Annapurna Flower Trip - Day 3. In Ghandruk.

First a short summary from the way up to Ghandruk. The beautiful place with the gorgeous garden by the river, made an incredible impression on me. Think I could have been there for many weeks. With a heavy heart, I said goodbye and started om my next adventure. On the way up we met many travel groups coming in the oposite direction. They came from the Rhododendronforest, where the trees were blooming and had some amazing stories to tell.

We stopped up to rest a bit and got some good pictures of some lovely children. The kids were attention seeking and weren´t satisified before they seen their pictures on screen of my camera. On the way we also saw some lizards and a colony of monkeys. Both were very shy, so some good pictures was difficult to get.

 

After a delicious lunch at the hotel and a quick wash and change of clothes, we were ready to explore Ghandruk. Ghandruk is the biggest village in the area we visited on the trek, also consisting of an exciting old Town. We walked along the streets to photograph and caoture normal village life, houses and culture. Ang, my guide, borrowed one of my cameras, giving me the opportunity to work with both my camera. In the posts ahead I will use some of his pictures too, but then marked with his name. He walked with long zoom, a 80-400 mm.

Walking through the narrow alleys, some plants appeared along walls and steps. Here represented by this great Bergeniawall.


People were cheerful and happy, here some ladies chatting (Photo: Ang Sherpa)


Chickens roaming the streets.

Along the house walls beautiful roses climbs alog with some zantedeschia.

Some lovely fuchsias.

The village lay beautifully on a hill, on a clear day you could see the mountains Annapurna and Machapuchare.

Me outside the old museum. (Photo: Ang Sherpa)

The museum was an old Gurung museum. Gurung is a minority group in Nepal and living outside the Hindu caste janjati. They have created their own caste system that is based on Hinduism. Many Gurungfolk live around the Annapurna area, they engaged in agriculture especially sheep farming and also some trade.

Outside the museum there was obviously some Tropaeolum. I did't  like the plant much before, after Annapurna I love it.

Inside the museum, I found this very exciting. It shows how they made knitting yarn etc.. Not so different from how we did it in Norway 100 years ago.

On a street corner; corn cobs and fire wood nicely stacked, surely to be dried for later use.

Colorful laundry was hanging outside to dry.

After we had walked for a while in the new part of Ghandruk, we arrived on the outskirts of town where there were not that many houses. In this part there were also some farmland.

Babysitting and embroidery goes well, especially when the child is so quiet as here  sitting on grandmother's lap (Photo: Ang Sherpa).

This man is on his way home with food for the animals (Photo: Ang Sherpa)

A typical child cradle in this area (Photo: Ang Sherpa)

White-tailed Stonechat (Photo: Ang Sherpa)

 Some youngsters who had fun while they washed clothes.

Outside the village between the new and old part of Ghandruk. The photos from the old village comes in a separate post on the next blog.

We had plenty of time to go there to study how people who lived there.  This is also the last day before we trek into the beautiful forests. First, with a lots of beautiful wild plants and eventually appeared also Rhododendron trees which I had heard so much about. See you soon in the old village.