November 24, 2010
This morning, we had another breakfast of Tibetan bread and fried eggs. Afterwards, we finished packing up and headed out on the trail.
From Tatopani, you can follow the trail a number of directions. There's a path to Syraphru Besi, another to Goljung, and another to Chilime. Intending to spend our night at Gatlang, we headed for Chilime.
Gatlang is the largest Tamang village and also the furthest west on the Tamang trek. Although our guide book doesn't really suggest a specific itinerary for the Tamang trek, we assumed that it was a natural place to stop for the night from looking at the map. To get there, you pass through Chilime and then work your way up into another valley. In this way, the first two hours of the trek are down hill, and the last two are uphill.
For the first time on our treks, we got a bit lost. Although the trail has been fairly easy to navigate by maps and signs until now, the trail out of Tatopani has a number of unlabeled junctures and side trails. Thankfully, you're never far from people, and if you ask, anyone can point out the correct trail to whichever village you're headed.
The sun came out, and our long sleeves were much too hot. Changing into our shorts and pushing up our long sleeves, we slathered on yet another layer of sunscreen. It's been five days since we were in a place where we could shower, and we're feeling pretty grimy - especially after our questionably clean hot spring experience last night.
As we passed, the Tamang people were harvesting their fields. With baskets strapped to their backs and scythes in their hands, they skillfully sorted wheat, millet, rice, and chilies. Even small children helped - or at least enjoyed napping nearby in the sun. We said Namaste when we walked by, and almost everyone looked up with a smile and a Namaste of their own.
Crossing the river, we walked by Chilime and around chortens and mani walls. We talked about All the Pretty Horses and about coffee and what makes a cowboy and the souls of horses. It's nice to read and like the same book.
Past another village, we turned up another valley. We passed our first trekker of the day coming in the other direction. She looked sweaty and miserable, and she asked if the trail ahead was mostly up or down. We broke the news to her gently.
It took another couple of hours to climb to Gatlang. Passing through more terraced fields, we watched still more farmers harvesting their crops and herding cows. It seemed like we could hear the bleating of small goats from every home we passed.
Finally, we arrived in Gatlang. One of the very first buildings was a community lodge, and although it looked quite nice from the outside, the rooms were filled with too many beds, and it looked a bit dirty. Overall, I wasn't too impressed, and I told Joshua that I'd rather see what else they had to offer in the village.
It took us 20 minutes to walk up to the road. Gatlang is huge, but unlike the other larger villages we've seen, it still has all cobblestone pathways with no motorized vehicles or electricity. The place is entirely uncommercialized, and everywhere you look, there are homes and gardens with chickens and livestock living on the first floor. Above, the kitchens and bedrooms are walled in with lovely, ornate wooden windows.
We walked and walked, but there were no lodges. By the road, we saw our fist lodge, but it was in the midst of construction, and when we walked inside, the rooms were half-done and dirty. I didn't like the look of it.
We ordered lunch from the half-finished lodge, and while we waited, we looked at the map. We asked the proprietor how long he thought it would take to get to Syraphru Besi. He looked dubious. 'Four hours,' he said.
We debated the merits of pushing on. It would be two by the time we left Gatlang, and if it took us four hours to get to Syraphru, it would be six by the time we walked into town. It might be dark. On the up side, there would be a shower and a lodge with clean rooms. Tomorrow, we could use the internet. We didn't particularly feel like hanging out for the rest of the afternoon in this construction site.
We decided to do it. Our food came, and a trekker and his guide arrived and took a room. Sitting at the table next to us, the trekker introduced himself. He's from Hawaii, and he loves it. Apparently, Maui was voted the 13th best micro-climate in the world. Rent's expensive though; he pays 2100 dollars a month, which is a lot for someone who's never had a real job. He paints t-shirts and sells old rock and roll posters for living. It takes him three or four hours to paint his t-shirts, and he usually ends up selling them in the parking lots of concerts that he goes to.
Within the first five minutes of conversation, we discovered that he had had a nasty strain of E.coli lodged up his ureter in Kathmandu, and he considered the Grateful Dead to be the greatest rock band of all time. 'Minnesota's cold, isn't it?' he said. Next, he told us that the oil companies of America are trying to turn New Orleans into Atlantic City 'with lots of casinos and a weird vibe,' but he hasn't been there 'since it was trashed.'
