Happy Birthday Dad.
We leave Deurali in bright beautiful sunlight. As well as snowing yesterday afternoon it must have fallen heavily because the countryside is just white. What an amazing sight. The sun lights up the snow so everything is like some fairyland. It’s a rare experience for me to see a landscape in such colour. The trail takes us through a landscape of white. The sheer mountainsides are white. The sun is in charge until around noon when the clouds roll in. This has been a typical weather pattern for the last few days. The trail takes us beside the Modi River. You have to strain your neck to look up at the sheer mountainous slopes either side of the river. The trekking is reasonably easy and at one point the trail and river meets. The water is glacial so icey cold. We reach Machhapuchhre Base Camp after two hours and decide to lunch. It’s overcast now. We leave the river and aim for Annapurna Base Camp. It’s reasonably easy going so is fun trudging through the snowed landscape. We meet a variety of people from many different countries and we re-meat friends we’ve made along the way. Just prior to the lodges at ABC is a welcoming sign and we all take a moment to record the occasion on our cameras and phones. The weather has completely hidden the mountains so I really have no idea what the landscape looks like. We reach our lodge round 3pm. There are four lodges here. This is called Annapurna Base Camp but it’s not the base camp the serious mountaineers use to assault Annapurna. Annapurna is just over 8,000 so is a popular scalp for enthusiastic mountaineers. Where we are staying is mainly used be Trekkers. Interestingly there is a company here organising helicopter skiing. They fly clients in from Pokhara, just 15 minutes flying away, and take them up the slopes for them to ski down. If the weather suits they do this all day. Clients are rich Europeans mainly.
It’s freezing here but we are above the tree line so no wood and no heating. We fill the afternoon with cards before early dinner and bed. I’m so cold.
angusmccoll 
sounding AMAZZZZING!!!