The Great Machapuchhre Trail

Pokhara wakes slowly, the way a lover turns over in bed, reluctant to leave the dream. At four in the morning the city is wrapped in a silence so complete it has weight, a hush that presses against the eardrums and makes the heart beat louder. The mighty Annapurna Mountains, cloaked in dawn’s shadow, stand as silent guardians over the sleeping city. Hours earlier the same streets had thrummed with neon and music Kuma Sagar’s voice curling through the smoke of bars, pleading ab jaane bhae jau, eh maya ab dherai na satau (“अब जाने भए जाउ, ए माया अब धेरै न सताउ”), but now the musical band are asleep, the lovers gone, the only sound the soft click of a shutter somewhere as a drunk tourist tries to photograph the dark.

I did not want to be the one to break that spell. So we slipped into the taxi without a word, the driver yawning as he turned toward Harichowk. Harichowk, where trekkers gather for vehicle to different trekking destinations. One tea shop had opened its shutter; we ordered milk tea and boiled eggs. A few jeeps sat outside, headlights off, waiting. While we ate, a couple more trekkers wandered in sleepy eyed, friendly nods and wouldn’t you know it, they were headed to the Great Machapuchhre Trail too. By the time we climbed into the jeep there were six of us strangers an hour ago, bound now for the same ridge.

Phewa Taalko Aanganma Lai Lai Machhapuchhre Chhaya, Jivan Mero Seti Bagar Bina Timro Maya (फेवा तालको आँगनमा लै लै माछापुच्छ्रे छाया, जीवन मेरो सेती बगर बिना तिम्रो माया). I have listened to Prakash Shrestha’s immortal voice hundreds of times. But this time I don’t want to see the shadows of Machhapuchhre (Fishtail) Mountain in Phewa Lake; I want the desire to see the mountain’s smile from its lap. I want to smile together and greet good morning.

The road to Saripakha took forty-five minutes. Boots hit dirt at six sharp. The air was cool and clean. In Nepal, trekking season you start alone at your door, but by the time you reach the trailhead, you’ve got a crew. Strangers yesterday, teammates today, all chasing the same ridge line.

The trail began with a polite climb, nothing cruel, just enough to remind the body it was alive. Then it flattened toward Tubu Hill. The sign promised ninety minutes; we covered it in forty-five, lungs burning, and laughter spilling out with every breath. A quiet man had been matching our pace since the start. I asked him about the trail. He said, “Up to Hilekharka the trail is easy, then not a cup of tea for anyone.” At the summit he introduced himself as the owner of Tubu Tea and Camping, the only roof for miles, and waved us inside like cousins come home. Machapuchhre Mountain rose behind the teahouse, its fishtail summit catching the sun, sharp enough to cut the sky. We sat on the grass with cups of tea steaming in our hands. If you carry a notebook on a mountain, the mountain will fill it for you.

From Tubu to Hilekharka the path climbed without mercy, taking sips of water from the bottle we carried. At nine o’clock we stumbled into the meadow at Hilekharka, legs trembling, stomachs hollow.

Pawan and I decided to have lunch here. “Dai, lunch for two?” he asked the tea house owner.

Festival season, and there are huge trekkers every day, and the owner who was exhausted from cooking for a large crowd the previous night and again early that morning replied wearily, “It’s barely nine.”

“Tibetan bread, curry, and tea,” we said.

He nodded, grateful for the compromise. While the bread puffed on the griddle we unpacked our dry fruits, chocolate, biscuits and laid them on the table like a potluck. A group of women in Gurung dresses posed for photographs nearby. I asked if they’d take one with us. They did better: they taught us a dance for TikTok, laughter louder than the wind.

At eleven we reached Chichemle Kharka. The trail had become a two-way river of triumph and defeat. A couple from Chitwan glowed with summit fever. “TikTok made us do it,” the husband grinned. Ten meters away a man in a sweat soaked cap sat against a boulder, boots caked in mud. I offered my bottle.

“Turned back at the ridge,” he said, drinking deep. “Influencers said three nights, two days, epic views. They forgot to mention the stairs.” He handed the bottle back. “Next time I won’t believe Social Media Influencers.”

During treks, strangers hand you their stories the way they hand you water without ceremony, trusting you’ll pass it on. Yudish had summited Tilicho a month earlier and still walked like a man testing new legs. Ashutosh was on his first trek ever, eyes wide as a child’s. Pawan had returned after years away, each step a quiet apology to the mountains. Kabindra and Sabita moved like they’d been born on switchbacks; they finished each other’s sentences and shared a single water bottle the way other couples share secrets.

