The canyon through which the Kali Gandaki River flows is said to be the deepest gorge on earth, something like 7,000 meters or 24,000 feet. That's a bit of a stretch, however, since it mostly looks like a narrow river valley and nothing like serious canyons like the Grand Canyon or Black Canyon in the western U.S. That depth is measured from the peaks of Annapurna I and Dhaulagiri, both over 8,000 meters high but something like 25 kilometers apart, to the valley floor. It’s really just an impressive valley.

I have to admit that once I got to this stage of the trek the two days from Marpha to Tatopani at the bottom were quite anticlimactic . It’s in some ways more pleasant to be walking downhill, but there’s not the same excitement as continuing to rise to a higher elevation and ever more snowy peaks. Although the gorge I trekked down had significant differences in appearance from the one I walked up one to two weeks earlier, there were also many similarities in cultures and experiences with landscape now going from arid desert to dry pine forest and then to lusher sub-tropical forest at the lower elevations and culture changing from the Tibetan-influenced Buddhist one of the high valleys to Hindu ethnic groups more typical of the Himalayan foothills of Nepal lower down.

I also lost most of my trail friends along the way, the people whose paths I crossed on the trail and saw in guesthouses most nights along the way who became my hiking pals. Some only went as far as Jomsom and flew out. Others skipped the night in Kagbeni and were a day ahead of me on the trail. In any event, by this point I missed the camaraderie I had with many of my fellow trekkers for the previous ten days or so .

I spent a night in Marpha in the upper part of the valley, probably the nicest town I had come across since the stone houses were all whitewashed with particularly big stacks of firewood on the roofs, a monastery above the village, and apple orchards covering the valley floor. Apple products are the specialty if the area – cider and brandy and firewater.

The next day was a long boring walk on the river’s almost level gravel plain, passing a couple villages named Larjung and Takuche, and good views of the Dhaulagiri Icefall, the large glacier on the northeast side of the 8,000 meter peak of the same name. Then it was a ways through a pine forest, crossing the river on a high suspension bridge at a gorge, and a few ups and downs to Kalopani. I stopped for lunch at a modern lodge and fell asleep in my chair during the thunderstorm that blew in. I decided to stay the night based on the positive recommendations in the guidebooks in a fairly luxurious (for Nepal) room with a sitting area and a private bathroom with hot running water and shower, all for 400 rupees or about $4, the best deal anywhere!

Beyond Kalopani I walked along the road the entire way the next day as it dropped steeply in spots and was blasted out of the cliff face elsewhere. And, of course, as I descended it got hotter and sweatier. Tatopani is a small village which has many guesthouses as well as a small hot spring pleasant for a soak. I decided to take a full rest day in the town before the long grueling ascent to Poon Hill. Tatopani Lies close to the low point of the Circuit trek at 1,190 meters (3,500 feet) so I had gone full circle in terms altitude gains and losses since the start of my long walk.