Joshua is pretty funny when he's irritated. He gets this grimace on his face that I'm pretty sure he thinks is a smile but is actually a grimace, and he tries to casually exit the conversation, but instead, he's not casual at all and really very obvious. Right around the time our Hawaiian friend started talking about watching Humpback whales mating and eating all raw foods, Joshua abruptly stood up and went to go pay. We left quickly, leaving Mr. Maui looking a little forlorn.
I asked Joshua what had irritated him so much about Mr. Maui. He couldn't put his finger on it, but in the end, we took a line out of All the Pretty Horses. The vaqueros hate it when people have all sorts of opinions about things that they really know very little about. Cowboys respect people who know a lot about a little and leave the opinions to everyone else. Joshua fancies himself a cowboy :) (For the record, I'd have to say I'd agree with the vaqueros.)
We set out of Gatlang at a cruise. Following the road, we walked fast as our shadows grew longer and longer. We passed packs of children that shouted Namaste and then demanded money, gifts, or school pens. Some of them ran after us for a long while, having spied a pen sticking out of Joshua's bag.
We passed Goljung after a couple of hours, but we decided to press on, and at the switchbacks down to Syraphru Besi, we took the small side path that descended down stone stairs.
In the end, it took us about three hours to walk from Gatlang to Syraphru Besi. It was still light when we walked into town, and finding the Buddha Guest House, we were taken to a clean room. At the end of the hall, the proprietor showed us the shower with an electric water heater. Just what we needed.
Shedding my pack, I headed straight for the shower. It was hot, and I soaped and shampooed myself twice over. Downstairs, Joshua had ordered two dal bhat with extra pappadam, and we played cards while we waited. When the food came, it was sublime. The dal had cilantro in it, and the kindly cook served seconds of the fried greens, my favorite dal bhaat side.
We played a few more hands of Rummy 5000. We're coming up to 4000, and although I've been winning since the first hand, Joshua's finally caught up to me. It was touch and go for a while, but he's trying out a few new strategies, and they seem to be working out. Things are back to normal, and I'm losing again :)
It's late now, and Joshua's been sleeping for a couple of hours while I've been writing. I'm hoping to post everything I've written in the past couple of weeks tomorrow, so I've stayed up late finishing. Lots of love to the friends and fam at home -E
November 23, 2010
For breakfast, we sat in front of the fire, watching Nima roll out Tibetan bread and then fry them in a dry skillet. Gyurme fussed with the wood, creating a space for the bread to sit on the coals, and one at a time, Nima would deftly drop the fried pieces until they puffed and browned.
To fry the eggs, Nima first whisked them into small cups. Warming a skillet with a generous coating of oil over the flames, she dropped the egg inside, tilting the skillet until it spread into a disc, and then flipping the disc with a twist of her wrist on the skillet handle. As she worked, Gyurme hovered and tried to help, moving things or trying to hand her implements. Irritated, she swatted at his hand and pushed him to the side with her hips. Finally, he sat down in front of the fire and stuck his hands directly into the flames, warming them.
The eggs were still hot, when Nima tossed them onto the puffed pieces of Tibetan bread. The oil and salt from the eggs flavored the dry pieces of bread, and their heat put off an appealing steam. We ate them with our fingers.
Creating a cup of Tibetan tea required an even more exotic process. Using a long metal cylinder fitted with a rope to carry on their backs like a quiver for arrows, Nima emptied a small bowl of water that had been infused with dark, brown, and apparently re-used herbs into a funnel over the cylinder. Next, she threw in a couple small pats of butter, two cups of milk, a generous toss of salt, and a thermos-full of steaming water.
From here, Gyurme took over. Using a long wooden plunger, he stepped on the rope fixed to the cylinder, placed the opening of the cylinder between his knees, and then started pumping the plunger. Steam rose out of the cylinder, and the plunger made an industrious sound. Beads of sweat worked their way over Gyurme's brow.
Nima plucked four chipped porcelain cups from her shelves, and Gyurme poured a healthy portion into each. They handed two to us, beaming, and kept the other two for themselves.
So, for the second day in a row, I choked down Tibetan tea. I don't know if it was because I watched the whole process or if it's because Nima made it (and everything she touches turns to gold) or if it just grows on you, but it wasn't quite as bad as I remembered. It was almost palatable. Nima and Gyurme watched to make sure we drank every last drop. When we had finished, Gyurme seemed exceptionally proud of us and said, 'Tibetan tea makes you very strong,' he flexed his biceps to demonstrate, 'it gives you gastric problems, too!'
