Hohare Danda Trek – 5 Days

As my wife finishes her photography courses, this year she had to concentrate a lot on realizing her portfolio. Hence, we did not have a lot of time to prepare for a longer trekking in Nepal. So, we ended up doing two smaller trekkings in 2 different regions. The first one was Mohare Danda trek (5 days) near to Pokhara. Mohare Danda is an alternative trek to Poonhill, whereas the latest being by far the most popular one. Upfront we have been wondering whether selecting Mohare Danda was the better choice or not and even after our selection I asked a lot of people. It seems there is no good or bad in this decision. Although, we only walked Mohare Danda, it looks to me that the owner of the cottage where we were staying in Pokhara was right: Mohare Danda has the better view, whereas the trek itself is nicer on the Poonhill trek. After 3 days trekking we reached Mohare Danda and from there we could see Poonhill below us. As the latest is a couple of hundred meters lower, I can imagine that the view is somewhat less attractive. On the other hand, before reaching Mohare Danda, we did walk for most of the time through a big forest with rhododendron trees. This is likely magnificent in April – May when they have their flowers, but doing the same in November is a bit monotonous and the trees do hide the nice views you may have on alternative treks. Our trip started with a very long bus and unattractive bus ride from Pokhara towards Beni (we were dropped off just before the Kalagandaki resort on the Beni – Jomsom road). Once we crossed the Kali Gandaki river the noise of all construction works in the valley did disappear and we continued our way to our first stop: Baskharka, where we did stay in the nice community lodge. Most of the villages on this trek do have community lodges. The ones we did stay at were all finished in December 2010, which shows that this area is still relatively new for tourists. For the Mohare Danda trek you don’t need any specific permits. The second night we stayed in Nagi and at the end of the third day we reached our destination of Mohare Danda (3300m). Unfortunately the weather was not really helpful these days and due to the clouds the views were limited and there was no hot shower in the evening (most lodges use solar power to heat up the water). Despite November still being high season for trekking, we hardly met other trekkers on our road, with the one exception being the Mohare Danda lodge itself, where suddenly all kind of groups did end up coming from different directions. Luckily the weather on the fourth morning was brilliant and we had a magnificent sunrise, with a clear view on the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri mountains. We did continue our trek towards Tikot. The first hours of this part were still magnificent: good weather and still outside the forest, with nice views on the mountains. Later on the road continued again trough the forest. In Tikot there is a community lodge but it is only used as a dining hall. The night itself you spend as a home stay in one of the locations. This was an interesting experience as you can directly see how local people live in this area. The last day was a steep descent with a lot of stairs going back towards the starting point of our round trip. Overall, we were satisfied with the way our trip was organized. We had a very young and good porter, who did carry the backpack of my wife, so she could fully concentrate on taking photos. Our guide was very helpful and very caring. He offered a couple of times to take my backpack, which I did not want as I did want to do this trek as an exercise for my physical condition. On the other hand, our guide’s knowledge was rather limited or maybe I simply had too many questions. Also, his experience with trek was rather limited and this is likely partly due to the fact that Mohare Danda is not a popular trek (yet) and hence experienced guides for the region are scarce. Nevertheless, as we had plans to do a second trip with the same agency, we asked for a different guide for our second trip and this was no problem.