Mardi Himal 7 : Low Camp to Sidhing – Trek Day 5

Low Camp to Sidhing : ~12 KM; ~ 3 Hours

I am extremely grumpy this morning. I did not get any sleep last night. The cold dinner, the stinking duvet and the echoing snores coming from other sides of the teahouse kept me up all night long. It was also a very long day yesterday – that with no sleep added to a lot of exhaustion. My stomach doesn’t like it either. The morning business decides to take a break. Plus, it's cloudy this morning. So, no sunrise! Everything seems to add to my grumpiness. I put on a puffy face with lips pulling out and walk around the foggy grey campsite with a proper sulk.

Icicles...

My friend is being cautious and shows me a bunch of roots covered in solid ice. It’s like icicles around the roots and grass. This makes me a little happy. The view of Machhapuchhre is completely cut off today by the fog. Maniram points it out to me. ‘A broken Machhapuchhre’, I say. This seems to set him off and he keeps laughing about it the whole day.

Fishtail has disappeared in the grey cloud !

We start our hike. It’s all the way down today. We walk through forests and fog. En route, we get to a teahouse which does a lot of farming. There are raya saag, radish, tree tomatoes and cauliflower  exactly the vegetables we have been having every night so far.

Near Shiding...

A much shorter day today as we climb down. Downward trail is always a relief to the lungs, but the brain works harder to focus. To me, it often feels like a form of meditation. Within a few hours, we reach a place called Shiding. And this marks the end of the trek.

We wait here for a while and then get a shared taxi from here, all the way down to Pokhara. 

End of The Mardi Himal Trek (1700m)

Mardi Himal Trek will always have a special place in my heart. In the daily mist of chaos and uncertainty with the heart-wrenching longing for the touch of the mountains, this trek happened. Annapurna is such a blessing, and I am just ever so grateful for the same. Every time the mountains touch, I feel like a better person. You can’t beat that…

And I say bye for now...