Annapurna lodges: Shangri-la, Kagbeni

My friends and I were using two different travel books on the Annapurna Circuit. Both mentioned the Shangri-la guest house in Kagbeni. My book, "Trekking in the Annapurna Region", published by Trailblazer, calls it an "eyesore". I think that's a bit unfair and fairly indicative of how crappy the book is in general.

I thought the facility was outstanding. It's big and clean. The downstairs common room is cavernous but surprisingly cozy at night.


There's a dining area upstairs as well, with a fantastic view of the Kali Gandaki valley and Nilgiri.


All of which is nice, but what makes the place so special is the people who work there. We had stopped for lunch at another restaurant in town. Kasia and I offered to find rooms for the group. We started here. I mentioned in a previous post how much it disgusts me to hear hikers haggling over room prices. Without any prompting from us the owner offered us a break on the room cost. Apparently business had been slow and she didn't want to pass up the chance to rent three rooms. For less than $2 I had my own room with an actual hot shower.

We didn't look any further. The owner is on the right.

My best guess at the English spelling of her name is Zindin. Her sister Kumari is in the center holding Zindin's daughter. Kumari's name I can spell because it's the name of the "living goddess" who lives in Kathmandu.

I won't even make a stab at Zindin's daughter's name. On the left is (again, best guess) Zundan, who, if I understood correctly, is a cousin. They all work nonstop from before sunrise to long after the tourists are asleep, and yet they are unfailingly cheerful and friendly. When she's cleaning up at night Zindin will strap her daughter to her back with a shawl. The child sleeps like a log with her body in the craziest positions as her mother bustles around the inn.

Take a look behind them. The kitchen is unusually large for Nepal, but, that aside, look how clean and orderly it is. I don't mean to criticize other lodges. It's miraculous how much food (and good food, at that) they can crank out of tiny kitchens, but it's not surprising that they always look in a state of disarray.

Zindin's kitchen is as busy as any of them but unlike other kitchens I've seen it doesn't look like burglars came through and trashed it. It's also well-stocked. One member of my hiking group is a Welshman named Tom who works as a chef in Paris. Zindin gave him a tour of the kitchen. He was impressed not just with how professional it looked. I'm willing to bet there aren't many kitchens on the trail with fenugreek on the shelf.

The food was amazing. I don't mean amazing by trail standards, I mean amazing, period. Tom said the chop suey was the best he ever had. The baby potatoes in sesame cream sauce are deservedly famous. I had gone to Kagbeni in part to visit the famous YakDonald's, but after trying the food at the lodge I had no desire to eat anywhere else.

Most lodges have gardens and raise chickens, so vegetable and egg items are cheap. Meat dishes are more expensive for them to make because they must buy the meat. Zindin asked us if we had any ideas for new dishes she could make using existing ingredients.

In Nepal they eat an unleavened flour bread called a chapati, essentially the same thing as a tortilla. I stumbled across the idea of a breakfast burrito. We were surprised when we realized we hadn't seen it on the menu anywhere. We pitched the idea to Zindin. She seemed interested. As I was the only one who was staying a second night she asked if I would show her how to make it.

The next day I wrote down the ingredients, instructions and even made a drawing of possible serving options: prewrapped, make-your-own, etc. That night I had dinner in the downstairs common room and, as usual, I chowed down. Yak steak and fresh apple pie with hot custard (pudding). There was a lively group of tourists so I got in the spirit and even had a big bottle of Everest beer.

I thought I was done for the night but as the rest of the hikers were heading off to bed Zindin asked me to join her in the kitchen to show her how to make a breakfast burrito. I felt wildly out of place and sorely wished Tom the chef was there to do the honors. I mostly tried to stay out of the way as she made the bread and sauteed all the ingredients together.

She tried it and seemed to like it. It's entirely likely that she was simply being polite, of course. I said it tasted the way it should but suggested that she could use her culinary skills to improve it. So there it was, a giant breakfast burrito sitting there on the plate... Hmm...

I had to eat it.

Don't get me wrong, it was excellent. But I had already eaten a huge meal. It would have been in incredibly poor taste to refuse. Normally I would have already been asleep. But there I was at 10:30 pm wolfing down yet another enormous plate of food.

