Today, we woke up early, packed up our things, and said farewell to Jeremy, as he doesn’t have time to trek to Dhaulagiri basecamp anymore thanks to the change in our plans. He decided instead to trek part of the Annapurna circuit via Poon Hill before heading home. We all already miss him and it hasn’t even been a day. We began trekking through Darbang and walked on a dirt road for the first few hours of the trek. We aren’t following the traditional trekking route, instead opting for a variant that is slightly shorter and meets up with the normal trekking route on day 2. We enjoyed the cool calm morning, and were gifted with views of Dhaulagiri II, III and V up the valley (we are climbing the highest, which is Dhaulagiri I). We eventually reached the end of the road, and the route became steep as we climbed up and down the face of the foothills surrounding the Myagdi Khola. As the cool temperatures of the morning gave way to extremely hot temperatures and high humidity, we did our best to stay cool and hydrated. We reached Kalleni, where we took a break for tea and made friends with a local toddler then continued for a few more hours until we reached Khamla. The plan had originally been to continue onto Jukepani, however, since we hadn’t seen our porters all day and saw no sign of them when we looked back, we decided to stop in Khamla for lunch and remain here for the night. The camp was located among terraced farmland, and we were surrounded with chickens, roosters, water buffalo, dogs, and horses. The location was absolutely stunning. We waited for a few hours, worried that we would experience the same disappointment we had at Yak Kharka. Thankfully, the porters followed through and all of our equipment made it to Khamla. We settled in for the evening, had a relaxed dinner in a tea house close to where we had our tents pitched, and went to bed.