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For its first 26km, the Rajpath follows the heavily used Prithvi Highway towards Pokhara. Leaving the Kathmandu Valley through its ugliest and most industrial corridor, it slips over a low point in the rim (good views here of Manaslu, Boudha, Ganesh and Langtang) and descends to NAUBISE (945m), near the bottom of the deep, wrinkled Mahesh Khola Valley. This first stretch is a real drag: traffic is heavy, there are often long waits to clear police checkposts, and the descent to Naubise is a slow crawl behind smoke-belching trucks (punctuated by adrenaline-pumping manoeuvres to overtake them between switchbacks). Nepali restaurants are plentiful in Naubise and a few places have rooms in the up to Rs140 (US$2)-Rs140-200 (US$2-3) range. At Naubise the Rajpath leaves the Prithvi Highway and forks off to the left, climbing relentlessly for 30km to Tistung (2030m) before descending into the Palung Valley and its tidy terraces (spinach - paalung - and potatoes are local specialities). The turning for Markhu and the Kulekhani Reservoir appears on the left 4km past Tistung, and the Newar village of Palung, at 1745m, is 5km beyond that. Very basic food and lodging can be had in SHIKHARKOT , 2km further on, but unless you're desperate it's worth toiling up the final, tough 10km to spend the night in Daman. Three kilometres beyond Daman, the Rajpath crosses the pass of Sim Bhanjyang (2488m) - often icy in winter - where it enters a landscape of plunging hill country and begins a relentless, 2000-metre descent to the valley below. These south-facing upper slopes of the Mahabharat Lek are dramatically greener and wilder than those on the other side - they wring much of the moisture out of the prevailing winds, and are frequently wreathed in fog by afternoon. The road passes through successive zones of mossy jungle, pine forest and finally terraced farmland until reaching the Bhimphedi turning (below), 40km from Sim Bhanjyang. The electric transformers seen near here relay power from the Kulekhani hydroelectric dam north of Bhimphedi, an important source of power for Nepal. The devices that look like ski lifts are ropeways, one bringing quarried limestone down to the big cement plant in Hetauda and the other, now disused, for ferrying raw materials up to Kathmandu. Hetauda is 10km further on
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