nepal consists of Daal Baht (rice and lentils - see the photo 2nd up), which Ryan ate at every meal, but Max and I mixed it up a little with veggie fried rice (also pretty much guaranteed to not upset your stomach).  It's customary to eat Dall Baht with your right hand, there's a whole technique to scooping it and pushing it in to your mouth in an orderly fashion, something I wasn't really able to master without making a large mess.  After lunch and a nap on the lunch table benches, we started to make our way through the jungle.  This jungle looked like a scene out of lord of the rings or some other movie, with dim lighting but rich, vivid green hues, a jungle that would be pretty scary at night with all the hanging vines and chirping insects and squirming leeches.  

We stayed at the Annapurna lodge where we had awesome views of.... the Annapurnas!  After our incredibly long day we decided to splurge on a beer and pose for some highly sophisticated artistic photos.