Machhapuchhre, the “Matterhorn of Nepal”, a mountain in the Annapurna Himalayas, is off-limits to climbers to preserve its beauty. Its name, from the Nepali माछापुच्छ्रे, means “fishtail”, a reference to its twin peaks which together resemble the tail of a fish.
Machhapuchhre has special personal significance for me, mainly because it was my first glimpse of the Himalayas after a long rain-drenched week hiking the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) Trail. I was tired, morose, spirits damp as my soggy socks, leeches clinging to my calves, frustrated that the non-stop rain had so far denied me my entire reason for being in Nepal — to see the highest mountains in the entire world, a dream I’d kept close to my heart since I first learned about the Himalayas in the Children’s Britannica as a kid — when the clouds parted and I saw Machhapuchhre’s twin peaks shining in the morning sun. It was glorious.
Here’s a photograph from my phone. The camera is terrible, but if you squint at the upper-right hand corner you’ll see Machhapuchhre:
To give you an idea of how I’d been hiking the whole week, here’s me in a trashbag I’m using as a makeshift rain jacket because I stupidly didn’t realize how rainy it’d be on the ABC trail, and so prepped as if I were going to hike in Southern California (where I’d done most of my hiking):
But I digress. Here’s a closer view of Machhapuchhre on the way to Chomrong, one of the small towns on the ABC trail. The rest of these photographs are, of course, not by me. (But damn I wish they were!)
Closer still, this time from Tadapani, another town on the ABC trail:
Different angle from the Annapurna Sanctuary:
Twin peaks up close:
Yet another different angle:
The Matterhorn for comparison, so you know why Machhapuchhre is called the “Matterhorn of Nepal”:
They both have tremendous vertical relief in a short horizontal distance, combined with a steep pointed pyramidal profile. Then again Machhapuchhre is 6,993 m to the Matterhorn’s 4,478 m, so you can think of Machhapuchhre as what you’d get if the Matterhorn started 8,000+ feet higher up.