Annapurna lodges: Mavis's Kitchen and Guest House, Manang

I am continually amazed that in the Nepal Himalayas, of all places, you can hike for weeks without having to carry food or a tent. The most popular trails, in the Everest and Annapurna regions, are called 'teahouse treks' because there are small villages along the trail. You rarely have to hike more than an hour before coming to a place where you can eat and sleep.

The facilities can be primitive, especially at higher altitude, but you can usually count on sleeping on clean linen and eating home-cooked meals in a warm dining room. (You can also count on pretty grim toilets.) Lodges make decent attempts at various types of international cuisine: spaghetti, pizza, rosti, chop suey, moussaka, etc.

The staff is usually friendly and efficient. It's astounding the way they can crank out meals for 20 to 40 guests using one or two burners. I'm impressed that they actually care, considering the vast majority of their guests arrive in the afternoon and leave early the next morning.

Every once in a while you stay at a lodge where the owners take pride in their lodge and kitchen. The food on the Annapurna Circuit was surprisingly good in general, but two lodges were really memorable.

The first was the Mavis's Kitchen and Guest House. Mavis is an Indian woman who moved to Kathmandu to teach English. Her English is perfect, as in better than mine. She married a Nepalese man and moved with him to his village, Manang.

I spent my first night in Manang in another hotel. I switched hotels after having Mavis's yak steak for dinner. It was outrageously good. Fresh rosemary in the gravy! When I hike I eat as much as I want, because I know I'm going to burn off the calories when I hit the trail again. The lasagne serving was so big I could not finish it.

Mavis runs the place with help from two of her nieces. Chiri works as a teacher during the day and helps out at night. Mavis is cheerful and chatty. I don't know why she wouldn't smile when I took her picture.

You can see a younger version of her in the poster in the background. She's not smiling there either! Most lodges are set up like hotels, but Mavis has little cottages behind the restaurant. Mine is the one on the right.


It's basic, just a room with two beds, a lamp and small table. It's quite cozy, though, and the relative privacy was a blessing after staying in so many lodges where the rooms are separated by plywood partitions.

Cost: about $2 per night.

It's located on the side of town furthest from the river and mountains, but since the scenery here is 7,500 meters high you don't have to worry about the view being obstructed.

Just behind the blue roof is the "Wild West" main street of Manang. After I took this picture I spent the afternoon exploring on the ridge just below the snow line.

The toilets are located behind my cottage. They are spotless. I can not overstate how extraordinary this is. Most of the toilets on the trail look like something out of a horror movie. You are more likely to see a herd of unicorns on the trail than you are to find a clean toilet.

One western concept the Nepalese still don't quite have a handle on is the hot shower. Mavis's would be the perfect guest house if she worked out the kinks in the shower.


It's a bit disconcerting trying to bathe while wondering if the heating apparatus is going to explode. It doesn't work very well, and whatever heat it generates is canceled out by the cold air blowing through the cracks in the wall. That is the only quibble I have. I hasten to mention that this is a typical setup on the trail. It's not as if it's noticeably worse than anywhere else. It's just the only thing about the place where there's room for improvement!

Our next stop after Manang was Yak Kharka. Mavis's sister owns a guest house there. I mentioned this in a previous post, but it bears repeating. She called ahead and reserved cottages for us there and wrote notes for us to take just in case. Even the big-money tour groups have to send porters ahead to reserve rooms. To have a rooms waiting for you on the trail is an unheard-of luxury. I probably shouldn't be writing about this...

In my Manang post I said that the village itself is more than just a stop along the trail. It's a great destination. I can imagine going back to Manang for a week and using it as a base to do short hikes in the region. Mavis may not be there, though. She told me she doesn't enjoy running the hotel as much as she once did and is considering moving on.

The prices for lodging and meals are set by the village governments. This is to ensure all the lodges in a particular area can compete and make money. I had a cottage to myself for about $2 per night. You can get simple meals like fried rice for as little as $2. I ate as much as I wanted and treated myself to Snickers and Coke whenever I got the craving and still averaged less than $20 per day for the trek, and that includes the costs of permits and bus rides.