The next morning she asked me if I wanted breakfast. She laughed when I told her I was still full from "breakfast" the night before. I mentioned that I don't eat breakfast. I made the mistake of saying that if I eat anything in the morning it's usually fruit. Zindin said she had apple trees, from which she made her otherworldly apple pie. Oh no, I couldn't -- but it was too late.

Great, I thought, I'll take an apple with me and eat it a little ways down the trail when I need an energy boost. Imagine my horror, then, when she handed me an entire shopping bag full of apples. She refused to accept any money for them.

I used this photo in a previous post but I'm using it again to illustrate the final bit of kindness guests at the Shangri-la guest house receive. Hotels in Nepal give guests a white scarf as a gift and blessing. It is not common for guests to receive these scarves on the trail. This was taken the morning my friends departed. They're all wearing the scarves they've just been given. I would receive mine the next day.

I've stayed in dozens of lodges on the trails in Nepal and this is the only one that has provided this courtesy. Most hikers stay one or, at most, two nights in Kagbeni. The owners have to pay for these scarves and receive nothing in return. In fact, they give them out after the bill is paid.

From what I gathered Kagbeni is becoming a casualty of the road building in the Annapurna region. It was a regular stop on the Circuit, but now that more and more tourists on this side of the trail are traveling by vehicle, they either pass through Kagbeni for a few hours, or not at all.

Though the village marks the southern boundary of the restricted Upper Mustang region, there's a road on the ridge above with a constant stream of vans and jeeps conveying tourists from Muktinath to Jomsom or vice versa.

Kagbeni is one of my favorite villages in Nepal. So many stops along the trail are there purely for the use of tourists, but here is a place that existed centuries before westerners invaded. It has personality, charm, and lots of nooks and crannies for hikers to explore. It is the jumping-off point for the day hike to the village of Tiri, perhaps the best day hike I've ever done.

It is also home to one of my favorite lodges in Nepal. If you go to Nepal and hike the Annapurna Circuit, do yourself a favor and spend some time in and around Kagbeni. While you're there, stay at Shangri-la, try the sesame potatoes and see if my breakfast burrito made it onto the menu after all.

Annapurna Circuit Day 15: I fought Nepal and Nepal won

One reason I decided to part ways with my hiking partners was because I wanted to do a side hike to the village of Lupra. In that tiny village, tucked away in a narrow side canyon, are two working monasteries of the Bon religion. It is the earliest surviving Bon community in Nepal and the only village of the faith in the Mustang region.

Bon predates Buddhism by hundreds or even thousands of years. The Buddha was born in Nepal about 500 years before Christ was born. I wanted to see a working place of worship for a religion which predated Christianity by centuries.

That's right, it's yet another thing that may interest only me!

I started south from Kagbeni. Immediately I got stuck in the morning rush hour.

I continued through the small village of Eklhaibhatti, crazily located in the Kali Gandaki river bed.

There are a couple stone walls to divert high water, but this place strikes me as a minor disaster waiting to happen.

I posted a picture of the YacDonald's in Kagbeni in a previous post. I thought it fitting that a restaurant which blatantly rips off an American corporate icon is also the only one I saw that advertised on the trail.

Then I made a left up the narrow Panda Valley. The walk was miserable. There wasn't a trail. It was a river bed literally covered with smooth rocks, most the size of bowling balls. It only took about an hour to get from the main trail to the village but it was tiring and hard on my ankles.

The sun was rising just behind the village which made getting a photo next to impossible for a pointer-and-clicker like me. This shot gives an idea of the treacherous walking conditions, as well as how tiny the village is.


This tiny enclave of 16 homes has managed to keep alive a religion that has disappeared or been absorbed by Buddhism virtually everywhere else.

I had seen signs of the religion in Kagbeni. There were fetishes above doorways.


Just outside the gompa in Kagbeni is a carved human figurine embedded in a wall.


As I noted in a previous post the swastika, long before it became known in the western world as a symbol of Nazism, was a Buddhist and Hindu symbol. It was also a Bon symbol. With a slight twist. Literally.

I saw this on the prayer wall at the gompa in Kagbeni.


