From Ghandruk to Ghroepani

7^th October, day 4 of trekking.

Today we climbed another 900 metres higher but this time through the mountains to reach another village called Ghroepani.

The inital plan was to go to Tadapani first, about 3 hours walk from Ghandruk, and stay overnight there. But we found that we have nothing much to do if we reached the place early as like yesterday in Ghandruk. So we discussed with our guide as to what is the best thing to do to make full use of our time. On top of that Tadapani is a very small village. We were also quite desperate to get access to internet which we have not been able to do in the last 3 places. In the end we agreed to combine the 4^th and 5^th day trekking into one but that would involve real long walks.

The whole route would normally take about 8 to 10 hours. But we were confident we could do it in less than 7 hours. For that we made sure we have enough food and fluid supplies.

The walk was actually quite tough, probably the toughest I have ever done in my life. The distance was nearly 20 km. The HRM reader showed that we have burnt about 5000 calories! The easy part was the trek through the jungle where we were most of the time walking under the shade. The hardest part was when crossing valleys where we have to go down two to three hundred metres before going the same height up again.

We pushed ourselves at steady pace with just few stops here and there for rest. In the end we reached Ghroepani, another village in this part of the world. Our place of stay was quite basic but with a nice fireplace in the lobby. Ghroepani is located at 2860 metres. The temperature outside could be quite chilly especially at night.

The power supply in Ghroepani was unfortunately turned out to be unreliable with intermittent black-outs. The internet was also not working!