Travel Day 1012 – Extended Langtang Trek, NEPAL
03/15 Gonggang via Tatopani and Brimdang to Nagthali (3170)
We woke up at 6am again with some nice valley views while the sun was rising behind the mountains and only a fresh Tibetan bread with honey later, we were on the trail again, climbing up higher…
Nagthali View, Tamang Heritage, Nepal
As it turned out the walk to Tatopani which was another 400 meters higher, was pretty steep and exhausting again. It took us about 1 ½ hours to reach Tatopani and left us with the awareness that under no circumstances would we have been able to finish this walk yesterday before darkness. But so Tatopani made the perfect tea stop for us and after we saw the hot springs, we obviously had to take a cozy morning bath as well…
Overall it seemed that Tatopani would have been a good stop for the night, mainly due to the hot springs, but otherwise the village was pretty destroyed, too. It seemed that Tatopani had once been a nice small Tamang village with only stone houses as well, but now since it was a main stop on the tourist route, there seemed to be more new guesthouses and lodges around than original stone houses. We actually watched people built even more lodges while we were having our morning tea…
Tamang Stone Houses by Tatopani, Nepal
Once we were finished with our tea and hot-spring bath, we continued our walk towards Brimdang through some dense forest. It was another 250 meter climb up to Brimdang and by the time we arrived, we were more than ready for a good lunch. Unfortunately for us, in this case, Brimdang turned out to be a completely untouched Tamang village of only about 5 houses and no tourist facilities at all. Actually two of the local houses had a sign outside for “fooding and lodging”, but strangely enough, nobody seemed to know what that actually meant…
Finally a boy who could speak some English offered to walk us to another house further away, where he thought the family might be able to give us some food. We agreed and all of a sudden we found ourselves not only inside one of the traditional Tamang housed that I really wanted to see from the inside, but we also had a family make us a home cooked meal on the open fire-place inside the one-room house. It was simply an amazing experience and the best daal-bhat that I had ever eaten…
Eating with a Tamang Family in Nepal
What was not so amazing on the other hand was that I eventually got sick from the food later on in the afternoon and violently ill in the middle of the night. But even if I had to take some emergency medications and couldn’t eat much for a while the next day, everything was still well worth the experience of having a nicely cooked and well-meant meal with a local Tamang family in one of their charmingly smoky, dark houses…
When we continued our walk, we had in mind to reach Thuman at the end of the day and it would have been easily possible before darkness, but once we arrived in Nagthali which was another 300 meters up, we couldn’t help but be fascinated by the amazing Himalayan views. Since we figured that it definitely couldn’t get better than the sunset and sunrise views we would have from the hilltop in Nagthali, we decided to rather spend the night here. And in retrospect it was the best decision and the best views of the entire trek…
Find all Day 03 – to Nagthali via Tatopani Photos here.
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