Yet there are still people who want to haggle! Manang is a busy town. The lodges do fill up. But people still try to get a "deal". The common scam is for tourists to promise to eat all their meals at the lodge if the owner will let them stay for free.

It's not as if you can go around the corner to Applebee's or call Domino's. The only restaurants are in the lodges. Of course they're going to eat there. And since most people only stay for a night, maybe two, they're only going to eat a few meals anyway.

Mavis, understandably, is tired of dealing with people like that. There is something seriously wrong when a woman who takes so much pride in her guest house and restaurant is considering getting out of the business because of cheapskate tourists.

I find it appalling. It baffles me that a tourist would expect free lodging anywhere, let alone in the Himalayas! Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world by western standards, with a per capita income of about $250 per year. Most people live on less than a dollar a day. If you can't afford $2 for a hotel room, seriously, stay home.

Annapurna Circuit Days 7, 8: Move over, Hoi An

I was doing some housekeeping on the blog when I came across this post from the Annapurna trek. I thought I had published it. In fact, I've even received comments about it. Hmm... Anyway, it's about my new favorite place, Manang, so I'm republishing it.


I've mentioned that Hoi An, Vietnam is my favorite small town. That was before I visited Manang. I'll add a new category. Hoi An is my favorite small town. Manang is my favorite village. Consider the issue successfully ducked.

It's altitude is listed in my guidebook at 3,540 meters/11,614 feet, a height at which altitude sickness becomes a serious risk. The guidebooks recommend staying two nights there to acclimatize. After Manang the villages are smaller and the lodges more basic, so it's last place to stay in relative luxury before heading to higher altitude.

I stayed there for three nights. I didn't want to leave.

The setting for the town is breathtaking. It sits in a valley next to a small river. There are clear views up and down the valley of the two 7,500-meter peaks on the other side of the river. The creature comforts here are as good as on anywhere on the trail.

Fresh-baked apple pie washed down with real brewed coffee!

Travel books talk about Manang as a comfortable place to rest before heading to higher altitude. I think they should market the place as a destination. I could see myself going back to Nepal just to go to Manang. And eat pie.

There are perhaps a dozen nice side excursions from the village, from a few hours to the gompa (shrine) on the hill above or three days to Tilicho Lake, one of the highest lakes in the world. The food is great. There is internet access -- slow and expensive, but hey, you're online in the Himalayas! But the best of the creature comforts happens at night. Read on...

The altitude is over 3,500 meters, which is daunting, but it's easy to get there. If you don't feel like hiking for a week you don't have to. There is an airport in Ongre, just a few hours south. Someone who wants to visit the Himalayas but isn't a serious hiker, or doesn't enjoy roughing it, could fly into Ongre, hike up to Manang (slowly), spend a week there, eat pie, hike back down and fly out.

The village is Tibetan in style, with stacked stone buildings and narrow passageways. Here is a an intersection with wall of Buddhist prayer wheels and a monument called a chorten.

I ended up in this particular corner because I was looking for the post office. I wanted to mail postcards from here to see if they were ever delivered. The mail here is carried by porters down the valley and then delivered by trucks.

This is the post office.


The postmaster lives upstairs and comes down to the office when he hears someone walk in. The cost for a postcard stamp to the US was only 30 rupees, less than 50 cents, not bad considering where I was.

The alleys are so steep and narrow that they block out the spectacular surroundings, but not always. Here's looking down a path at Gangapurna. It's nearly 25,000 feet high, or about a mile higher than Denali (McKinley), the highest peak in the US.

If I were a better photographer I would have gotten a better shot of this child standing on the roof of her house in her school uniform with the Gangapurna Glacier in the background.


The entrance and main road through the village looks like something from the American Wild West, complete with horses tethered to hitching posts.


That illusion was enhanced on my third day, during the first day of the bi-annual Ni festival. Horsemen from all over the region came to town to put on a riding display. Some of the riders were young guys with fashionable clothes and slickbacked hair trying to impress the girls. Others were old-timers who looked like they could have ridden with the Golden Horde.

