"Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion" - Antoli Nickolivich Boukreev, famed mountain guide who lived to tell the tale of the 1996 disaster on Everest featured in the film Into Thin Air, but perished in an avalanche on Annapurna, Christmas Day 1997.

Annapurna Sanctuary is a magnificent natural amphitheatre with huge snow-capped peaks on all sides. At dawn it is like watching an enormous birthday cake with the peaks being lit light candles one by one as the sun rises. I watched this spectacle standing amidst the widely scattered shrines and memorials to climbers who came here but never went home. With only 109 successful summit attempts and a death rate 3 times that of Everest, Annapurna is a notoriously dangerous mountain. This is the closest I will ever get to it.

This a moving place, in more ways than one. There may be an air of death here, but no more than a few minutes goes by without the booming noise of a glacier grinding its way down the mountains, or rocks being cast onto the valleys of debris below; making the place feel very much alive too. And it contains the Annapurna Base Camp, which was established by Chris Bonington for his (the first) successful climb of the South Face in 1970.

I got here quicker than I anticipated. I guess I already have some acclimatization, so the climb back up to 4130m wasn't too much of a problem. I met a few new people, so wasn't always trekking alone, and there were a handful of people looking out for me; in particular Daniel and Teresa from Santiago, Chile; and Paul and Suzanne from Wimbledon, UK. They probably won't see this, but they deserve a mention anyway. And I mustn't forget Chhomrong the dog, who I named after the village where he joined me for an hour and a half's hike to the next village. He definitely won't see this!

Unlike the circuit, the hike was very up and down, but it was a great change of scenery as we contoured around Annapurna South through rhododendron forests, which unfortunately are not in bloom at this time of year. The best wildlife sighting of this hike was a group of black-faced langur monkeys playing in the trees.

And just when I thought the festival season was over, along came another one. Diwali, the Festival of Lights is an important Hindu event celebrated all over the Indian sub-continent. The villages became decorated in strings of chrysanthemums, and it was another excuse for lots of singing and dancing in the evenings.

But boy it's cold up here in the Sanctuary. Last night I slept in a tent wearing all my clothes, in a down sleeping bag, under a blanket and a duvet. There was a thin layer of ice on top of the duvet this morning. The three day trek down to Pokhara will be straightforward, where I'm looking forward to warmer temperatures and a very well earned rest at the end of what will have been a 25 day hike - the longest and highest I have done to date.

Posted from Pokhara, November 13th 2010.