Poon!

Short Version:
We walk from Shikha to Ghorepani, then up Poon Hill.

Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 19 = 3:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 95:00
Beer Time = 22:00

Long Version:
Shikha Morning:
Incredible views of Dhaulagiri and Tukuche mountains scraping the first light out of the sky as we dress and pack and head into the dining room not long before 0700.
Closer to hand, we watch the village wake up as we eat; sleepy-faced people and animals are emerging from their (sometimes shared) niches; the sounds and smells of village life begin to manifest...
...and then around the corner from the low end of the main street: hundreds of marathoners. Not en masse; one by one initially, then clumps, then bigger clumps building to a constant stream then tailing off to less and less-comfortable-looking solo runners* towards the back of the field.
Horses and buffalo emerging from their night-time accommodation win the battle with the runners for trail space, mainly through sheer mass. This is entertaining viewing.
One of the last runners comes in to the hotel for emergency poopage.



********

Lycra-clad ultra-fitness nuts safely past, we set off.
Uphill.
Up many, many stone stairs.

It wasn't long before we passed the race sweepers, one of whom was only too happy to furnish information about Racing the Planet: Nepal, which saw two hundred and some extreme masochists from all over the world** take part in a seven-day, six-Stage, 250 kilometer, self-supported endurance foot race. The "self-supported" bit means they had to carry all their crap, including sleeping bags, mattress pads, clothes, and food for the day. No food was to be purchased along the way; the competitors were only to consume foodstuffs they'd started the day carrying. We spoke to one racer (the pooper) who had been threatened with a time penalty for buying and eating a Mars bar on Day Two. He wasn't too worried, as he was 3rd-to-last at the time. He also said that he planned "...never drink ten pints and agree to anything like this ever again..." (Yes, he was English).

We passed several backmarkers throughout the morning, repassing some after stopping for baby goat cuddles***. We then got to cheer them on as they passed the table where we'd parked ourselves to eat chocolate and pizza and momos in the sunshine next to the rose garden in the courtyard of Ghorepani's Tukuche View Hotel. And the view really was something else: not just Tukuche, but also Himchul, Niligiri, Dhaulagiri and many of the Annapurnas. Seriously awesome.

People were telling us, though, that the view was EVEN BETTER up at the top of the hill.
Not just any hill, either; this is Poon Hill, and that's one of the most awesome place names ever.

So we went, and it was a bit like climbing Mount Maunganui in terms of steepness and stairsness, and then at the top the views were indescribably stunning.
Awesomeness.
Spectacularity.
Mountains on all sides, draped in golden late-afternoon sunlight.

The only thing that could have made it better would have been a homo-erotic photo-session romp starring a near-elderly Japanese man and his young Nepali guide. And then we got EXACTLY THAT, and our lives were complete.

Then we watched the sunset, and that kicked it up another notch.

Poon Hill rules.








* = "Runners" may not be quite the right word for some of them; "mincers," maybe, or "hobblers."

** = Apart from poor countries, countries on the non-Amerikan side of a war, hot countries, or countries where wearing lycra in public gets you stoned (and not in the "fields of marijuana" sense of the phrase). Basically it was Amerikans, Canadialanders, Orstralianuses, Japaneezers, and assorted Euromonkeys. The intertubes says there were a few random SAmerikans and some SAfrikaaaaaants as well.

*** = That's a cuddle where one or more of the participants is a baby goat. Didn't want to call it a kid cuddle.