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Marco Ferrarese

For once, I don’t mind waking up at 4am.
The predawn cold at 3,300 metres is harsh but cannot detract from the spectacle: Nilgiri (7,061 metres), Tukuche (6,920 metres), Annapurna South (7,219 metres), Hiunchuli (6,441 metres) and Dhaulagiri (8,167 metres) – some of Nepal’s, and the world’s, highest mountains, in all their glory.
The first rays of a new sun glow against the tips of that jagged silhouette and the peaks start dripping liquid gold.
Moments later, rays shimmer against the fishtail-like face of the 6,993-metre Machhapuchhre, erasing the geography of stars above as quickly as a rolling shutter rises. My wife and I are the only people watching these petrified gods awake.

I discovered the Mohare Danda lookout, in the Annapurna region of central Nepal, through the Community Homestay Network (CHN), a Kathmandu-based organisation focused on raising the status and income of local women through tourism.
It’s a moderately challenging hike to the dramatic viewpoint. It can be accomplished in three days – plus three more to circle back down to where a road connects to the city and airport of Pokhara.

Few visitors can spare more than a few days for a Himalayan walking adventure and relatively short teahouse treks around the Annapurna region’s Poon Hill have become popular, with road connections and internet coverage improving yearly. So popular, in fact, that Ghorepani, the starting point for a Poon Hill trek, has been transformed from a peaceful lower Himalayan hamlet into a fully fledged traveller village.
“The drawback?” says Ashish Gupta, my guide from Royal Mountain Travel, of which the CHN was a corporate social responsibility project until 2017, when it became an entity in its own right. “Imagine sharing those idyllic mountain views with 500 people every day in high season.
“Promoting Mohare Danda is an effort to counterbalance the increased local dependency on tourism and unequal distribution of its profits in a large region that rarely sees the same amount of tourists headed to Poon Hill,” says Gupta.

Mohare Danda overlooks the same stretch of the Annapurna range and the route to it, through villages and meadows, opened in 2010. Initial efforts to promote the trek were dashed by Nepal’s devastating 2015 earthquake and Covid-19 further discouraged locals from investing time in appealing to tourists who had yet to return in significant numbers.
The CHN is reviving interest by coordinating the trek with homestays run, for the most part, by local women, rather than with Poon Hill’s more commercialised teahouses. The result is a more intimate trekking experience; one that could bring cash to a part of the Annapurna Conservation Area that has few other means of income.

“Most of the revenue generated from the tourism industry in Nepal has been distributed to highly commercial business owners rather than the communities,” says network founder Shiva Dankal.
We start our trek in Galeshwor, crossing a hanging bridge slung over the Kali Gandaki River and climbing steeply through forest to the Bas Kharka community homestay (1,522 metres), which opened with the trekking route, in 2010.

Two women of the Magar ethnic group welcome us with tea in their kitchen before showing us to comfortable beds set inside a row of traditional houses made of stone slabs hewn from the mountain. Since receiving guests, they say, they have been able to thrive in their village and improve the facilities of the rooms they offer.
We rise at 5.45am to a glorious view of Dhaulagiri, the seventh tallest peak in the world, and set off soon after.
By 8am, we have climbed to the Kothi Dil viewpoint (2,006 metres), from where it’s an hour downhill to Dandakateri, a village strung out through corn fields on a ridge. Without stopping at the community dining hall, we continue walking to our next overnight stop.
Nangi village (2,660 metres) stands above a long valley. In its community hall, which may have a homely central kitchen-cum-dining hall but, with a dedicated housing block, cannot be considered a homestay, piping hot solar-powered showers soothe aching muscles.
As it’s still early, we explore Nangi and the community paper factory, which has not reopened since closing during the pandemic.

“Locals are discouraged from investing more time into it because there are still very few visitors coming to Mohare Danda, even though we are just one and a half hours away from Poon Hill,” says teacher Toya Pariyar, who helps manage village activities. As he shows us notebooks and thick, fibrous paper sheets made from the Daphne tree, Pariyar explains that these handicrafts used to be sold to trekkers.
“The revenue was invested in education and community development”, he says, adding that he hopes that this October and November (peak tourist season), Nangi will have seen at least a few of the 10,500 visitors Poon Hill saw in the same period last year.
Our third day starts at 5.30am, with clear views of Dhaulagiri. We snake uphill for two hours through an alpine forest alive with the sound of chirping birds until we reach a bump in the mountain and descend onto the Hampal Pass (2,994 metres), a grassy meadow that falls away to a valley.
It takes another couple of hours of huffing and puffing along this trek’s highest crests until we reach Mohare Danda, where the air is thick with fog, hiding whatever views the vantage point may have.

We bed down early in the trekker shelter (which is not part of the CHN network), in a room furnished with little more than two twin beds, thick blankets and a naked light bulb, unaware that the beginning of our fourth day will present one of the most unforgettable mountain views on Earth – that from Mohare Danda lookout.
To say the climb has been worthwhile is an understatement. Dhaulagiri disappears behind the clouds, but we can still see a watchful Annapurna South as we descend to Upper Phulbari village, passing through some of Nepal’s largest and oldest rhodo­dendron forests.
At noon, we reach Shikha village (2,000 metres) and, staying at a teahouse, we feel the difference immediately; the interaction and curiosity one experiences in a homestay are absent in a place accustomed to a constant flow of visitors.
Before retiring to en suite rooms upstairs, guides and trekkers sip their drinks in the spacious main dining hall without much interaction.
The following day, walking past Tatopani and Ghara – villages of narrow alleys and traditional houses made of stone, with flat rock roofs and wooden doors and windows – we descend on a stretch of motorable road, part of the Annapurna Circuit, to the village of Narchyang (1,340 metres), where Annapurna north base camp treks begin.

We settle into the Narchyang Community Homestay, a CHN member and a proper Nepali home – a communal dining room next to a large kitchen; a corridor leading to the rear and the outside toilet passing five rooms able to accommodate 10 people – fronted by a long garden from where we can see a waterfall on the mountains across from us.
Tonight brings us our final battle: learning how to cook the national dish, dal bhat, under the expert supervision of the mother and daughter of the family who own the home, who explain the steps with a smattering of English and hand gestures.
They sit behind me and look bemused at every move this foreigner makes around their stovetop. The final test comes as I serve the hot meal on brass dishes, and mama tucks in.
“Good”, she says, and even if she’s only being kind, it’s a reaction that proves the worth of this novel network of less-trodden trails.


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Sunrise views from the 3,300-metre-high Mohare Danda viewpoint. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

A clear view of Dhaulagiri peak from the Mohare Danda lookout at dawn. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

The trek encompasses some of Nepal’s largest and oldest rhododendron forests. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

On the trail’s highest crest towards Mohare Danda. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

Descending from Mohare Danda’s lookout through the rhododendron forest towards Phulbari village. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

Locals on the Mohare Danda trekking route. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

Toya Pariyar displays products inside Nangi’s now closed paper factory. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

A Community Homestay Network property along the Mohare Danda trek. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

A warm Nepali welcome at Narchyang. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

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PostMag

Travel

An alternative to Nepal’s Poon Hill, peaceful Mohare Danda has comparable views and benefits local women and families


An alternative to Nepal’s Poon Hill, Mohare Danda has comparable views, a fraction of the crowds, and benefits local women and families
