Love your website! Can you tell me where this is? My boyfriend and I are planning to go to Nepal, but still looking for a good trekking experience, and this looks exactly what we are looking for!
Hope you can give us some advice. We have 6 days in the area of Pokhara for trekking. We aren’t hardcore trekkers, like to trek 5-6 hours a day. I’d like to come some little closer to the snowy mountains, so I did not only saw them far far away when I return to Holland :). Next to that we would like to do some homestay overnights.
Next to this, I arrived on your website because I typed in ‘bodnath’ and ‘Tihar’ in google. Can you tell me if Bodnath is a good place to be at the evening of Depawali? (3rd day of Tihar). Someone advised this to us, but Bodnath is a Buddhist place, while Tihar is a Hindustan event! I really hope you can give us some advice about this too.
Tnx a lot!
Grtz, Mirella (Holland)
Thanks Mirella! This photo is from Dhampus which is actually very close to Pokhara, in fact the lazy just go there for the day (it’s only a few hours walk from the main road) and come back! Of course you need to stay overnight there to get the nice sunrise you can see in that blog post. With the amount of time you have in theory it would be possible to do the same route as me but you would be trekking long hours every day and it would be very hard work. I would suggest instead the Annapurna Sancturary route which is only around 5 days. It still passes through a bunch of nice terrace farmland, jungle and you go into Annapurna Base Camp which is amazing (do a search on that on my blog to see the photos), then back again. You could mix it up by coming a different route for the last part of the way down after Chhommrong, for example you could end your trek in Dhampus instead of Naya Pul. Do some research on Annapurna Sanctuary trek and Annapurna Base Camp treks. Anyway I really don’t think you can be dissapointed with Annapurna Base Camp, its the trek that I was advised by lots of people when I was asking around because I also had a short amount of time. It has the best variety of scenery and you get right into the heart of the mountains at the high point.
Homestays might be trickier, this region is all geared up for lodges, in fact some of the villages ARE just lodges. You’d have to do a bit more research into this, I am sure any villager will be happy to have you for some money, I met some girls who just went around knocking on doors because they wanted to eat with the families and paid them a few dollars for the food, then it was like a homestay experience without the sleeping. It is possible to do homestays all over Nepal though and in any of the hilly areas they will be similar to the mountains. Bear in mind that the trekking is hard work, and you really want a good nights sleep – homestays will have very hard beds and be even noisier than the lodges (which have paper thin walls). Everyone and the animals get up at like 5 in the morning which can be a killer if you want a lie-in!
I went to Bodnath on the third day hoping for some amazing lamps or something but was dissapointed. There were some butter lamps, but those are there on a lot of nights anyway. You can do a search for Diwali or Tihar on my website to see the stuff I did find over the Tihar festival. I found it hard to find local info about where was good to go for the lights, never getting a definiive answer from the locals. However as you can see from my pics for that night, the local businesses all have nice temporary shrines set up and the area of Thamel and around Durbar Square was beautiful with all of these candles outside the shops and coloured fairy lights hanging over the streets. If you find out any other good places to see the lights please let me know! There must be some places or temples that are more impressive!
Hi Alan,
Love your website! Can you tell me where this is? My boyfriend and I are planning to go to Nepal, but still looking for a good trekking experience, and this looks exactly what we are looking for!
Hope you can give us some advice. We have 6 days in the area of Pokhara for trekking. We aren’t hardcore trekkers, like to trek 5-6 hours a day. I’d like to come some little closer to the snowy mountains, so I did not only saw them far far away when I return to Holland :). Next to that we would like to do some homestay overnights.
Next to this, I arrived on your website because I typed in ‘bodnath’ and ‘Tihar’ in google. Can you tell me if Bodnath is a good place to be at the evening of Depawali? (3rd day of Tihar). Someone advised this to us, but Bodnath is a Buddhist place, while Tihar is a Hindustan event! I really hope you can give us some advice about this too.
Tnx a lot!
Grtz, Mirella (Holland)
Thanks Mirella! This photo is from Dhampus which is actually very close to Pokhara, in fact the lazy just go there for the day (it’s only a few hours walk from the main road) and come back! Of course you need to stay overnight there to get the nice sunrise you can see in that blog post. With the amount of time you have in theory it would be possible to do the same route as me but you would be trekking long hours every day and it would be very hard work. I would suggest instead the Annapurna Sancturary route which is only around 5 days. It still passes through a bunch of nice terrace farmland, jungle and you go into Annapurna Base Camp which is amazing (do a search on that on my blog to see the photos), then back again. You could mix it up by coming a different route for the last part of the way down after Chhommrong, for example you could end your trek in Dhampus instead of Naya Pul. Do some research on Annapurna Sanctuary trek and Annapurna Base Camp treks. Anyway I really don’t think you can be dissapointed with Annapurna Base Camp, its the trek that I was advised by lots of people when I was asking around because I also had a short amount of time. It has the best variety of scenery and you get right into the heart of the mountains at the high point.
Homestays might be trickier, this region is all geared up for lodges, in fact some of the villages ARE just lodges. You’d have to do a bit more research into this, I am sure any villager will be happy to have you for some money, I met some girls who just went around knocking on doors because they wanted to eat with the families and paid them a few dollars for the food, then it was like a homestay experience without the sleeping. It is possible to do homestays all over Nepal though and in any of the hilly areas they will be similar to the mountains. Bear in mind that the trekking is hard work, and you really want a good nights sleep – homestays will have very hard beds and be even noisier than the lodges (which have paper thin walls). Everyone and the animals get up at like 5 in the morning which can be a killer if you want a lie-in!
I went to Bodnath on the third day hoping for some amazing lamps or something but was dissapointed. There were some butter lamps, but those are there on a lot of nights anyway. You can do a search for Diwali or Tihar on my website to see the stuff I did find over the Tihar festival. I found it hard to find local info about where was good to go for the lights, never getting a definiive answer from the locals. However as you can see from my pics for that night, the local businesses all have nice temporary shrines set up and the area of Thamel and around Durbar Square was beautiful with all of these candles outside the shops and coloured fairy lights hanging over the streets. If you find out any other good places to see the lights please let me know! There must be some places or temples that are more impressive!