Trek in the mountains. Day 1.

To start our trek we flew to Pokhara and stayed in the beautiful Fishtail Lodge.  Fishtail is a mountain that looks a little like a fish's tail.  The lodge is on a lake and has great views of the mountains.

At the Pokhara airport with Fishtail in the background

Fishtail

This day we are trekking to Tikhe Dhunga.Staying in room number-102. My grandmother, Amala, needed a horse to trek six or seven miles to reach the guesthouse that we were staying in. I got to ride on the horse today more than my grandmother, but still I walked most of the way.  It was very beautiful trekking to the guesthouse.  My backpack was heavy and made my shoulders very sore.

While we walked through rural Nepal I saw lots of different jobs people do in Nepal. We walked through terraced rice fields (terraces are when people make the steep hills like stair steps to stop water from coming and washing away their fields). People were growing and harvesting rice. Rice plants look a little like corn or wheat. People harvest the rice by bending over and hand cutting the stalks.  We also saw two water buffalo plowing a field.

Other workI saw were people do was washing clothes in the rivers. We also saw people leading cows around a pole to beat the rice, it was really funny watching that. We saw people crushing rocks using little hammers to make tiny stones for building trails. People also collect horse poop in buckets to make fire for cooking and heating because there isn't much wood, and horse poop burns very well in fires.  People also had to build the trails we were walking on by hand with huge flat rocks. 

There were people leading horse trains carrying food and big fuel drums to the villages. They don't bring it up by car or truck because there are no roads up the steep hills.  

Our group includes my mom, my dad, Amala, Bindesh, Wangchu (our guide), our porter and our horse handler.  Being a trekking porter is another job in Nepal.  Our porter was carrying all our duffel bags (3 bags) on his back and amazingly was able to walk faster uphill than any of us.

Finally we got to the guesthouse we are staying in.

A traffic jam of goats on our trekking trail