We embark our journey to Nayapul by ridding car, I believed it should be less than 1000cc just like Perdua Kancil, a crazy bumpy ride along the road for about 1.5hrs. From Nayapul, we began our walk to the checkpost after we have taken some sour mandarin orange that is awaken our soul as we are still in sleepy condition at this time.

Thank goodness that we manage to grab our porter, for grabbing necessary backpacks along our trail. Along our walk, we have bypassed a village with beautiful paddy fields, taking opportunity to share some lollipops as well as colour pencil brought from my homeland for the kids playing around the street. Glance of happiness and laughters from kids that would never forget in my heart.

We started to walk along mountain cliff, dusty with no proper road along our way. Guess what, we got a free spa of dusty face each time jeep or bus drove bypassed our way. Trekking guide man and porters are friendly and helpful, we get to have long chat while we walk; learning the languages and culture of Nepali, plus learning that there’s no term for calling a “Coca-Cola”, but has to be pronounced each alphabetic in Nepali. Phew.. imagine it gonna be pathetic to order a Coca-Cola with 8 alphabetic in Nepali :D. Joke aside, we also encountered one of unreasonable trekker that seem to be disappointing, climbing down together with the group of trekkers, putting the anger toward us, while telling us we should be ashamed and should walking slowly. Perhaps the anger trekker might be disappointing on their own matters we never aware of.

The negative feeling didn’t interrupt our excitement during the trail. we also accompany a group of hundred backers with hip-hop songs behind us, producing high spirit on trekking, enjoy the view of the village behind the mountains, illustrated with the flow of river, and some animals (horses, donkeys, buffaloes, as well as goats). Yet to forget we met a friend who was all the way travel from China. He shares his experience staying over here and become a volunteer teacher for months.

After for hours of walking, we have made a night stay one of guesthouse at Tikhedunga. The night we stayed was pretty cold during that time, reaching the cold temperature as low as 2 degree celcius. We are staying in the wooden room, not the luxurious room, without any powerplug in the room. The accommodation didn’t seem to be the one i expected for: free WiFi, free power charging, and of course free hot showever. The ugly truth I have noticed that we have to pay for each facility to be used, especially usage on WiFi access, power plug (some guesthouse may not provided, if you are lucky to grab free charging in some stay), hot shower from the guesthouse. I would definitely suggest trekkers to bring bigger/extra capacity powerbank to keep charging your devices from time to time, use the facilities when necessary. Here, we start practicing to keep away using our mobile to keep power alive all the time. As the weather was freezing, nothing we can do much, but some small chats and the coldness that lead me into early sleep, therefore, the first day of our journey was over in a glance.

Another rise and shine through the village of Tikhedunga, we manage to grab our simple breakfast before embarks our journey to Ulleri, followed by Ghorepani. Our breakfasts were served with omelettes, Tibetian breads, and black coffee, while enjoying the view of the breaktaking mountains. Tibetian breads were made in deep-fried fluffy dough, crispy outside, soft inside, served together with pure honey syrup or jam for preference. The honey is just too good to taste as there’s no added sugar in it. Pure honey taste indeed :D.

Our next trail from Tikhedunga to Ghorepani is even harder; conquering non-stop 3300 steps of stone staircases to Ulleri, and another combined terrains of forrest, alley, and yet another staircases to go, up to 8 hrs walk. I started to get exhausted for the first 100 steps and realised how difficult to step all these staircase with 10kg weight of camera bag in which I have carried along. I was hardly to grab camera out from my bag and decide to use mobile phone to take great photos. Perhaps it was one of the hardest trail to Ulleri and I have underestimated it. In my thought, maybe I should bring lighter camera in the future.

After long hours of morning walk, we have finally made a stop for lunch upon reaching Ulleri. Finally, Dai Baht to the rescue to replenishing our energy lol. I just can’t stop to order Dai Baht everyday, variety if side dishes to be mixed up with rice and it was too appetite and delicious to be consumed. My first time to enter and play around in their kitchen lol. We found that it was the best Dal Baht made by auntie. It may not necessary to have standard side dishes, in spite auntie has added Kimchi as special side dishes on the plate, in which making Dal Baht has unique taste and delicious. We also shock to anticipate a trekker who has strong bodybuild from China, who can even eat 3 times more of large bowl rice, and kept praising auntie for the delicious meal.

