Mardi Himal Trek

We drive from Kathmandu early in the morning on the first day of the journey, have our breakfast in malekhu (a small fishing town on the highways) and our lunch in Pokhara City. We continue our drive north to the mountainside from Pokhara. We hit our destination for the day after a 4-6 hour ride from Pokhara: Pothana. From here you can enjoy beautiful views of the Annapurnas and Machapuchre.

We start our day early in the morning with a refreshing yoga session, have breakfast and go uphill northward. In the early morning it’s virtually all thick forests with various sorts of flowers and birds to welcome us. We have lunch in one of the little tea houses along the path and continue north. After about 5-7 hours, we reach the forest camp, our destination for the day. We end our day after we dine and relax for the next day will be packed with stunning Himalayan views.

In this day we are reaching more altitude.The magnificent snow covered Annapurnas starts to emerge and you know that anything in these incredible mountains was worth every penny. We have our breakfast in forest camp and our lunch in the low camp that is about 3-4 hours of hard climb in the dense floral forests. We enter Badal Danda after a three-hour walk uphill from the forest camp. It looks like Machhapuchre Peak can be scaled, just a walk away. We’ll rest before the Machhapuchre for the day, have dinner and then bid a good night.

This will be the most relaxing walk of the whole journey. It is just a short ~2 hour hike from there to the mardi Himal high camp which is the last place where we can find lodges. The high camp can be seen from Badal danda making the walk even more comfortable in the head. We then have breakfast and depart for the journey to the high camp. Badal danda onwards, we shall stop seeing tall trees and rich vegetation as the path is full of rugged rocks, grasses and maybe snow and ice if the weather dictates so. Welcome to the Himalayas! We follow a ridge from Badal danda to the high camp when on the left you see the ever so beautiful Annapurnas, Machhapuchre and Mardi Himal in front of you and a thousand hills to the right. We reach the high camp and have our lunch and rest for the day. In the evening we dine and sleep exclaiming how beautiful the place is 😉 !

After having our breakfast earlier than usual we all get ready for a long day. We head towards the base camp not later than 5:30 in the morning. It is a challenging uphill hike in high altitude but as soon as you reach the Mardi Himal view point and realize that you’ve been waiting for this moment the whole trip and staring at the majestic snow-clad peaks from the Dhaulagiri to the Ganesh and everything in between including the prettiest of all Manaslu and the Annapurnas.
As beautiful the view is from there and no matter how much you’d wish your home were up there, we will soon have to descend to lower altitudes as the weather up there is very random and keeps changing very quickly. We make a quick descend to the high camp, have our lunch, pack our belongings and head towards a very lively village of Siddhing. We come down from the rugged Himalayas back into the green lush, idyllic Nepali villages. We have dinner and rest for the tiring and eventful day.

After having our breakfast,we trek to Siddhing where we we hop on a jeep and head towards Pokhara which is ~3 hours away. We reach Pokhara, have lunch and depending on the mood and the immediate decisions made, will decide to leave for Kathmandu or stay in Pokhara and end out trek.