Prayusha Acharya

Thanking the weather for being good, despite the forecast of heavy rain on 16 February, Saturday, we gathered in Deerwalk complex at 10:30 am. We all had been waiting for this day since months and were very excited. 22 people including me along with our 3 teachers, headed by bus towards our first destination, Markhu.

Singing and making plans for that night along the bumpy roads, it took us about 3hrs to reach Markhu. It was drizzling. We were wowed by the beauty of that place- the deep blue water surrounded by green hills, a slight cloudy blue sky above that and small looking colorful boats floating in the middle of that dam.

We headed down for boating. We picked up life jackets and went to the boats. There was a man to paddle the boat. We enjoyed the boating for 15 minutes, talked about how beautiful as well as dangerous it could be and got back. After that, we clicked some photos in that gorgeous scenery and had some lunch. We then hiked towards our next destination of that day, Chitlang.

The sky was getting darker and it was about to rain. We reached Goat cheese homestay, our homestay for that day, just in time. We found our rooms, became fresh and then gathered in a hall. We had few cups of tea since we felt cold and it was raining too. We were then served with welcome snacks that had goat cheese salad, gundruk sadheko, prawns, popcorns and fried soybeans. We really appreciated the food.

We spent our time by singing in the hall. It was very cold since it was raining hail. We then decided to go to a room to stay warm. Boys came up with ideas of rap battles and dance battles. After seeing almost everyone singing and dancing, we were informed that our dinner was ready. We again enjoyed the food and headed back towards the room for some antakshari. We sang and had a lot of fun. In order to not disturb anyone around, we wrapped up at 10pm and headed to our rooms.

Next day, since we were said that our breakfast will be ready and we need to leave earlier, we woke up, grabbed our breakfast, inspected the goat cheese factory and headed up to see the old durbar. We were pleased to see a school in that area beside the durbar. We then hiked to our next destination, Chandragiri hills.

Our route from Chitlang to Chandragiri was through a thin forest. We walked and walked approximating time to reach the top and appreciating the greenery around us. There were also rhododendrons blooming around. We picked some of them. We reached Bhanjyang from where we could see an amazing view of Chitlang. We took some rest there and had heavenly tasting Choilas. We again continued to walk.

After about 3 total hours of walk, we reached Chandragiri. We observed the tremendous view from hill top, at an altitude of 2551m. We could see Kathmandu valley surrounded by hills, mountains above that and cloudy blue sky with sun shining bright. We moved towards cable car and got down by it. We were picked up by school bus and had some lunch before we ended our journey.

Though our trip was short and tiresome, we enjoyed our time. We got to know our friends even better and it was a great break from our monotonous life.