It is 22 years since my wife, Hennie, and I puffed our way up to the temple of Vishnu at Muktinath as we backpacked the main trekking routes in Nepal. But it could have been yesterday.

On this, our return, prayer flags still flutter from the pagoda, sieving the rarefied Himalayan light into shimmering patterns of glare and shadow. Not even the Tibetan women sitting at the entrance weaving yaks’ wool scarves to sell to trekkers seem to have budged.

In the courtyard, a diverted stream fed by snow melt from the glaciated heights all around spurts from the mouths of 108 brass cows’ heads. Tibetan monks in wine-coloured robes are clanging bells and lighting butter lamps, joined by orange-clad ascetic saddhus whose pilgrimage to this shrine began on the baked plains of India.

Sacred to both Buddhists and Hindus, Muktinath is also one of the farthest-flung hamlets in Nepal’s Annapurna conservation area, which attracts more than 50,000 foreign trekkers a year.

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We come for high-altitude hiking on the old mule trails that connect Himalayan villages, staying at the teahouses that offer basic food and shelter.

However, what is different 22 years on is that this time we jolted up to Muktinath in the back of a Jeep. To the dismay of those for whom the region’s roadlessness is central to its allure, the trail from Pokhara into the heart of Annapurna — the second half of the longer Annapurna circuit, often referred to as the “Jomsom trek” — has been upgraded into a dirt road negotiable by 4x4s in two days.

Or, as we opted for, in two hours from Jomsom airstrip after a 20-minute hop from Pokhara in a small aircraft.

If you believe the doomsters of the blogosphere, the road’s completion earlier this year sounded the death knell for the most popular trekking route in the Himalayas.

Happily, we know better. The British tour operator Mountain Kingdoms pre-empted the problem by engaging three local sirdars or head guides to research a new eight-day trekking route through the Annapurna massif from Muktinath back to Naya Phul near Pokhara.

Our guide, Durga Katel, announced that we were among the first outsiders to be acquainted “with our secret”. He began by leading us across the raw, windswept Jhong Khola gorge via a new footbridge, for a six-hour descent through the geological freak show of Upper Mustang where layers of salt flats and mounds of black, coffee-coloured and ashen rock are folded together like cake mix.

The old and new trails converge at the flat-roofed village of Kagbeni, where farmers still grind flour by feeding cups of barley into ghattas — small wooden water mills. But since our last visit, modernity has arrived in the form of the internet and a “Yak Donald’s” restaurant.

For the next four days we trekked through the Kali Gandaki valley, in the pervading, candescent presence of the seventh highest peak in the world (Dhaulagiri) and the tenth (Annapurna), avoiding the road on paths and yak trails.

Our most exhilarating and exhausting day was the ten-hour hike between the villages of Larjung and Ghasa. We climbed steeply through forests of pine and wild marijuana to reach a gentian-strewn meadow where a lone herder was grazing yaks.

Perhaps it was the altitude, but the close-up views over the colossal Dhaulagiri ice falls and the glacial lakes below left us breathless. Our return to the Kali Gandaki was via the remote village of Taglung.

Each evening we rejoined the old trail to spend the night at a teahouse where a tray of dal baht — lentils, curried vegetables, hot lime pickle and a mound of rice — and a bottle of cold Everest beer awaited. We carried just daypacks and walking poles, while our porters went ahead with our bags.

The farther we travelled down this valley, the more fecund it became: fields of golden barley and buckwheat; irrigated patches of vegetables and apple orchards.

The improved road means produce can now reach the cities. At the village of Tatopani the road finally veers from the old mule trail, leaving the final stretch of the trek — the steep ascent to Ghorapani and final drop to Naya Phul — pretty much as it always was.

The trek was as deliriously uplifting an any in Nepal. As our guide promised, we had discovered a secret.

Getting there Mountain Kingdoms (01453 844400, www.mountain kingdoms.com) offers a 13-night bespoke trip to Nepal from £1,170pp including accommodation and all meals on the eight-day trek from Muktinath, B&B at hotels in Kathmandu and Pokhara, guide and porters; also included are internal flights between Kathmandu and Pokhara, and to the Jomson airstrip, but not flights to Nepal. The company also runs 24-day group treks from £1,275pp.

Etihad (0800 7319384, www.etihad.com) flies from Heathrow and Manchester to Kathmandu via Abu Dhabi from £575.40 return.

When to go Any time outside the mid-May to mid-September monsoon is fine for trekking. Peak season is October and November.

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