24 Hour Trek Near Kathmandu - Sundarijal To Chisapani [Part 1]

Cinematic Vlog - Best Closest Hiking Trail Near Kathmandu.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Walking past the little bazaar at Sundarijal, a huge rusty iron water pipe running through its centre, is nothing remarkable. You are either a visitor going up to see the waterfall, the reservoir or walking up as far as you can, or a hiker leaving a human habitation for the wilderness. But there is a sequence of sorts.
First, you see the tea shops, their counters crammed with sel, malpuwa, samosa and jeri. Next, you pass Nepal’s second hydropower station. Then a couple of houses, with laden grapefruit and tamarillo trees in their kitchen gardens; spinach and cauliflowers and spring onion sprouting from neat beds. You buy a ticket to the Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park at a small booth, then continue the climb. Then a soothing sight for the mind and an excuse to rest the body: a big waterfall.
For a visitor today, that site marks an exit door of sorts, a way out from the confines of the Kathmandu Valley into the wilderness. Walking past that building, a Shivapuri Nagarjun National Park entrance ticket in pocket, it’s as if you’re free once again, moving deeper into forests, higher and farther from the haze-veiled city, closer to the mountains. The Sundarijal reservoir appears; its turquoise waters a welcome excuse for stopping. The Bagmati is beautiful here, unmolested, oblivious to the defilements awaiting her once she leaves the protection of the national park.
The next house that appears is one of several that make up Mulkharka, a small village of terraced fields, houses with protruding wooden balconies, corn ears hanging in them, looking like a huge centipede. Turning around, you see, framed in a ‘V’ formed by the ridges of two hills on either side of the ravine, the long corrugated tin roofs shimmering in the sun, splotches of green around them: Kathmandu. You notice that there are many more concreted houses now in Mulkharka. The 2015 earthquake turned most traditional stone-and-wood homes to rubble. A few survive, their sides plastered with earth, flaky and cracked in places, blackened in others by soot from wood fires.
A dappled trail through a forest of tree trunk to tree trunk moss carpeting, wisps of old man’s beard hanging from branches. Scuttling feet that turn out to be a covey of kalij pheasants. Vultures wheeling in the sky. That is the hike for the next four to five hours after Mulkharka.
At the end of those hours of surrendering yourself to the wilderness you arrive in Chisapani. Like a bleached canine, Langtang Lirung peaks from behind a serrated range of black barren mountains, devoid of vegetation and snow. Other mountains are closer, larger, glaciers clearly visible. Beginning with Gauri Shankar in the east, there is an arc of Himalayan giants on the horizon: Dorje Lakpa, Ganesh, Manaslu, the Annapurnas. Chisapani itself is a gateway to longer treks, Gosainkunda and Helambu. But for people who are out in the wild after a long sentence in the city, the mountains, forests, blue sky and the night sky bejewelled with stars are enough.
The walk from Chisapani to Pani Muhan takes you through some of the best preserved forests around Kathmandu. You know that from the size of some of the oak trees, giants seven or eight feet wide, towering a hundred or more feet above the forest. The same trees keep most of the sunlight out, so you hike through a dark, somewhat foreboding, place. It’s clear from the trail carpeted in leaves that this route does not see many trekkers. Only the presence of cow dung, stone steps and tangerine ribbons tied to tree branches to serve as indicators reassures you that the trail hasn’t been abandoned altogether. For that reason, it creates the temporary feeling of being in a foreign land. Mere kilometers from Kathmandu, you walk under ancient trees, savouring the patches of sunlight, familiarising yourself with this world, plotting your next escape from the city.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[@THE.STRUGGLER_SHORTS_]

Wow