Then came the man with the child on his back. She was four, maybe five. His wife walked beside them, smiling at the absurdity of it all. I asked the obvious question. The answer was not obvious: the little girl had already done Annapurna Base Camp and Mardi Himal. We talked for fifteen minutes about trekking until the trail pulled us apart. Only then did I realize I’d forgotten names.

“What’s your daughter called?” I shouted.

“Yuwancy,” he called back, already twenty meters down the slope.

The name struck me like a bell. My own daughter, Prarthi, had been six when we trekked together. I remembered her excitement the way you remember a fever how she’d pointed at every rhododendron and demanded its life story. Yuwancy had that same fire, banked for now in her father’s arms but ready to blaze.

We reached Rest Camp at one o’clock. Twenty hungry trekkers milled around a kitchen that had food for ten. Kabindra and Sabita asked for dal bhat; the cook shook his head. “No meat, and only ten plates.”

Sabita’s voice carried over the crowd. “Then we split it.”

The owner, sensing opportunity, charged five hundred rupees a head. Ten plates became twenty half portions, and the math worked in his favor. I told the others to call Aashika Tamang, a social activist who fights exactly this kind of daylight robbery.

We lost an hour to the argument and the meal. When we shouldered our packs again, the sun had vanished; the mountains were hiding inside a thick quilt of cloud. Khumai Danda waited, the last summit of the day, and the trail climbed like it had something to prove. But the mountains keep their own ledger: every story traded, every swallow of water passed hand to hand, every child carried on a father’s back they all balance out. By the time we crested the ridge, the six of us were no longer strangers. We were a single moving line, stitched together by sweat, laughter, and the thin, bright air that only the high places give.

I’ve learned that a friend doesn’t have to be someone you’ve known since childhood, and real connection doesn’t need years to grow. Sometimes all it takes is walking side by side on a tough trail, breathing the same thin air, sharing the same struggle. In those moments, one chance meeting, one shared climb, can become the quiet miracle of a lifetime, because the heart knows its own long before the mind catches up. It’s in the steady rhythm of steps on the same path, under the same wide sky, that we truly find each other.

The final push to Khumai Danda felt like climbing into the sky’s attic. The clouds had swallowed the sun, and the steep trail rocky, unforgiving seemed to rise straight into the gray. Each step echoed with the crunch of gravel and the rasp of our breath.

A trekker coming down, face wind burned and eyes wide, blocked our path for a moment. “Huge crowd up there,” he panted, wiping sweat with the sleeve of his jacket.

“How long will it take now to reach Khumai ridge?” The trekkers returning from Khumai Danda were looking at us from below upwards and from above downwards. “If you guys walk in this manner, it will take two hours.”

“If you haven’t booked, forget a room. It’s chaos.” His warning landed like a slap. We exchanged glances; six pairs of eyes suddenly sharp with the same thought.

“Whoever gets up first,” I said, “secures rooms for all of us. No excuses.”

Sabita nodded, already moving. “We already booked one room for us at Hotel 360.”

“I spoke to them yesterday, but didn’t book the room,” I added, matching her stride. “Confirmed at least for all of us.”

Yudish grinned, though his voice was tight. “Then let’s make it happen.”

We pushed harder. The air thinned, lungs burned, but the rhythm took over left, right, breathe, repeat. In trekking season the mountains run on scarcity: one teahouse, fifty trekkers, a dozen mattresses, and the eternal truth that even a confirmed booking is only a promise until the key turns in your hand. TikTok is full of it now; grainy clips from North ABC showing twenty, thirty bodies crammed into a single room, sleeping shoulder to shoulder like sardines in a tin, all for the promise of a sunrise over Annapurna.

Hotel 360 appeared through the mist like a mirage tin roof, Nepal flags snapping, a crowd spilling onto the porch. Despite the huge crowd, Khumai Danda is quiet, as if in meditation. We didn’t see Kabindra and Sabita in this hotel. Maybe they didn’t get any room.

“Dai, need a room for four of us,” I told the owner, breathless but firm.

“What’s your name?”

“My name is Gautam and I talked with Ishwor Sonam yesterday on mobile.”

He flipped through a ledger, frowned, flipped again. “There is no room booked under your name.”

