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We had a few days confined to a 100m radius from the hotel while our muscles and joints recovered from the trekking; we were even pleased to be in a ground floor room as negotiating steps was a slow and painful process. It was very nice to relax and catch up with things.

Just as our muscles seemed to recover, we decided to take a trip to Sarankot a small village on a ridge above the lake. As tourists walk around Pokhara,bored looking taxi drivers often shout and offer to take them up to Sarankot first thing in the morning to watch the sunrise as there is an old fort on the top which makes a fantastic viewing point for the Pokhara valley and string of Himalayan mountains.

However, despite it being midday and baking hot, we decide to walk. This turned out to be a lot harder work and take longer than we anticipated as it is a handful of kilometres over which you climb around 800m. This didn't sound much compared to what we had done on the trek however, the heat took it out of us and we were both fairly exhausted for the final climb. It was a very pleasant walk up through small villages where there were lots of happy, chatty folk as it was the main day of the Dasain festival. Dasain, which spreads over 15 days, is the main festival in the Nepali calendar and it is traditional for families to return to their villages and celebrate by eating, liberal tika painting on foreheads and making merry (we've been told by several people that it's Nepal's equivalent to the Christmas celebrations in western countries). In honour of this, many of the villages had erected large bamboo swings which had queues of eager children waiting to play.

We were quickly rewarded for the three hour climb as the views from the top back down over the lake and Pokhara valley were stunning. We were lucky and got ourselves into a corner room in the hotel with commanding views out over the city and the lake. It was a very relaxing evening to sit and watch the sunset and the lights come on over the city below.

The tranquillity was shattered later in the night by a long and very dramatic thunderstorm. We'd seen the tall storm clouds gathering on the horizon at dinner time but there arrival in our immediate vicinity was a bit of a shock. The bright flashes from the lightening and deafening crashes of thunder which shook the building kept us awake for hours - however, it was quite exciting and we sat for a little while with the curtain open watching the forks of lightning arcing down from the sky and striking around the valley. We were reminded of a similar night in Mussoorie during our honeymoon; we were thinking of Heather's mum then too, and how much she would have hated it. We weren't feeling very confident about having a clear morning to enjoy the sunrise and were counting up the number of times we have climbed to the top of hills to get a view of the Himalayas and been frustrated by the clouds during our stay in Nepal.

It seemed the storm had barely subsided and let us get to sleep when the alarm went off to tell us the sun would soon be coming up. We were very pleasantly surprised to see a clear starlit sky when we drew back the curtains. A lightening strike had seemingly knocked out the power to Sarangkot but not the main city of Pokhara below us, and we had to dress by candlelight.

It was not very far to climb to the viewing platform and we were there just as the horizon started to turn pink. We stood glued to the spot for the next hour, trying to remember occasionally to put the camera away and just enjoy the spectacle. Photos seldom do justice to such a scene, but we got a few good'uns before the battery started to die. Despite the fair-sized crowd of people there at the top of the hill all snapping away excitedly, it was a serene atmosphere; we all knew we'd been given a bit of a treat.

From left to right we could see (amongst others) Dhaulagiri, Annapurna South, Annapurna I, Machhapuchhare, and Annapurnas II and IV. Some of these seem like old friends to us now, and we were delighted they'd come out in all their glory to say goodbye to us on one of our last days here.

After some breakfast, it was another long steep descent down stone staircases back to lakeside, which turned our legs to jelly and left us pouring with sweat despite the fact it was not yet 9am.

We've only a couple of days left in Nepal now – we're leaving the hills and heading down to the Terai – a low flat plain in the South of the country. Here we'll be spending a couple of days in the Chitwan National Park before a long bus ride to the Eastern border with India.

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