mytravelbugbite

Nepal is famous for its trekking opportunities with Everest, the Annapurna circuit and many more besides. For these you need more time than we had as this was primarily a trip to go to Bhutan. Not wanting to completely miss out we spent our last day of the holiday on a day hike from Kathmandu. We had to drive out to the start at Nagarkot with our guide.

The route began with a fairly flat track along the side of the mountain. There were views across to the Himalayas but there were clouds over Everest itself (fortunately we’d seen this from the plane the day before though). We only saw a couple of people coming in the other direction looking pretty puffed and we were soon to find out why.

A track led off the main road and started to descend down a very narrow set of steps that seemed to just keep going. As we were walking we saw some pretty large spiders to the side of the trail and we had kites flying overhead.

When the track started to level out we stopped at a small snack bar for a quick drink then we had to ascend the next hill, past a few isolated villages where one of the locals told us how they were still living in the corrugated irons shacks since their homes were destroyed by the earthquake 18 months ago as they had received no government aid yet. After this we descended to the end of our walk in Dhulikhel.

The whole trek was surrounded by some stunning views over the Himalayas in the distance but also of the paddy fields closer to us. The direction we went had far fewer inclines meaning it was not it was not as taxing as it would have been in the opposite direction but it was still a good few hours’ worth of hiking. It was a great way to get out of the city and get a small taster of the trekking Nepal can offer.

On the way home we stopped off at The Bakery Café which is an innovative, quirky food place where the waiters are primarily deaf and dumb and is a venture to help them get employment. The food was really good especially for our new favourite, MoMo. This place was well worth the time to visit and is part of a chain (although not all employ deaf waiters).

After finishing eating we went for one last shop in Thamel and then went to bed.

Have you been on any good day hikes in Nepal? Or any longer ones you can recommend to try anywhere in the world?