One of the most amazing things about the whole Tibetan tea process was the cylinder-quiver. Yesterday, when we had seen them walking away from Nagthali, ready to close up and go home, they had two things with them. Gyurme had a small backpack, and Nima had the cylinder-quiver. They're not about to spend a day without their Tibetan tea.
After breakfast, we began our hike up to the lookout point where you can see Tibet. It was a lovely hike, but we didn't get our hopes up. When we woke up, the clouds had been thick over the mountains, and they showed no signs of letting up. After an hour of hiking through rhododendron forests that have been browned by fall, flakes of snow began to drift onto our shoulders. We continued to climb up into more forests where the gnarled trunks and branches were covered with moss like some pre-historic monsters or woodland creatures. The snow fell harder.
By the time we reached the third hill and the end of the trail, the snow was falling so hard, we could barely see twenty feet in front of us, much less Tibet. The snow was sticking to the path and trees, our shoulders and hats. It was a shame, because I'm sure we would have been able to see a spectacular view of mountains and Tibet, but it was wintry and wonderful just the same. We sang christmas songs again.
On our way down, we count ourselves lucky. Here we are, in the middle of the Himalaya, and we're all alone. We're hiking a trail that's been open for just four years, and we're getting a chance to meet Nepalis who have lived, cooked, and worked here for generations. We're learning their names, and we're eating their food. All around us, the landscape is spectacular. Some day, not too long from now, Nagthali will probably look and feel a lot like Ghorepani, and this hike up to the Tibet viewpoint might even look a lot like Poon Hill. But for now, it's just us and Gyurme and Nami, and we feel like we've stumbled upon an incredible secret.
After three hours, their little white and yellow lodge comes into view. Nami is outside, standing with her arms crossed over her chest and looking out towards the Langtang mountains. Down the hill and over a distance, two small figures are sitting next to a prayer flag. She tells me one of them is Gyurme.
Joshua and I pack up our things and move them to the picnic table outside the kitchen. Although the clouds had seemed impenetrable just half an hour ago, the sun has broken through, and we can see some of the Langtang mountains peaking out. It's just before 11, and Joshua goes off to the bathroom. Nima walks over to me and asks, 'lunch?' I try to tell her that we'd like lunch between 11:30 and noon, but this proves to be very difficult. Nima walks inside to get their little battery-run clock and comes back outside. She points at it and then she points at me. I try to show her 11:30. I point at the minute hand and then make a noise as though I'm dragging it around to the number 6. Nima looks at me, confused.
After a couple of minutes of trying to talk to each other, we give up and look back at the mountains. I've closed my hand into a loose fist, and it's lying next to the little clock on the table. Nima raises her hand and I see her debate whether or not to pull it back, but in the end, she pats the top of my fist with her palm. Then she picks up the clock and walks back into the kitchen.
Joshua comes back a couple of minutes later, and we take out our books to read. I've just started All the Pretty Horses, and I have to say that I'm enjoying it every bit as much as Joshua did. I guess it's not just a boy thing. McCarthy's dialogue is perfect and hilarious, and during some scenes, I'm laughing so hard, I'm snorting. In honor of some of the best lines, we've begun asking each other 'where'd you get that gun?' and the other responds, 'at the gettin' place.'
A little after 11, we figure it's time to order lunch. Joshua walks inside to order a couple veg fried rice, and he walks out a couple minutes later, having had none of the communication problems Nima and I had. As we wait, we continue to read. I stop Joshua every few minutes or so to repeat some of the dialogue.
In the kitchen, we hear Nima chopping. She dumps something into the frying pan, and it sizzles. After a bit, she brings out a couple of plates, and the rice is the same as it was the night before, and unlike so many of our other lunches, it requires no additional spices. By now, Nima's cooking has risen to epic heights. She can do no wrong.
As we're finishing our lunch, Gyurme walks up from his lookout. He nods a Namaste at us, but he heads first for his wife. They don't touch, but they stand close to one another, talking. Nima's shoulders seem to relax when he is near. Once he's talked to Nima, he walks over to us and asks us about our hike this morning. We tell him that Tibet was hidden, but that it was still a lovely hike, and he nods his head. He laughs when we tell him it snowed a ton.