The swastika at the bottom "turns" to the right as it does in Buddhism (and Nazism). The one at the top, however, turns to the left, as in Bon. It was the only Bon swastika I saw there. I asked a young monk why this one particular swastika was different from the rest. He didn't know about it! It really is something that interests only me!

The stupa at the entrance to Lupra is unlike any I've seen in Nepal, or anywhere else for that matter.

I could tell by the way people stopped and stared the village doesn't get a lot of tourists. I asked where the gompa was. Of course it was at the top of the hill.

When I got there it was closed. Word had gotten around so soon a woman came to unlock it for me.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures, which wasn't a big deal, as it turned out. I have to admit I was disappointed. To my admittedly untrained Western eyes the Bon temple, called Yungdrung Phuntshakling, was virtually indistinguishable from a Buddhist temple. It's not surprising, considering Buddhism more or less absorbed Bon. The two religions have co-existed for thousands of years. My side trip sounded a lot more interesting on paper than it actually was.

I headed back down the boulder-strewn valley and headed towards Jomsom, the main hub of the western leg of the Annapurna Circuit. I was hiking down the Kali Gandaki river valley. I saw children playing and families picnicking in the riverbed. I have no idea why or where they came from.

Jomsom sits in the distance, with Dhaulagiri, the seventh-highest mountain in the world, looming overhead. Off camera to the left is Annapurna, the 10th-highest. Because the river runs between these two peaks this valley is considered to be the deepest in the world.

As I walked I was debating what to do. I wasn't sure I wanted to continue hiking on the trail. On this side of the circuit the trail is an actual road. I was constantly having to step out of the way of vans, jeeps and motorcycles. It really sucked the romance out of an otherwise perfect day for hiking.

I saw very few hikers. Most people were in a vehicle or on mountain bikes or, like these folks, on horseback.


I was feeling strong and fresh for the first time in days. Why not keep walking?

Then again, I could also avoid a lot of the road traffic by taking a bus from Jomsom to Tatopani and then continuing on foot. Maybe I could visit Annapurna Base Camp again? Or maybe not. The trail out of Tatopani ascends a sadistic 1,900 meters, the longest climb on the Annapurna Circuit. That's nearly a mile and a quarter of vertical distance, not walking distance.

I was hiking on the flattest, widest section of trail I had ever seen in Nepal, which made what happened next all the more bizarre. One second was cruising along. Then I was lying face down in the dirt with a badly sprained ankle.

I have no idea what happened. I completely wiped out. My guess is that all the boulder hopping in the morning had weakened my ankles. Whatever the reason, I could barely put any weight on my left foot.

Here is a picture of my ankle.


I sprained it on October 30. This picture was taken on December 27. It's still swollen two months later. Luckily I had my trusty hiking pole to lean on. Even more luckily my next stop was a village with an airport.

All things considered I was incredibly fortunate the mishap occurred where it did, which was right about here.

I didn't have far to walk. I hobbled into Jomsom, found the first available hotel room, booked a flight out for the next morning, and took a few obligatory photos before hopping into bed to rest my ankle.

Jomsom is a soulless place. I didn't mind that it's "modern". It just has no personality.


It does have, however, perhaps the best setting for an airport in the world.


I hope the guy who painted this advertisement for rock climbing was paid well.


If I had been in a village I liked, such as Manang or Kagbeni, I might have rested for a few days and continued hiking. I had no desire to stay in Jomsom.

I was glad I decided to leave when I checked out in the morning. I had spent two weeks sleeping in lodges owned by the most gracious and welcoming people. The owner of my hotel in Jomsom tried to overcharge me for my room, even though the prices are printed in the menu.

I had seen everything I wanted to see on the trail. I had been trying to convince myself to hike the entire circuit, just to say I had done it, but I wasn't at all enthusiastic about dodging traffic for the next few days. I had already been to Annapurna Base Camp. I don't feel like I missed out on anything. I was as content as I could be with a sprained ankle.

Annapurna Circuit Day 14: Mustang sally

I wanted to spend another day exploring Kagbeni and the surrounding area, but my friends wanted to move on. The morning got off to a sad start as we said goodbye. From right to left: Kasia, yours truly, Tom, Rob and Josh.

