20 December 2008
There was an early morning knock for those that wanted to visit the monastery, SB went and I took the opportunity to hve a lie in. Callie and Steve also left the trek to head to the Annapurna Sanctury.
The monastery had a lot of taps that if you ran your head under it absolved all your sins, so Scott is now all sinless. The area was a hindu/buddhist monastery nd they get monks and saddhurs from all around the world. The water around the base of the taps was totally frozen.
The views of the mountains today are very cloudy and apparently there was snow on the pass, so we wouldn’t have been able to cros the pass if it had been the same yesterday – hmm not sure if I would have been happy with that.
We had brekkie and headed off on our walk which is level with some down hill. The scenery on this side of the mountain is a lot greyer and bleaker, kind of moonscape.
After about 3 hours we arrived in Kagbeni, which doesn’t look too much, however, we have actually seen our first motor vehicle since starting the trek and getting off the main route.
We had lunch at our hotel and then went fora walk into the town to the monastery. The town is medieval in feel and it reminds you of a set from an Indian Jones movie. You just can’t imagine how hard it would be in winter. We then walked to the black gate which is the entrance and border to Upper Mustange (guarded just in case you wanted to do a dash across the border).
We headed back to the hotel for some R&R and played cards and a few of the group had their first beer.