Ghorapani

View from the hotel restaurant

The climb after lunch was still more uphill than not but fortunately it was interspersed with some flat and even downhill portions, making it much easier on the legs and lungs, although the final stretch was still a killer. Finally, Tserig announced the good news; we had reached Ghorapani, officially, Lower Ghorapani…the bad news…we were staying in Upper Ghorapani, 15 minutes further up the mountain. Oh well…it did mean 15 minutes less that we had to hike in the morning.

We stayed in the rooms on the left

We stayed at a place called the Sunny Hotel, though I must admit it didn’t particularly seem to be all that sunny there. In fact, it was downright cold in Ghorapani. They had a fabulous feature in the restaurant here – a large round stove, looked like it was made out of an oil drum turned on end. A hole was cut at the bottom for air and a second one was made with a “door” on it for adding wood. Around it they had a wooden structure for hanging clothes to dry and around the whole contraption were 4 benches. I parked myself on one of those benches and pretty much spent the whole afternoon and evening there, right in front of that delicious warmth.

There's a woodburner inside those clothes!

Instead of the typical rooms with the bath and toilet down the hall, this place had a few rooms with the bath included. We decided to take advantage of that – was nice to not have to run down the cold hall to the bathroom in the middle of the night. However…the facilities were different. The toilet was a standard toilet (most toilets here are Japanese style) with a few unique features…the tank was mounted on the wall…except it wasn’t particularly secure so they added a wire around it and pounded a nail in the wall to hold it up. The seat was, well, insecure, so they added a wire around that to keep it on the toilet…kinda. It slipped a lot. The toilets in the building were actually better put together so we used those most of the time but still…appreciated in the middle of the night. The shower was interesting…a shower head right next to the toilet…with two conflicting signs. Once said to “turn on water and wait 3 min. for hot water”. The other said “shower uses wood to heat water so please take very short shower”. We decided to skip the shower, did a spits bath and called it good for the night.