It was cool to watch them riding with no hands, controlling the horses using only their knees, something I have only ever seen in Mongolia. It was also fun watching the locals tailgating, Nepal style:

Everyone stopped to watch.


I was dining alone the first night when a gorgeous blonde girl sat down at the table next to me. I was eating yak steak, not pie. I thought she was flirting with me but that was just my ego tricking me. She's just an incredibly sweet and friendly person. How disappointing.

Kasia was traveling with her friend and housemate, Rob. They're both Polish but live in London. Rob has lived in England his whole life. He talks (and thinks) like a Brit. Kasia has only lived in England for a few years so she speaks with a lilting combination Polish-English accent. I would pay to listen to her read the phone book.

The three of us became fast friends and I spent the next few days hanging out with them and a young Welshman named Tom. He's a chef who, after his sojourn to Nepal, was heading back to his job in Paris. He was absolutely shocked at the quality of food on the trail. More on that in future posts.

Rob coined a phrase which makes me laugh every time I think about it. Nepalese use squat toilets, but every once in a while you'll encounter a western toilet. Rob's says the sensation of discovering a western toilet where you don't expect it is deja poo.

Usually I go to bed at 8 p.m. on the trail because I'm tired, it's cold and dark and, well, there's nothing to do. In Manang I could go to one of two "cinemas".


One night we watched "Hang the Over" ("The Hangover"). I've now seen it three times in three different countries, which must be some kind of record. So I've got that going for me. Which is nice.

I found it odd that two of the staple movies are "Touching the Void" and "Into Thin Air". Do I really want to watch a movie about a mountain climbing disaster before attempting the highest trekking pass in the world? And "Alive"?! Maybe I shouldn't have eaten the "yak" steak...

Cost for the movie is 250 rupees, a little more than $3. For that we got to sit on wooden benches lined with yak pelts and watch the movie with complimentary popcorn and tea.

In the center is a wood stove, so it was warm and cozy inside. The movie "screen" is an old TV. The next night we went to the cinema across the street and watched "Into the Wild" -- another movie about someone dying in the snow...

I desperately needed to rest my feet so the first day I didn't do anything except read. And eat pie. The next day I did a couple side hikes. And ate pie.

I got up early to climb up to Praken Gompa. Actually I got up early to eat pie, then hike. About an hour of slow walking above Manang takes you to a small shrine where there's a lama who will bless hikers for a small donation, to give them luck crossing the high mountain pass called Thorung La. Trekkers wear the twine bracelets he gives them as a badge of honor.

I arrived too early. The lama was asleep. Two of the nuns motioned that I should go in and they would wake him up.

NO NO NO, I said, shaking my head wildly. Let the man sleep! Don't wake him up for me!

He's 93 years old!

Even without the lama's blessing it was worth the walk to see the view of the village and the mountains beyond. In the afternoon I would climb the ridge in the center of the picture to the hill on the left.


Looking down the valley into the fierce early morning light washed out the view of the landscape, giving it an almost impressionistic look.

I didn't linger long for fear that the nuns would wake up the lama. I went down to recharge. And eat pie. In the afternoon Kasia and I walked up the other side of the valley and stopped for tea at the Chongkor Viewpoint Restaurant. Here she is enjoying the view and a glass of seabuckthorn juice. Mmm ... seabuckthorn juice.


Believe it or not, here I did not, repeat not eat pie. I could easily have spent an entire day wandering around the ridge. We saw trails going all the way up to the snow line. Looking across the valley we could look down at Manang and across at the gompa I had visited in the morning. It's a barely visible white speck on the side of the mountain.

The view back down the valley was awesome. The entire ridge was criss-crossed with prayer flags, which added an additional pinch of color.

It felt good to be alive.


When I could finally force myself to leave I would be heading up the valley to the right in the photo below. The mountain pass we would cross is just past the mountain in the distance.


The lake at the bottom gets its otherworldly blue color from the sediment in the runoff from the glacier. The mountain, glacier and lake are all called Gangapurna. Kasia and I found a trail down to the lake. She didn't have to tell me to smile when she took my picture.

The sun set behind Gangapurna, which made for great evening viewing. I love the lighting effects when the sun is blocked by the mountains but still hasn't set.