Five Lakes in the Cloud

Panch Pokhari at 4,073 metres in monsoon: five sacred lakes, hillsides in flower, and mirror-still water, walked the day before the pilgrims arrived.

By Ujjwol Kayastha · August 16–19, 2024 · Sindhupalchok, Nepal

Nobody sensible treks in August. The monsoon is still working, the trail is a stream, the leeches are having their best month of the year, and the mountains you came for spend the entire time behind a wall of cloud. But once a year the wall is the point. Panch Pokhari is five ponds in a bowl at the top of Sindhupalchok, sacred to Shiva, and at Janai Purnima in August the paths fill with pilgrims walking up to bathe in them and change the thread they wear across the chest. We rode out on the 16th, walked up on the 17th, and stood at the lakes on the morning of the 18th. Janai Purnima fell on the 19th. We had the whole thing to ourselves by exactly one day.

days, door to door: 4
high point · the lakes: 4,073 m
lakes, hence the name: 5
climbed from the valley: 3,225 m

Out of the valley, into the rain (Day 01 · Aug 16)

KATHMANDU → INDRAWATI → CHAUTARA SIDE

09:55 bikes loaded
11:20 valley floor, 848 m
14:01 roadhead, 1,669 m
16:04 the road turns to river

Three bikes, four people, and a forecast nobody looked at properly. August in Nepal means the hills are the greenest they will be all year and the roads are the worst, and both of those are true within about an hour of leaving Kathmandu. We drop to the Indrawati at 848 metres, the lowest we will be for four days, and start working back up the other side.

Three people with loaded motorbikes above green terraced hills under heavy cloud — Three bikes, green terraces, monsoon overhead · 10:20

Three riders at a roadside waterfall in dense green forest — A wash stop on the way up the gorge · 11:20

The last stretch to the roadhead is the part where a motorbike stops being transport and becomes a wheelbarrow you happen to be sitting on. Wet rock, running water, a waterfall coming off the far wall of the gorge, and a surface that is more riverbed than road.

The road, loosely defined · 16:04

Thirteen hundred metres of wet stone (Day 02 · Aug 17)

KAMI KHARKA → PAUWA BAS → HILE BHANJYANG → NASIM PATI → PANCH POKHARI

06:54 Kami Kharka, 2,760 m
09:49 Pauwa Bas, 3,046 m
11:34 Hile Bhanjyang, 3,403 m
12:40 cloud, and lunch
18:00 Nasim Pati, 3,768 m
18:06 Panch Pokhari, 4,073 m

The whole of this day is a staircase. Somebody, at enormous effort, has laid stone steps up most of a mountain, and in August those steps are a watercourse with ambitions. You climb through oak and rhododendron with the cloud sitting in the canopy, and the only company is porters going up faster than you with three times the load.

A long suspension bridge hung with prayer flags across a forested gorge — Prayer flags on the crossing · 08:17

Two orange and grey birds feeding on the ground — Two visitors at the tea stop · 08:50

Overtaken again, uphill, carrying more · 09:53

Pauwa Bas at 3,046 metres, Hile Bhanjyang at 3,403, and the names stop mattering because every one of them looks identical: a flat spot, a tin roof, a kettle, and forty feet of visibility. This is the honest bargain of a monsoon trek. You are not here for the view, because there is no view. You are here for the walking, and the walking is superb.

Trekkers scrambling up a steep rocky section of trail under blue sky — The steep bit, before the steps take over · 09:49

A trekker resting on wet stone steps with a porter passing behind in fog — The steps go on longer than you think · 11:00

Four trekkers sitting together on stone steps in thick mist — All four, still cheerful about it · 11:35

A stone-paved lodge courtyard strung with prayer flags in heavy cloud — A courtyard, a flag line, and no view at all · 12:40

You are not here for the view, because there is no view. You are here for the walking. Hile Bhanjyang, 3,403 metres

It takes until six in the evening to top out. Nasim Pati at 3,768, then the last rise, and the ground flattens into a shallow bowl at 4,073 metres with water in the bottom of it. There is a signboard at the top with all five ponds painted in blue, which is the only way we will see all five of them at once, because the cloud has come in behind us and closed the door.