They headed south. I headed north.

I wanted to visit Tiri, the only village in the Upper Mustang region tourists are allowed to visit without a permit. You can visit the region if you want, but it will cost you. A hiking permit for the Annapurna region costs 2000 rupees, about $25. A permit for the Upper Mustang region costs $700 for 10 days and additional $70 per day after that.

The similarity of the name of that to that of the horse (and the car) is purely coincidental. The horse gets its name from the Spanish. The place name is a corruption of a Tibetan name. Upper Mustang was formerly the independent Kingdom of Lo Monthang.

In 1960 the borders of Lo Monthang were closed. Foreigners were not allowed until 1991. There are no more kings or kingdoms in Nepal, however. The Kingdom of Lo Monthang officially ceased to exit on October 7, 2008.

From Kagbeni I had to cross the Kali Gandaki river bed and head north. There was some sort of festival going on. Locals were stringing flowers across the river. Nepalese love festivals. I had been hiking for less than two weeks and I had already seen three.


I was a little surprised to note this was a Hindu festival. Nepal is a primarily Hindu country. However, in terms of culture, language and religion, Mustang is more Tibetan than Nepali, for reasons that are obvious from this map.

Upper Mustang looks like it was carved out of Tibet. The people of the region are primarily Buddhist. However, as I'd seen repeatedly throughout Nepal, the cultures and traditions of Buddhists and Hindus are closely intertwined.

This is the view of Kagbeni from the other side of the river. The red gompa is the most prominent feature. Nilgiri towers in the distance.

There were disconcerting signs of civilization, like these power lines that hung so low over the trail I had to duck to get past them.


At the bottom of this photo is the existing path, with a reminder of the Sisyphean road building looming above.

I passed all this quickly. And then I had Mustang to myself. It was one of the best day hikes I've ever done. Sometimes I thought it would have been nice if my friends had been there to see it. Other times I was happy for the solitude. Every once in a while I would see or hear a jeep in the distance. Aside from that it the silence was nearly complete. Bliss.

The landscape is evocative of the American West, as is the name Mustang. A pair of horsemen trotting up the river valley added to the similitude.


I walked through Tiri without seeing a single person. The silence was eerie. I ascended the ridge behind the village. And then I just sat there and took it all in.

That's Tiri in the foreground. Thorung La is visible in the distance. I used the camera timer to take this self portrait looking north into Upper Mustang.


I thought I was alone, but I wasn't. I was being watched. There was a single horse silhouetted against the blue sky near the top of the bump in the ridgeline.


I had been incredibly fortunate with the weather. I went days without seeing a single cloud. Some clouds appeared on this day, but they actually enhanced the view. I had never seen clouds quite like these. It looked like someone had used a sponge to blot the sky with white paint.

I could have sat there all day.

At this time of year the Kali Gandaki river isn't really a river this far north. It's a series of streams that eventually meet further downstream. I had the brilliant idea of walking across the river bed. The streams were wider and deeper than I thought...

It wasn't so bad. I had to wade through a couple nearly knee-deep streams that were nearly. It was worth getting a little wet to get some really cool pix, like this one looking north towards Tiri.


This self-portrait is looking south towards Kagbeni.

I loved the crazy cloudscapes that day.

I wanted to visit the gompa during the afternoon to take some photos, so I reluctantly headed back to the lodge to change into dry clothes. As I was wandering through the labyrinthine streets I made a new friend.

This is the exterior of the gompa.

The overhang visible on the left is part of the monks' quarters. A wall of prayer wheels goes nearly the entire way around the outside of the building. Walk down the corridor, turn the corner, and there's the valley.

Young monks were playing in the courtyard. Boys will be boys, even in a Buddhist monastery.


The monks were kind enough to let me take photos inside. Here's a wall painting of the Buddhist Wheel of Life. The amount of detail is amazing. Every tiny piece has a meaning. Please don't ask me what those meanings are. Just enjoy the pretty colors like I do.

It was an exhilarating day.

Annapurna Circuit Day 13: Fugitives in a forbidden land

We departed Muktinath with a new member of our fellowship, an Aussie named Josh. We arrived in Kagbeni after one of the best days of hiking any of us had ever done. We had the trail to ourselves for hours at a time.

