Handpicked experience · Kathmandu
Kathmandu, Nepal
A sacred summit nobody has ever stood on, beside the first eight-thousander ever climbed and the deadliest, seen from a ridge before the valley gets light.
A pre-dawn collection in central Pokhara and a short drive up the hill
Sunrise over the Annapurna range, with the fishtail peak in the middle of it
Half an hour or so at the viewpoint for photographs and a short walk
Back at the lake within about three hours
A pre-dawn run from Pokhara up to the ridge at Sarangkot for sunrise over the Annapurna range, with about three hours door to door and half an hour or so at the viewpoint itself.
You are collected in the dark from central Pokhara and driven up the hill, arriving before first light. There is time at the main viewpoint for the sunrise and for short walks along the ridge, then the drive back down to Lakeside. It is over by mid-morning, which leaves the rest of the day intact.
The sharp fishtail summit dominating the view is sacred to Shiva and closed to mountaineering. One expedition was permitted in 1957 and its climbers stopped roughly fifty metres below the top, having promised not to set foot on the summit itself. They kept their word, no permit has been issued since, and it remains one of the few significant peaks on earth that nobody has stood on.
Annapurna I, further along the same wall, was the first eight-thousand-metre peak ever summited — in 1950, three years before Everest. It also has the highest death rate of any of them: roughly one fatality for every three successful ascents. The two facts sit side by side on the skyline in front of you, and from this distance neither looks like a problem.
Pokhara sits at about eight hundred metres. Annapurna I stands at eight thousand and ninety-one. The horizontal distance between them is around thirty kilometres, which makes this one of the steepest rises from inhabited valley to high summit anywhere on the planet. It is why the range looks impossibly close from a lakeside town, and why the light does what it does at dawn.
Sunrise here happens twice. The high snow catches the sun several minutes before anything at ground level does, so the peaks turn pink and then gold while the valley below is still dark and cold. The fishtail usually goes first. Then the light comes down the wall, the ridge you are standing on warms up, and the show is over.
It is genuinely cold before dawn even in warm months, and nobody brings enough clothing the first time. The view depends entirely on the sky — cloud on the range means you have driven up a hill in the dark for nothing, and that risk is the trade for the mornings when it works. Cancellation is free up to seven days ahead.
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About three hours in total from a pre-dawn pickup in central Pokhara, with roughly half an hour at the viewpoint and the drive each way either side.
It is sacred to Shiva and closed to mountaineering. The one permitted expedition, in 1957, stopped about fifty metres short after promising not to tread on the summit, and no permit has been granted since.
It was the first eight-thousand-metre peak ever climbed, in 1950, three years before Everest — and it has the highest death rate of any of them, roughly one fatality for every three successful ascents.
Because the ground rises about eight kilometres over thirty. Pokhara sits near eight hundred metres and Annapurna I at eight thousand and ninety-one, one of the steepest rises from an inhabited valley anywhere.
The high snow catches the sun several minutes before ground level does, so the summits turn pink and then gold while the valley is still dark. The light then works its way down the wall.
Then there is nothing to see, and that is the risk of the trip. Cloud on the range is common in the monsoon months and rare between October and April.
Colder than people expect, even in warm months. It is a ridge before dawn, and most first-timers underdress.