Actually I entered Beni because it was the closed town I could find. What I really did was the Annapurna circuit. Now everyone who has been hiking in Nepal heard about this track but for those of you who haven`t here are some details. The track (usually done in about 20 days, we had to do it in 15 days due to lack of time but it was still quite okay) is about 230 km (if i remember it right) and circles around the Annapurna massiv (which includes first 8000 m peak ever scaled by man). If one does this trip proper fitness is nescessary. Furthermore one should know that the highest point of the trip is about 5400 m os please inform yourself about alltitude sickeness (it is potentially lethal). Nevertheless the great view of some of the highest mountains in the world and the ease of achieving great altitude (since there are lodges on the path and porters are available for a relatively small amount of money, remember that for them it is not as little, give them a nice tip at the end, furthermore in the mountainous regions it is often still the common way of transporting goods). On the track you can do a lot of daytrips which we sadly did not have time (only in Manang a village commonly used for a days break to adjust to the alltitude with a nice monastry near by and also some nice view point)
After crossing the pass (5400 m and supposedly the highest pass in the world although I heard that for a lot of them allready) the track leads down to Muktinath with a famous monastry (check the internet for more information about it). Then the trackk leads down the long valley which is very dry until you reach Tato Pani (meaning hot water and as one might have guessed there are some hot springs here so that one can take a hot path). Here the path leads in two directions the one we took is up to the poon hill (tato pani is about 1000 m highand the village one is heading to 2800 m; poon hill about 3200 m) were most people sleep over night and head out before sunset to see the sunrise which is really nice (you see the really high mountains shining pink to red if the whether is nice). from poon hill it is all down across one of the longest staircase of the world to the bust station.
