Sunrise Hike

Last Saturday (Oct 27^th), I went for a little hike.  I have very little to write I think because most the interesting stuff was visual.  I left my house nice and early and got up to the top of the hill nearby where there is a temple around 5:45 which was just in time to watch the sky start to lighten.  THE MOUNTAINS WERE OUT!!!  Big time.  I spent about an hour taking pictures of the mountains and the temple at sunrise.  I hope I can get these to load.  It was absolutely breathtaking, and for some reason it really drove home just how far away from home I am but it was an excited sort of feeling.  I was thinking, “Wow, I am watching the sun rise over the freaking Himalayas!  I am definitely not in Kansas anymore.”  Granted they didn’t look too much different from the distance I was at than you might see in the Rockies, but maybe it was just that I hadn’t seen the sunrise light up snowy mountain slopes in such a long time that it seemed very momentous to me.  At any rate, it was really awesome. (I tried playing with lighting and stuff on the photos so some are black and white because I couldn't get the color to come out well on some of them.  Also, the raw vs. jpeg photos were quite different in low light especially, so that was fun to see and play with.  I am learning a lot about photo taking).

B&W before sunrise

jpg of the pic above

first sun hitting the summit

Mount Jugal (I think)

Some beautiful morning light

getting fancy pantsy.  The barbed wire surounds a water tank.

Sunrise on the temple

I think it is cool that the only color that popped is from the prayer flags

Another ping (from Dasain)

Mountains in the afternoon light

 

After I had my fill (if possible) of looking at all the pretty mountains I headed out on the road.  I walked for about two hours up the road at a pretty good clip.  From the temple I had seen what looked like a ridge that connected the ridge I was on to the big ridge on the other side of the river.  I was skeptical because the river is pretty good size, and has carved out a pretty good valley for itself over the eons.  So, how could there be a ridge across the river?  Well, I got to the connector ridge and lo and behold it did connect.  There was a large waterfall cascading down this ridge that must feed from the top parts of the big ridge I was heading towards as that ridge is almost always locked in the clouds.  (Like I said, it is pretty high).  I also assume that just upstream of where my village is located the river must split into several large tributaries and the big waterfall is one of them.

After two hours I had to turn back because I had a meeting scheduled with one of the trainers at noon and I figured it would take about 2 and half hours to reach town.  I think I was within about an hour’s hike of gaining the high ridge, and from there I could potentially follow it up and up and up.  Or I could just sit on the ridge and look at the mountains on the other side.  I saw a couple just barely poking over the top of that ridge from the temple.  The ridge is high enough, as far as I could tell, rice production stopped which means it is pretty high (maybe 2,500m or so).  This, of course, is not that high as far as Colorado standards go and certainly not for Nepali standards, but it would be sweet all the same.  I might try this coming Saturday, or maybe the next.  My right leg really, really started hurting on the way back and I seem to have strained some of the tendons on the back of my knee.  It’s doing better, but if I’m gonna put in the effort to get there I don’t want to get turned back because my leg starts to hate me.

As usual this got wordy, but I hope the pictures were interesting!