Fishtail Peak from Sarangkot Village Summit

After much discussion we managed to cancel the tour for sunrise in Sarangkot with the hotel as it was costing us double of what Gurung offered to take.
Wake-up call fixed and our tummies full of the famous dal [lentil soup] and roti [flat pancake bread] in Nepal we collapsed into bed. Pashu was out before the lights actually :).
For some reason the hyper person that i am, i couldnt sleep, there were so many images to record !! I went out to the stone flagged garden and sat down with a coffee. The room looked beautiful, lit up with a golden glow from outside.
If it was not for a spider the size of my hand that decided to share my coffee with me, i might have stayed out longer ! Yikes...
Btw stick to tea in this country you might be better off, for the coffee here doesn't taste like coffee !
Panadol Night Time glugged i started on a mission to sleep.I woke up rfreshed to find the time 3:00 AM, cant explain that as the time difference is not even much and i was surely not jet lagged, maybe i was just very excited. Pashu mumbled that i was mad and went off to land of nod again.
I took out my Palm and started typing the previous day's diary. before i realised, it was the wake-up call & smell of freshly brewed tea on the porch and a quick shower later we were dressed to see the sunrise from Sarangkot. As promised, Gurung was waiting for us on the other side, we left at 4:30 albeit along with our Hotel Guide Mr. Baral who had already been commissioned the day before and would not take no for an answer!
The drive was lovely and still dark, but you could see miles and miles of terraced hills growing rice. People were up and about by 6:00 AM.
Even though it was cloudy, at sunrise, we did manage to see the Fishtail. It was hard to get early pictures with out Digital Camera, but we got some good shots on our drive down. Remember to always carry a Manual SLR film camera on such occasions, because it captures what digital technology cannot!
A little dog at the top reminded me of Phoebe [my retriever] back home, so i decided to buy him some biscuits while we had tea along with some Japanese tourists up there with us.

An incident i will remember...

As we were leaving the summit i handed the biscuits to a shopkeeper to give to the dog, shockingly there was a local kid who wanted some. If i had known i would have given him the biscuits right at the beginning, he happily gulped down the biscuits which so vanely had been offered to a stray dog. I really do not know what i was thinking, and this gave me the true picture of how bad things were here. I was ashamed at my own ignorance and felt guilty for being better off.

Pokhara City

Sarangkot Village
Can be reached by car to some extent but basically you have to hike a little to reach the top at 4770 feet. This little spot offers the best viewing for the Fishtail Peaks. It is favourite for sunrises and sunsets.
The village of SARANGKOT, nestled just below the summit, has tea shops, handicrafts sellers and something like a dozen lodges. All have electricity and most can provide hot washing water by the bucket. Several simple restaurants line the path up to the top, some with excellent views. For the summit, another ten minutes up to a walled compound, where the local council will hit you for a donation for any of various projects. Kot means "fort" in Nepali, and this is the remains of one. (You'll find that just about every hilltop in this region, which was once divided among many warring principalities, is called Something-kot.) If you've hiked up from Lakeside, the sudden view here will come as a staggering revelation. The peaks seem to levitate above their blue flanks, the gathering clouds add a quality of raw grandeur, while to the south, Phewa Tal shimmers in the hazy arc of the valley. If you hadn't been planning on trekking, this is where you might change your mind.
The thing that strikes one the most here is, from here one truly feels like there is something eerily ethereal about this place, the whole valley spread out under you, with floating clouds, you are above and reminds me of the illustrations for heaven, where the god's reside, this is where i truly felt that this is the abode of the god's !
As saying goes that this was the retreat the god's made for their Holiday!