A painted signboard mapping the Panch Pokhari trail with the five lakes drawn in blue — The board that draws all five of them · 18:06

The cloud lifts, briefly, and it is worth everything (Day 03 · Aug 18)

PANCH POKHARI · THE FIVE PONDS · AND BACK DOWN

06:18 awake at 4,048 m
08:04 the temple
08:31 the cloud opens
08:59 high point, 4,073 m
12:08 turn for home

Morning at the lakes and you still cannot see them. There is a small pagoda temple by the water with a line of prayer flags running off into nothing, a blue-roofed shelter, and a smell of wet juniper. We stand around in ponchos being photographed by people who also cannot see anything.

Four trekkers in front of a small pagoda shrine in dense fog — At the temple, visibility about forty feet · 08:04

A still lake in heavy mist with a stone path along the green shore — The first pond, doing its impression of nothing · 08:20

And then, somewhere around half past eight, the cloud simply walks off. Not slowly. It goes in about ninety seconds, the way weather does at that altitude, and what is underneath it is a bowl of green rock with five ponds in it and not a breath of wind on any of them. The water goes to glass. The hill above the largest pond arrives upside down underneath itself, cloud and all, and holds there.

A rocky hill perfectly mirrored in still lake water with pink alpine flowers in front — And then the cloud got out of the way · 08:31

Flags on the shore, and no wind at all · 08:16

A stone staircase climbing through a narrow cleft between rock walls, prayer flags overhead — The way out runs through a crack in the rock · 12:08

The other thing August does, which nobody mentions, is flowers. The whole bowl is in bloom. Pink and magenta right down to the waterline, sheep grazing through the middle of it, yaks standing in the cloud looking mildly put out that you exist. In October this is brown grass and hard light. In August it is absurd.

Trekkers climbing a stone staircase through a hillside covered in pink flowers — Everyone walks the same stone staircase · 08:50

Sheep grazing among pink alpine flowers below a misty rocky ridge — Sheep, and about a million flowers · 08:55

A black yak standing head-on in mist on a flowering hillside — Right of way, obviously · 09:10

It opened for about twenty minutes. Four days of walking, and the mountain paid out all of it at once. Panch Pokhari, 08:31

Down, in the rain, on Janai Purnima (Day 04 · Aug 19)

THE HIGH CAMP → KAMI KHARKA → THE VALLEY → KATHMANDU

07:45 cloud back in, 2,336 m
09:12 below the treeline
10:18 the last of the steps
16:18 valley floor, 1,074 m

The cloud came back overnight and stayed for the descent, which felt fair. Going down those steps in the wet is its own event: three thousand metres of it, knees complaining by the second hour, and the forest steaming around you as the day warms up.

A blue-roofed lodge on a green slope with cloud pouring through forest behind — Going down, and the cloud came back up · 07:45

Everything up here is running downhill · 08:33

We passed people going the other way all morning, walking up on the day itself with no packs and no intention of stopping. That is the version of this trek most people do: one long push through the night, a wash in a freezing pond at dawn, and straight back down. Ours took four days and a lot of petrol, and we got the lakes on a morning with nobody on them.

Go in August if you can accept the terms. You will be wet for four days, you will see almost nothing for three of them, and the trail will be a staircase of running water. And then for twenty minutes on one morning the cloud will step aside and show you five ponds lying flat as glass in a bowl of flowers at four thousand metres, and you will forget the entire rest of it.

All travel stories · Back to the portfolio

More trek logs

Bhairab Kunda: The Lake You Can Walk On January 10–11, 2026
Tilicho Lake: Six Days to the Lake in the Sky October 24–29, 2025
North Annapurna Base Camp: The Quiet Side of Annapurna May 1–4, 2025

All travel stories