DAY 3 Ghorapani (2750m) to Tatopani (1190m) The alarm clock rudely woke us up at 4am, if it had failed to ignite, I'm sure the people ******* next door certainly would have. "What's that dear, thunder?" Outside was dark with no stars, meaning it was cloudy, lets hope the sun burns it away. Poon Hill (3210m) is a side trip from our route, and offers a 'must see' view of the Annapurna mountain range. We walked off into the night, following some other people from our hostel, as my guide didn't know the way. Head torches bobbing in the night like firefly's. Halfway up the hill and the clouds parted, an unknown peak made an appearance. We stopped and watched the early sunlight and the clouds merge into different colours, picking different photo settings on our little digital Sony whipper snapper. The sun gave the peak an orange backdrop and then more cloud floated in and called curtains on the view. In the very far distance a row of snowy, high, peaks shone above the cloud line, the Annapurna range, that was the amazing view people talked about, but today was not to be one of those days, so we went back for fried eggs and porridge. Today, we predicted would be the hardest day of the trek. The day had already started with a 2 hour hill climb before breakfast and now we had to descend 1750 meter's, that according to our guide book would be around seven hours walk, without breaks. Out of Ghorapani we walked down muddy, rocky slopes first , then down steps made from slate and into a village paved with beautiful marble. The marble slabs literally tumbled out of the side of a hill, and onto the path where anyone could pick up a slab and own the next Ikea kitchen table top. We walked down through pretty villages with crops growing on terraces. A man was spraying water into the air, he had a bee hive attached to the side of his house and was making the bee's wet and angry. He paused so we could run past him and then didn't hang around to find out what was going on. Maybe he was trying to get rid of the bee hive or maybe he just wanted some honey on his toast tomorrow. Some nice Maoist propaganda, a taxi driver told us 80% of Nepal are now Maoist supporters. The Maoist are on the USA terrorist list. They recently had victory in the country's general elections and will later (Wednesday 28th May) demand the King steps down and end 258 years of a Monarchy in the Kingdom of Nepal. We took a break for a cup of tea and talked to the the tea house owner and his friend. They told us they were Gurkha solders who had served with the British army previously. They were waiting for more work and had visa applications in Kathmandu to go into Iraq or Afghanistan. Around 1pm the spitting rain turned into heavy rain and we stopped for lunch. We ordered some fried rice and vegetables then watched a lad run out into the hostel garden and pick out the spinach, carrot and potato that arrived on our plate twenty minutes later. We talked about being back in a restaurant in the UK, and wondered what would you pay for a meal that advertised fresh, organic vegetables picked to order from the garden? We had to pay 95p. The heavy rain turned to a monsoon with thunder and lightning but we decided to walk on to Tatopani, still three hours away. We suited up in water-proof jackets and trousers and slipped down the steep steps for a couple of hours. At the bottom of the valley a landslide had destroyed the steel bridge so we detoured back on our selves and followed a road that finally finished at Tatopani, a full 14 hours after we got up. There are natural hot pools in this town, but we can't tell you what they are like as we only managed to walk into the restaurant, eat some pasta, drink a beer and walk to our bed. Cooper out Love Dan & Kat