“Call Ishwor Sonam,” and he did, but Ishwor didn’t recognize me.

My stomach dropped. “I called yesterday. You confirmed.”

“Wait, wait let me show you the mobile call logs.”

The owner hesitated, then ready to give the last room. “One room. For four of you. Two thousand each.” It was like we’d won the battle. Four of us in one room.

We didn’t argue about the room. We dropped our packs, claimed our squares, and laughed because we had won barely and because the mountains had taught us long ago that victory up here is measured in square feet of floor and the promise of a dry corner to lay your head.

Outside, the clouds pressed lower, but inside our little rectangle of space, the four of us were home.

It was cold. I brought out whiskey from my bag and served it to all four of us. “Where are they?” Ashutosh asked. The couple Kabindra and Sabita were missing. We didn’t see them. We thought they hadn’t found a room and left for another hotel.

Yudish reminded us, “They don’t have cash. They only had mobile banking, which might not work here on this mountain.”

After having two pegs each, we decided to explore the hotels to see whether we could find them.

“Dai!” Sabita shouted.

I looked in the direction the sound came from. “Where were you guys? We’ve been searching for both of you.”

“I thought maybe you guys wanted to stay separately from us because you need some private space. Hahahah.”

Na chahey ko hoina timilai, chahanthey juni juni bhari lai (नचाहेको होइन तिमीलाई, चाहन्थें जुनि जुनि भरि लाई।). A group of trekkers was singing songs inside the dining area. We hurried to enter the dining area. A few songs were sung by the heroes of the trek. Trekkers enjoyed hot coffee or rum.

“Let’s have rum, dai?” Yudish asked me, and Ashutosh pressured me. I gave the green signal, and then Ashutosh poured rum for the three of us.

“Let’s ask for dinner, because we need to wake up at 3 o’clock tomorrow morning,” Kabindra reminded.

We had a vegetarian dinner and got inside the room.

At the stroke of midnight, I’m alone utterly, terrifyingly alone under a moonless sky. The jungle breathes hot and heavy around me, and then it comes: a low, earth shaking growl rolling closer, closer, the unmistakable snarl of a tiger stalking through the underbrush. Or is it? No, no, it’s beer.

I can almost feel the hot breath, taste the bitter foam closing in. Is this death? My pulse screams; I’m paralyzed, drowning in dread.

Suddenly my eyes snap open. I’d been deep in delirious sleep, but the sound is real pulsing through the room’s walls, growing louder and closer. Terror grips my chest. I spin around, heart pounding, and there they are: my three teammates, sprawled in awkward sleep, snoring like angry tigers gargling beer a chorus of deep roars and wet hisses that could wake the dead… or call a real tiger.

During the daytime we had seen a warning signboard on the trail, and that came into my dream.

“NO ENTRY TIGER ZONE.”

“NO ENTRY BEER ZONE.”

Someone knocked on our door and someone knocked on our window.

“It’s time to go now,” Kabindra shouted from outside our room.

“Wait, wait give us five minutes,” Pawan answered.

At 4 a.m., when the world still dreams in ink, we lace our boots and step into the void, flashlights carving narrow tunnels of light through the Himalayan night.

In the dark, the trail is a rumor. Hundreds of headlamps bob ahead like fireflies drunk on altitude, each beam a private prayer. We follow the light of strangers, trusting that collective longing will guide us higher than any map. “He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.” Yet here, tragedy feels distant; the only drama is the slow unveiling of being.

Pawan couldn’t walk, but he still wanted to return to Khumai Danda. I had no choice, so I ran fifteen minutes to get the hotel room keys from Ashutosh, then ran back to hand them to Pawan.

He said, “Sorry, brother. Since we’ve already walked forty minutes from Khumai, I want to reach the top of Korchan Danda to welcome the sun.”

Two hours of uphill penance lungs burning, thighs screaming until the ridge arrives like a verdict. We spill onto Korchan Danda in a breathless congregation, silhouettes against a sky the color of old bruises. The sun, that ancient dramatist, withholds its entrance. We wait. In the silence, the mountains speak first: stone faces older than language, patient as eternity, reminding us that time is not a line but a circle, and every dawn is the universe remembering itself.

