Nepal Day 4 - Part I: Poon Hill

21 Dec 2009

Our fourth day obviously was also a long day.  It started with a very early morning rise at around 5am?  Well, actually I didn't hear my alarm so WJ & I both over slept, until our Abi knocked at our door, then we jumped out of bed and got everything ready in less than 10 minutes.

We walked in the dark, completely dark, we could see nothing but the light from our torch light and the stars still lingering in the sky, unwilling go disappear into the coming morning.  The air was chilling, and it was really cold at the beginning, but after you started to walk, you felt hot, not just warm.

The way was steep, all the way uphill.  Well, that was kind of expected.  Gorenpani is at around 2900m above sea level, while top of Poon Hill is at 3210m.  Uphill and uphill and uphill.  By the time we got to the top, my inner layer was already completely wet!  It was terrible, as we still had to wait in the chilling wind for the sun to rise.  Sometimes, I really thought I had gone insane.

The sun came up very slowly.  You could see the first light shining on the surrounding mountain peaks.

The angle was really too low to capture very nice sun rise on the mountains, that golden moment, too many shadows, and the light was still weak.  And then suddenly, the sun jumped out from the clouds below, however, the sun shine was still too feeble.  Somehow I had this feeling that the sun looked like USA today.  Still shining with golden rays but just that golden ray no longer contains the same high gold content :D.

And then we of course must take some tourist photos as evidence that we had once been here.

Here the sign says Poon Hill, 3210m, but no matter how I twisted my watch, the altimeter just refused to display 3210m or anything close, it only read ~3100m.  I looked high and low for that missing 100m or so, but couldn't find any other higher point.  There is a viewing tower atop Poon Hill, but I doubted that tower could be 100m high.

At Poon Hill, I saw & heard some Singaporeans' presence there.  There was one big group with at least 4-5 members.

After the sun rise, we went back to our guest house.  On the way back, we met Weil again.  Wow, they stayed at a very good guest house, Annapurna range is right in front of their window!  Spectacular views!

And I also discovered that all the guides are very alert.  I blindly followed the group of tourists walking in front of me.  At a Y-junction, I still followed them, then their guide whistled to me to say that I should take the other way.  I don't know how he would know I should take the other way.  He didn't see how I went up the hill!  Anyway, he was right.  And I realised I had been 'watched' all the time.


You can find a complete list of blog entries about my Nepal trip here.