Jomsom to Tattopani

Jomsom is a dusty and windy mountain outpost that has a smallish landing strip that has flights to Pokhara (a lakeside city 7 hours west of Kathmandu) but they only fly until about 10 in the morning due to the extreme winds after that.

A flight to Pokhara takes about 25 minutes.  To 'drive' it means a combination of 4x4, sketchy buses and police checkpoints that can easily take up to 2 days. Our plan was to take a local (read insane) bus ride from Jomsom to Ghasa to skip a really bad trail section and then foot it the rest of the way to Tattopani.  The bus had seats for 32 and we had 46 including 4 on the roof.  

Me controlling the anxiety of a packed bus with zero ability to move much less exit 

Local bus travel

We had a 30 minute stop for a hand pump refuel of diesel from a 25 gallon can

Anyway,  we got to Ghasa in one piece in about 4 hours (32 miles) and had an awesome lunch and hit the trail.

Guesthouse in Ghasa stop for lunch.

The next 6 houra were a nice hike to Tattopani.  Almost the entire route was directly next to the Kali Ghadeki river which is as beautiful as it is loud due to its rapids.  It goes through some of the deepest gorges in the world.  In mind i hiked that part with Callie, as the river's name was Kali.

A couple if great Kali river pictures 

Quite possibly the best sign ever.

We arrived in Tattopani around 4 and at 5 we hiked the extra 10 minutes and hit the natural hot springs that are there.  Mother natures hot tub.  They were over 100 degrees and felt amazing asy quads were still sore from the prior days huge descent.

Sleep came easy this night.

Next:  Tattopani to Ghorapani