The main path to Kagbeni runs through the village of Jharkot. We decided to cross the valley into Dzong and head down from there. We had a hard time just getting to Dzong. We had to wind through the back alleys of Ranipauwa and ask for directions several times. We still didn't find the best path.


The name of the village is transliterated as Dzong or Jhong and simply means 'fort'. From this viewpoint it's obvious why.


The remains of the actual fort, a sand-colored tower, are visible on the right of the plateau. It's called Rab-rgyal-rse, which translates to the rather florid "Peak of Supreme Victory". Next to it is is a guesthouse where we stopped for tea. The view looking back towards Muktinath and Thorung La was awesome, but I couldn't get a decent photo looking into the fierce morning sunlight. You'll have to go and see for yourself.

We saw two tourists in Dzong. Then we hit the trail. From that point on we literally saw one person until we arrived in Kagbeni -- a farmer plowing a field with a buffalo in the valley below. On the other side of the valley, on the main road through Jharkot, we saw a steady stream of jeeps and minivans. We chose our path wisely.

As magnificent as the scenery is in Nepal it is often lacking in color, which makes the view looking back to Dzong and Thorung La all the more startling.

From this vantage point it is obvious why Tibetan traders from centuries past chose Thorung La as a mountain pass. It doesn't look so high from here...

Popular souvenirs on this part of the trail are fossilized sea critters called ammonites. You can buy them or you can find your own. We found dozens. Most are smaller than a plum, but Kasia found this monster.


If you want it you can probably still find it on the trail. She and Rob had another two weeks of hiking so it didn't make sense to add a giant rock to her pack.

We were hiking at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet, within sight of mountains nearly three times that high, and yet we were finding remains of critters that lived on the sea floor. The extreme terrain of the Himalayas forces you to rethink your conception of space and distance. These fossils forced me to rethink my conception of time. My mind clanked to a screeching halt as I tried to process the knowledge that these animals lived before the Himalayas even started to form, when the land I was walking on was at the bottom of an ocean.

Part of the appeal of the Annapurna Circuit is the chance to hike in the Tibetan Plateau, the world's highest desert. It's a stark landscape unlike anything I had seen in Nepal. Here are my hiking homeys on the way to Kagbeni.


We finally arrived at the river valley and this mind-boggling view.


The village is not our intended destination of Kagbeni. It's Tiri, the only village in the Upper Mustang region that tourists are allowed to visit without a permit. The region is restricted, which meant we were probably breaking the law!

Granted, this is Nepal. Here they would point wayward hikers in the right direction with a friendly smile, not throw them in a rat-infested hole and start lopping off body parts. Still, I did experience a mild frisson knowing I was doing something illegal.

Or maybe it was the wind making me shiver. We were standing above the deepest river valley in the world, a natural wind tunnel. The wind was blowing so hard on the ridge we had to lean into it to walk.

Kagbeni was just behind us.


The peak of Nilgiri, over 7,000 meters high, dominates the landscape. As we entered town on the road at the bottom of the picture we passed a sign informing us of our transgression.

I loved the village. Most villages on the trail crowd around the main path, but Kagbeni is a maze of back alleys that were fun to explore.

The most prominent building in town is the red, cube-shaped Thupten Samphel Ling gompa. This combination monastery, fort and university was built in 1429. Kasia went to check it out that afternoon. I love the cozy feel of Buddhist temples.


At sunset monks go onto the roof to play music.


The gompa is the main attraction in town, but every tourist who passes through gets a photo of this place as well.


Hilarious. Even though McDonald's is everywhere, this restaurant is so remote that apparently it's not worth it for their lawyers to shut it down. There was a constant stream of tourists taking photos but I never saw anyone inside!

We didn't eat there because we ate all our meals at our lodge. More on that in a separate post.

After Kagbeni the itineraries of my friends diverged from mine, so we enjoyed one last meal at the lodge that night. I normally don't drink on the trail, but this was a bit of an occasion, so I bought a small bottle of Mustang apple brandy, which was surprisingly palatable. When that was gone Rob broke out a his "medicine", a bottle of mint vodka. Good times.