Nima and Gyurme head into the kitchen, and we hear them eating. We read our books for a few more pages, and then Joshua goes inside to pay. Nima and Gyurme ask him if he'll wait for them to finish eating. They'd like to say goodbye.
Once they've finished, they walk out to us and Joshua settles the bill. We take a few more photos of the lodge to post on-line, and Nima hovers around, making sure that we've gotten the best angles. When we put on our packs, Gyurme tells us to follow him, and we all do, including Nima. Up on the hill, we walk over to the very edge, and he points out Tatopani, far below. The top lodge is his brother's, he says. Nima touches my arm and points to the south. 'Gatlang,' she says. I nod. She moves her hand a little to the east. 'Goljung,' she says. I nod again. Then she tugs my arm. When she starts walking, I follow her. She looks to make sure I'm right behind, and as we walk, I notice how much taller I am. Her flip flops slap at her heels as we walk along.
A little ways away, on the south side of the hill, she comes to a prayer flag and beneath it, an exposed bit of rock. She points at three small depressions that look vaguely like footprints. 'Buddha's foot,' she says, and then she sits right on top of the rock, with her feet tucked under her. She points at three more villages. 'Dunche, Thulu Syraphru, Syraphru Besi,' she says.
Gyurme and Joshua come up behind us, and just like Nima, Gyurme tells Joshua about the Buddha's footprints. Gyurme sits down next to Nima on the rock on the edge of the steep hillside, and we thank them for their hospitality. Nima tells us to come again when we have a family. Gyurme tells us to not forget about the photos on the website. We tell him we won't forget.
They point out our path to Tatopani, and as we walk away, we wave goodbye. They stay seated on the Buddha's rock, waving back at us and looking out at the mountains to the west.
The trail from Nagthali to Tatopani is downhill, and we spend the first hour picking our way down a steep slope. Without trees to block our view, we can see Chilime, Gatlang, Goljung, and Syraphru Besi in the distance. The clouds have cleared, and the sun has even come out. Up above, the snowy mountains emerge.
In Brimdang, we loose the path at a gompa, and then we find it again. A pack of enormous grey and white monkeys gallop off into the trees just feet in front of us, and we stand, gaping at these enormous creatures, hanging from the trees. Their tails have to be almost four feet long, and they're all looking at us, curious.
Brimdang is a small collection of wooden homes with terraced fields. A couple of women in the traditional Tamang top-hat and dress are sitting in their front yard, sorting grain. They bow deeply when we say Namaste. On the other side of town, a dozen or more cows are coming up the path, and a couple of herders in their woolen tunics and enormous Gorkha knifes tucked into their belts are tapping their rumps with bamboo switches. We come to a stand-off on the edge of a rice terrace, and although I'm terrified of their pointy, long horns, they're actually more terrified of us. They look at us, and then they look at the fence into the field next to them. Much to the dismay of the herders, they decide to walk right through the fence.
Inside the field, two small children are running and jumping into stacks of hay. The little girl is a bit older, but she can't be more than seven. When the herders yell at the cows, she takes matters into her own hands. She runs up in front of the big bull and stares him down, yelling. Then she picks up a little stone and chucks it right between the bull's horns. He backs up and goes out the fence, leading a little entourage behind him.
It takes another hour from Brimdang to reach Tatopani, and as we walk, we talk about the jobs we've had. Joshua started out at Taco Bell, held a brief stint at Menards, and then moved on to Davannis, where he made pizzas and then delivered them. He worked from the time he was 14, and he worked all the way through the school year, too. In college, he worked at the gym and then at the school cafeteria. In the summers, he worked for conferences.
Of course, I've heard all of these stories before, but still, it's fun to total them all up and compare our experiences. I started working when I was 14 too. I bussed tables and filled drinks at Key's Cafe and Bakery the first summer, and the next, I was a receptionist at Great Clips, sorting bills, sweeping hair, and folding laundry. In the summer after I went to England, I worked at the Turkey Drumstick stand at the state fair, accumulating layers of grease and grit all over my skin, and then the next year, I worked the night shift at Fed Ex, sorting irregular packages. In college, I never stayed in one place for long, and I worked a series of office jobs - stuffing envelopes in Admissions, doing odd-jobs in Alumni Giving, and totaling figures in Accounting. In the summers, I worked for Fed Ex and another office job at Walden, and then with conferences. The last year of school, I gave speeches and rallied idealists to work in our country's poorest schools, and in the Spring, I worked for a Montessori center, running after toddlers and wiping up their poo.
