Dilmaya's Hidden Annapurna Trek

A unique opportunity to avoid the normal Annapurna tourist trail and find a forgotten and unspoilt area of Himalayan Nepal principally occupied by the Gurung people and rarely visited by outsiders

http://dilmayatrek.com/

Your guide will be the founder of Dilmaya’s Bikash Gurung who will lead you amongst the hilltop villages of his youth under the snowclad Annapurna mountains and show you an agrarian way of life that has changed little over the centuries – no tractors, no chainsaws, no fertilisers: just the traditional practices of ox-drawn ploughs, handsaws and recycled manure.

You will stay in Gurung homes and receive a simple but very warm welcome around the traditional open hearth – eating as they do rice, dal and a variety of fresh vegetables and local breads washed down by tea and the occasional glass of millet whisky: and sleeping as they do above the family water buffalo and chickens.

Anyone who likes a good walk and can live without some of the modern creature comforts will find the inconvenience of hole in the ground loos and hard beds more than compensated by the spectacular scenery, the friendliness of the Gurung people and the sheer experience of seeing a thriving agrarian community unspoilt by modern developments.

  

TOUR FORMAT

Dilmaya’s Hidden Annapurna Tours deliberately offer only a limited number of tours in order to preserve not change the villages visited. Dilmaya’s have four village circuits each of which is visited only half a dozen times a year.

Tours occur between October and mid May before/after the rainy season.

The tours last 8 days and are offered to groups of minimum 1 and maximum 8 people.

The tours are offered at an ‘all in’ price, please, mail us.

      The price includes jeep transport to the trek area, guides, porters, all board and lodging, ( TIMS ) fees,   (ACA) entry permit fees and an evening’s ‘mother group dancing’. (It does not include flights into Pokhara and any nights in Pokhara before/after the trek).

RECOMMENDED CLOTHING

Temperature is temperate and rarely cold. It is recommended you bring:

• comfortable walking boots
• casual clothes
• a light fleece for evening wear
• flip flops
• in October and May you should bring a light waterproof
• a sleeping bag liner (you will be sleeping in village homes with basic bedding)
• toilet paper

THE GURUNG PEOPLE

The Gurungs are a Sino-Tibetan people who migrated into the Annapurna valleys in the 12^th century. Today there are about 800,000 Gurung hailing from a cluster of villages north and north west of Pokhara.

The Gurung are pastoral and arable farmers growing principally rice, maize, millet, lentils and potatoes on hillside terraces. Nearly all households have chickens and a water buffalo stalled by the house for eggs and milk.

The heart of the Gurung home is the hearth in the centre of the earthen floor.

The Gurung are renowned for their warmth and for family values and interdependence.

Despite the advent of the ubiquitous mobile and in most places micro-hydro generated electricity and rough roads the Gurungs retain most of their traditional culture and way of life. Like other areas of Nepal they have traditionally supplied Gurkha soldiers to the British and Indian armies, but today the pressures on the villages come from young men leaving to work abroad typically in the Middle East and Far East and in a drift of people out of the villages to Pokhara and Kathmandu in pursuit of better education for their children. It is hoped that improvements in village schooling and other facilities and the efforts of ACAP will reverse that drift.

For further information on the Gurung see the website of Professor Alan Macfarlane of King's College, University of Cambridge.
  

THE ANNAPURNA CONSERVATION AREA PROJECT (ACAP)

The tours are all within the Annapurna Conservation Area which covers a 7600 sq kilometre band of country some 30 miles north of Pokhara from the foothills to the peaks of the Annapurnas. It is Nepal’s largest protected area.

ACAP was set up in 1986 and is a non-profit making organisation operating a highly devolved model under which decision making is as far as possible vested in the village development committees of the 55 villages in the conservation area. ACAP aims to achieve a balance between nature conservation and socio-economic improvement and aims to promote sustainable economic development, natural resource conservation, re-forestation and the preservation of the environment. The area has 1226 plant species, 30 mammals and 456 birds.

DILMAYA’S BUSINESS VISION

Dilmaya’s goal is to delight our customers. And thereby to become the leading trekking company for visitors interested in experiencing traditional Gurung village life whilst exploring the unsurpassable Himalayan landscape.

And we will achieve our goal sustainably – employing local labour and putting money back into the Annapurna environment and the sustainable development of the traditional Gurung way of life.

CONTACTS

To book or learn more please contact Bikash Gurung  
(visit :- www.dilmayatrek.com).
Tell; 0977-61-526896, Mobile; 9846198454,
E-mail; dilmayatreks@gmail.com,
            bsm_grgt@yahoo.com,

English spoken