Then, without warning, a blade of gold slices the horizon. The sun rises not in triumph but in quiet generosity, smiling like a child who has kept a secret too long. Machapuchhre catches the light and smiles louder, its snowfields blushing rose, its impossible spire suddenly intimate, almost shy. Annapurna unfurls her vast apron of glaciers, radiant, maternal. The trekkers’ strangers no longer erupt in spontaneous applause, clapping for the sun, for the mountains, for the fragile miracle of being awake to see it.

“Why are we here? What endures?” these are answered in a single shaft of light touching stone. The mountains do not speak; they are the answer. And we, small and temporary, are privileged to stand in their glow, clapping like children who have just discovered the world is beautiful after all.

“Brother, please give us tea,” I requested the person selling tea and coffee.

All of us gathered together and had tea and the snacks we had brought in our bags. We clicked lots of pictures. Kabindra was busy taking his girlfriend’s photos.

I asked Kabindra to take mine too. He agreed but was surprised when I took off my top and stood half naked.

“Dai, take off your pants too. Let’s have a photo in just boxers.”

Pawan told them that naked photos had already been taken during the Mardi Himal Trek.

With the Himalayas all around, we captured the feeling, the memories, and the moment with nature. At 3,700 meters, we saved a beautiful piece of life. Giant rocks. Snowcapped peaks rising from stone. Hills circling us. Pure beauty. How do you trap that in words? We just kept shooting photos, laughing, living it, some of us running from group to group, clicking for everyone.

It’s freezing, but I still strip off my top and strike my signature pose on Korchan Danda’s summit half naked, grinning, sunrise blazing behind me. One glorious hour up there, then we’re sliding back down to Khumai Danda in another hour. What was pitch black on the way up now explodes into postcard views we never saw coming.

Breakfast is a slow motion affair one lone cook flipping eggs like he’s got all week. We finally eat, settle the bill, and the hotel owner drapes khadas around our necks. I tell the crew, “This isn’t a farewell scarf; it’s a receipt. Wear it and you’re officially paid up Nepali Excel sheet.”

Saripakha to Khumai is a brutal eight to nine hour stairmaster from hell. Khumai to Korchan? A gentle uphill stroll by comparison.

“Let’s do lunch in Pokhara tandoori, the works!” Unanimous yes.

On the descent we pass fresh faced trekkers heading up. Some look crushed when we break the news: “You’re still hours from Khumai, and Korchan’s another world.” We dish out honest trail intel no sugarcoating.

A lively group from Dharan is parked on a rock, sharing snacks. I ask, “What dragged you all the way from Dharan?”

A silver haired beauty smiles. “TikTok videos. Couldn’t resist.”

Another asks, “How much farther to Khumai?”

“You’ll hit it around five p.m.”

“That far?!”

I grin. “I was in Dharan long time back, gorgeous place, and that sukuti? Unreal.”

From behind me an old guy chimes in, “Not just the place and the meat, brother the girls are stunning too. Look at these ladies right here!”

We all crack up, the mountains echoing our laughter all the way down.

Kabindra called a jeep from Saripakha. After one hour, we reached Harichowk. From there, we took two taxis to Pokhara.

Yudish said, “I’m starving no meat for days. I want a full chicken tandoori and chilled beer!” We ordered tandoori, butter naan, chicken curry, and chilled beers.

The waiter came back. “Sorry, no tandoori and chicken curry.”

We moved to the restaurant across the street and ordered the same. They said yes, but tandoori would take time. We opened beers and ate the free snacks.

“Cheers! To The Mountain”

The naan and curry came. We ate fast and happily. But the tandoori was still not ready. It was 6 p.m., and I had to catch a bus to Kathmandu.

Pawan said, “Cancel the tandoori!” We left, got into a Scorpio, and drove to Kathmandu.

The trek was fun chatting with new friends, laughing over sore feet. But that night, I was too tired to talk. Phone at 5 %, I switched it off.

1 AM.

Scorpio stopped at Kalanki. Dark and quiet. We quickly took two bikes to go home. Ten minutes later, my bike got a flat tire.

“Dai, punctured!”

“Now what?”

“Dai, stay right here. I’ll grab another bike. Don’t move till I’m back.” 

He left.

Midnight. Alone. 

Every sound scared me rustling leaves, barking dogs. The road was empty. I tried Pathao and InDrive. No one accepted.

After 15 minutes, one Pathao took my ride but raised the price from 135 to 350 rupees. I paid. Just wanted to reach home safe.

New bike came. I held on tight. Wind hit my face. Every bump felt dangerous. Finally, home. Charged phone. Slept.