We continue our journey to Ghorepani from Ulleri. Surprisingly, We could able to catch up the view of Annapurna I from far distance, a mountain covered with the shredded of ice. Look alike ice kacang lol. While enjoying breaktaking view from our surroundings, we walked through the path without proper road, stone scattered everywhere, through the forest and alley, under the winter condition. Not forget I have anticipated a tribe of goats blocked infront of my way, no choice but to give passage to allow them to across the alley and spending over 15 mins to listen the rhythm of Baa Baa sounds.

From the point of 30 mins towards the destination point of Ghorepani, I can feel I have walked much higher than the sea level, my leg started being freezing, can felt the short breathing, energy depleted very quick. I keep walking for few steps and idle for awhile, and keep going. The situation was worse than before, mist is everywhere and getting darker now. I kept asking them to keep moving while taking my time to relax while walking forward. My mind half conciousness and barely look at the bottom to make sure I was stepping every single rock correctly. Its truly heaven for me upon reaching the Ghorepani Town with strong determination. Get to heat up myself from the heater, grab some dinner and straight to the bed for recovery. My legs feel kinda cramped, while my mind was completely blank because of tiredness, and didn’t ever think of things to be happened for the next day. Decided to wear more outfits to get warmed as the weather is way too cold than ever. Perhaps, yet to be a survival distinct of the day for me.

Reached Kathmandu’s Airport by ridding Malindo Airline as it was the only budget choice to ride since the day when airasia has suspended operation this route since early of this year. My thought of my first experience to ride this new flight is much better than airasia; more space for legs, with complementary foods with choice of chicken or vegetable, infoentertainment. I barely watch the movies as they are quite out to date, but it may get passenger to spend their boring time on it.

The most regret decision ever made is that I should proceed the counter offer made to cab drive immediately without getting taxi driver to wait us to setup our local sim card initially. As a result, they tend to grab another new passenger instead.

Setting up new local simcard is rather more time consumption and complicated; they need your passport photo for registration (I’m not quite sure whether it is an exception for other call operator, FYI, I have taken namaste sim card for free), and yet their service is offline and can’t proceed topup credit into sim card. In the end, we decide to seek for help on topping up the credit, found a guy named “lovyus”, purchase the credits and get him for assistance in addition for simcard activation.

Seeking for taxi upon arrival at Kathmandu terminal is easy due to lots of drivers for competition, however, the fare offered by each of them has no standard, ranging from 500npr to 800npr. We tend to walk out the street to look for taxi to get better offer.

Talking about communication encountered with napaleses duirng my first day in Kathmandu. I can tell less than 15 percent of people are fluent well in English but the slang has drove me abit crazy; taking sometime to digest what they are talking. While the rest, you just need combined language of body language + English to make them understand what we are talking :D. The funny part goes like that: taxi driver of mine don’t even know the hostel we stayed, and lucky thing is that I get to download Kathmandu offline map into Google map which is big help for him to send us to the location, and he is still confusing the direction of left and right without showing my body language lol.

Dirty, dusty and crowded with cars can be defined for thamel environment. If you prefer a clean place, probably this is not a suitable vacation place for you. As a street photographer, lots of hidden gems you may found. Need to be wary on belonging, reduce lens changing all the times to minimise the dust sticked into camera sensor. I got my mobile phone covered with dust not even 10 seconds along my taxi ride.

As for transportation system, most of streets are jammed with traffic since every morning, regardless the day in weekends.

The whole entire journey on our first day rely on arranging our journey for next couple of days. Indeed, we managed to book the first day hostel in Thamel before heading to Nepal, and looking toward for alternative for next stay when the time we reached back from pokhara. Although the hostel we have stayed located 15 mins walking distance to the heart of Thamel Town area, they are friendly, but it’s doesn’t cool to walk over the dusty street during the winter season.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot to tell about my fastination regarding sightview of entire Kathmandu. The buildings are constructed block by block, does it look like building made on the monopoly’s board? 😀

Its great experience we had to make an art with loads of chocolates, mixing it and noming all of them into our mouth.