After a while, we could see the buildings of Tatopani through the trees, and before long, we were walking by three steaming pools, filled with Indian and Nepali men and women. At the back, carved fountains spouted hot water that smelled of sulfur, and behind the pools, dozens of prayer flags were strung over the source of the hot spring.
We passed the hot spring, and down below, we found Pilgrim's Guest House, a large, well-kept, and completely empty lodge. The owner came out of his kitchen as we walked up, and when we asked if he had a room, he took us up to one on the second floor with lots of windows and a view of the valley. He told us it was ours for a hundred rupees a night. Done.
Changing into boxers and t-shirts, we gathered our towels and flip flops and walked to the hot spring. The three square-shaped pools were each filled with murky, brownish water, and a thin sheen of what looked like oil coated the water like skin. We got in.
For an hour, we sat in the hot water, enjoying the warmth and steam. In the pool next to ours, a dozen women were lounging, wearing red sarongs that bared their shoulders but covered them to their knees. On their heads, they'd wrapped up their hair in plastic bags. Some of the women were Buddhist nuns, and their closely shaved hair and red bathing robes seemed out of place in the steam.
The men in our pool and the pool to the other side had hairstyles that we've seen on some of the saddhus - a close crop with a tuft of hair at the crown in the back. They have a piece of string tied under their armpit like a shoulder bag with no bag and another tied around their waist.
After a while, two very old Tamang women approached the pools. Dressed in their traditional long wrap dress, woolen tunic, top hat, and fabric belts, they took their time de-layering. Although our guide book had warned us to dress modestly at the pools, it seemed like maybe it wasn't as big of a deal as they had thought. These two very old, very wrinkled women were completely topless, and they wrapped their impossibly long braids around their heads like a crown before they walked into the water and stood under the fountains.
We'd been in the pools for a long while before another Westerner came in. A New Zealander with a guide, he got in and sat next to us, asking us about our trek so far and telling us a little bit about his job as a care giver and his studies in Organic Farming.
The steam went to our heads, and once we had been in the pool for about an hour, we were ready to head back to the lodge. Saying goodbye to the New Zealander, we wrapped up in our towels and walked to our room. After we had changed into some dry clothes, we ordered dal bhat and sat in the dining room, reading and playing cards.
The sun set, and after a little bit, our food came. It wasn't as good as Nima's, but it was still pretty tasty. After a few hands of Rummy 5000, Joshua stopped having fun. It seems that, after a good six years of learning how to play, I now know how to win, and I do so with alarming frequency. It's making my husband cranky.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Rimche to Briddim to Nagthali
November 22, 2010
We arrived in Nagthali at 3 PM. The clouds had settled over the pass, so there was no view to be seen, but judging from the names of all the lodges - Hotel Good View, Nagthali Top View Point, Nagthali All View - it will be spectacular once the mist clears.
As it should be. We climbed over 1700 meters to get here.
From Briddim, we walked an hour and a half down hill to the river. The whole way, we could see Thuman directly across the valley, just a couple hundred meters above Briddim. If we could have flown, it would have taken less than 10 minutes. As it was, we had to walk all the way down to the river, Bhote Koshi Nadi, and then all the way back up.
It took an hour an a half to climb the switchbacks up to Thuman, and after lunch, it took another two and a half hours of climbing to reach Nagthali. By the time we saw the lodges of Nagthali, we were more than ready to sit down and rest.
Before we left, Pemba and Kami made us a breakfast of Tibetan bread and fried eggs. As we ate, Pemba and Kami were drinking a milky, steamy liquid from bowls, like cafe au lait. When they saw us eyeing their bowls, they told us that it was Tibetan tea and asked us if we would like to try it. We agreed, and they poured us small cups.
It was the same sort of tea that the monks had served us at the Dalai Lama seminar; it was salty, and the milk and butter that they had used created a little film of grease at the top. I swallowed it down, trying not to taste it. Afterwards, it was all I could do not to shudder.
