On a warm day in February, at the beginning of the trekking season, I encountered a little girl singing and dancing atop a pile of dirt outside her house in the Annapurna region, a swatch of the Himalayas on Nepal’s northern border. Without missing a beat, she rotated one wrist, sashayed the opposite hip, and pointed with her other hand to a trail on the left — presumably not the one that led to the cow shed and terraced fields behind her home.

In recent years, travelers have been an uncommon sight on Nepal’s world-class trekking routes, a vital part of the country’s tourism industry. A 12-year guerrilla war led by the radical left-wing Maoists against the ruling monarchy put a vise on the once lucrative industry as tourists were often relieved of “donations” while trekking in Maoist areas — or faced a beating if they did not pay up.

The violence was tempered by an official cease-fire in late 2006. Since then the Maoists have traded in their camouflage clothing for business suits, a change tied to their increased political visibility. A nationwide democratic election in April determined an assembly of politicians (Maoist and otherwise) charged with rewriting the country’s constitution and serving as an interim government. The assembly’s first step, on May 28, was to declare Nepal a democratic republic, thereby abolishing the world’s last Hindu monarchy.

In the midst of this transformation, tourism is booming, with foreign air arrivals the highest they’ve been since 2000 and many trekking companies returning to previously abandoned regions, including the popular Annapurna area.

Growing up amid the flat, featureless spaces of Oklahoma, I dreamed of mountains since the day I picked up my first copy of National Geographicin my grandfather’s garage. To this day the Himalayas retain a mythic, almost sacred quality. When the opportunity to explore the place I had dreamed about presented itself, I chose the Annapurna Base Camp trek which winds through the center of the Annapurna region, ascending 10,650 feet before arriving at a highaltitude amphitheater among some of the most famed peaks in the Himalayas: Annapurna South, Annapurna I and Machhapuchhare.

Though many Himalayan trekkers join group tours or enlist the help of local guides and porters, the five-day, one-way trip can easily be completed independently. Lodging, food and a friendly hand pointing the right direction are never too far from sight. The appeal of this style of trekking, for me, was a greater sense of adventure along with a greater nature-to-man ratio. I pictured myself as a legendary mountaineer like Reinhold Messner on his quests to find the yeti or climb all the 8,000-meter peaks.

The A.B.C. trail begins at Phedi — a village just outside Pokhara, Nepal’s second largest city — and rises steeply through terraced mustard fields overlooking the Pokhara valley. Eventually the farms give way to a string of larger mountain villages, where old Maoist youth slogans and the omnipresent hammer and sickle appear in red paint on walls and telephone poles.

Other travelers jam the trail on this early leg of the journey, ranging from groups of 20 or more Chinese backpackers to schoolchildren clamoring for candy to porters with precarious loads of canned food, fuel and even furniture bound for higher altitudes. My companion and I stop for the night at Landruk, a well-stocked village featuring a “Western-style toilet” and apple pie at almost every guesthouse. Water and electricity, we discover, run more reliably here than in Katmandu, the capital.

An hour of easy walking the next morning brings us to the Jhinu Danda hot springs, where local entrepreneurs have built three riverside granite pools — trekkers can soak their bones for 25 rupees (about 35 cents). A group of white faced langur monkeys watches from a boulder downstream as we wade in the springs and polish off bottles of cold Coca-Cola purchased for 70 rupees (about $1).

The afternoon is less leisurely as we labor under a strong sun climbing 1,500 feet of terraces in the mountainside; I find myself recalling the difference between a vacation and a trek. But Maya, the owner of a lone guesthouse between Jhinu Danda and the next village, convinces us to step inside her kitchen for lunch, where she dishes out endless portions of daal bhaat (the local staple of rice and curried vegetables), spicy mustard greens, and fresh onion and tomato for a mere 50 rupees (70 cents).

On the third day, patches of soft snow begin to appear on the trail as we wind though a forest thick with bamboo and rhododendron. The bridges over fast-moving streams become more rudimentary, constructed of logs and stones rather than metal cables. In one section of the forest we pass a Shiva temple laden with small brass bells and coin-filled urns. The white scarves that drape it are worn to rags by the wind.

Proper towns disappear, replaced by simple outposts that exist solely to serve trekkers. At night we sit around the kitchen table with a wood fire burning underneath, eating garlic soup (to combat altitude sickness) and momos (fried dumplings). Conversations at each guesthouse begin with the weather at A.B.C. and generally devolve into a rousing chorus of Resamm Phirri, Nepal’s ubiquitous national trekking song.

As we follow the trail along the Modi Khola River deeper among peaks on the fourth day, the snowpacked terrain becomes increasingly majestic and, at times, terrible. Tiny avalanches break off ridges a safe distance away, but their thunderous crunch inspires a quickened pace. Waterfalls that will pour down Machhapuchhare’s sides in the months to come remain, for now, locked in mint-green ice. In the afternoon, thick clouds swirl around the peaks, descending in the form of snow and hail as the hours progress.

I discover too late that we have ascended too quickly. Altitude sickness washes over me, and the day’s walk becomes a trudge on unstable legs. The only cure for altitude sickness is to descend immediately; but my companion feels healthy, and the lure of A.B.C. trumps my inability to keep anything in my stomach.

Machhapuchhare Base Camp, at 12,210 feet, provides a final respite before we attempt the ascent to A.B.C. some 1,400 feet higher. Machhapuchhare is not open for climbing.

After attempting to eat some garlic soup, I crawl into my sleeping bag and wait for morning.

With bottles of frozen water and sluggish limbs we embark at dawn on the two-hour walk to A.B.C. The only tracks in the fresh powder belong to a single Canadian who left a half hour earlier. As we enter the amphitheater of mountains, our footsteps resound from the shadowed walls with a faint clatter like falling rocks. We snap photos in the semidarkness, and I lie in the snow attempting to catch my breath — only to lose it when the sun overtakes the easternmost ridge and the icy blue peaks warm to a brilliant gold.

Back at Machhapuchhare, we pack our things before the bruisecolored afternoon clouds engulf the peaks illuminating our path to a set of newly arrived trekkers.

INFO TO GO

Trekking routes through Nepal’s Himalayas can be tailored to fit almost any schedule. In the Annapurna Sanctuary, treks may last anywhere from three days (the popular Poon Hill trek) to three weeks (the Annapurna Circuit), with both low-and highaltitude routes.

Nepal’s trekking season lasts roughly from October to May, the dry season. Consider going during the winter months, when the trails and guesthouses are considerably less crowded — but certain high-altitude passes may be blocked with snow.

Both guides and porters are numerous in the towns of Pokhara and Katmandu, making it easy to arrange your trek after arriving in Nepal. However, be wary of hiring just anyone off the street who claims to be a guide. Better to speak with a reputable guesthouse like Katmandu Guest House (tel 977 14700800, http://www.ktmgh.com) or a local trekking agency like Adventure Treks Nepal (tel 977 98510 65354, http://www.adventurenepaltreks.com).

If you’re traveling as a group, or just want to have your trek booked before arriving in Nepal, many reputable stateside trekking agencies like Mountain Travel-Sobek (tel 800 970 7299, http://www.mtsobek.com) or Intrepid Travel (800 970 7299, http://www.intrepidtravel.com) offer a variety of trips to the Annapurnas.

Visitors must purchase a $29 entrance fee to the Annapurna Sanctuary at the Annapurna Conservation Area Project office in either Katmandu or Pokhara — though oddly, our receipt of payment was never checked within the sanctuary.