Pemba and Kami seemed proud of us for drinking the Tibetan tea, and once we were finished, they sat with us and we settled the bill. Pemba took out a notebook and began writing down the meals, drinks, and room in Nepali. He wrote the prices down in Nepali, too, but at first, we didn't realize that. Instead, we were looking at 900, 800, 900, and so on, thinking, holy shit, we've just broken the bank. We forgot that Nepali numbers look similar but have completely different denominations, thank god. In the end, the bill came out to 1060 rupees (that's 15 dollars for four meals and a room), and we were much relieved.
Packing up the last of our things, we said goodbye to Pemba and Kami and began to head out. Pemba stopped us, asking us to come inside one last time. He wanted our e-mail, and we gave it to him. He told us that he'd like us to e-mail him when we get back to the USA, and we shouldn't worry that he can't read English; he'll get his friend to read it for him. Then, he held out his hand a showed us a few friendship bracelets that Kami had woven. He asked us to choose two, and then he tied them on our wrists.
Walking out of the Red Panda compound, we turned around, took one last photo, and waved goodbye. Pemba stood at the door of his kitchen until we were out of sight.
As we walked, we agreed that Briddim was a wonderful start to our Tamang Heritage trek. Already, the trail and the people we've met have been much different, and we feel lucky to experience Tibetan-Nepali village life in a place that has had so few tourists come through.
We descended. We climbed. Just before noon, we arrived in Thuman, and taking out one of the business cards Pemba had given us, we headed for the Buddha Guest House. With a table sitting overlooking the valley and a brightly painted guest house, it was a lovely point, and we ordered the usual chowmein and potatoes. Joshua took out the cards, and we continued 5000, looking out at the mountains of Tibet and in the distance, the peaks of Langtang. Clouds began to flirt with the peaks, and the air in the valley was thick with mist or dust, we're not sure which. Our cook came out and asked us where we were planning to spend the night. When we told him that we were interested in hiking up to Tatopani, he shook his head. 'No good,' he said. 'Too far, and bad weather. Need stop in Nagthali to see view. Weather no good today. You see tomorrow morning.'
We asked him how far was too far. He said that it would take five hours to reach Tatopani and three hours to get to Nagthali.
Nagthali it is. We ate our chowmein and potatoes, served to us by a woman with the largest earrings we've ever seen, and when we finished, we paid. Our cook walked us out to the trail and gave us directions to Nagthali. We began to climb.
We were silent most of the way, and by the time we reached the misty forests, the temperature had fallen drastically. We climbed and climbed, never stopping, and then finally, we saw buildings through the mists. The first lodge that we came across, although lovely, was deserted. A little nervous, we kept hiking. A few minutes later, we met a Nepali couple coming down the trail with their backpacks on. They asked us if we were staying in Nagthali, and when we answered in the affirmative, they turned around and walked back with us.
At their lodge, Nagthali All View, they showed us to one of their rooms. Large with simple wooden walls, it is one of the most pleasant rooms we've stayed in thus far. The whole place sits high on a hill in a clearing, and it's painted a cheery white and yellow. We're doubly lucky to have run into the couple, because Gyurme and Nima had actually just finished closing up the lodge for the season. They were headed home when we ran into them.
Shedding our packs, we donned all of our extra layers. It may be mid-afternoon, but already, it's freezing. In the kitchen, we sat next to the fire with Gyurme and Nima, and they gave us a huge thermos full of hot water. I took out the computer to write and got much the same response I've gotten so far - awe. The Nepalis that I've met on trail are all amazed by laptops, and it's common for me to have an audience as I'm writing. I've taken to showing them pictures, because I know they can't read what I'm writing, and it must be very dull to look over my shoulder and watch letters race across the screen.
So I showed Gyurme and Nima my slideshow of the Annapurna, and Gyurme, in particular, seemed thrilled to see all the places that he's heard of. When I said Annapurna II or Manang or Machupucchre, he excitedly repeated the words and then explained them to Nima, who doesn't understand as much English.
I showed them a couple pictures of the house in New Orleans that we used to live in, and that set off a series of questions about our family. Are we married? How many brothers and sisters do you have? How many children do you have?
Gurmu and Nima told us that they have three children, two girls and one boy, and all of them are going to boarding school. Telling us their names, they explained that lamas choose the names for children once they are born, and almost all Tibetan children have names associated with the day of the week that they were born. I wrote them down as they told us: Sunday is Nima. Monday is Douwah. Tuesday is Mingmar. Wednesday is Lakbah. Thursday is Purba. Friday is Pasang. Saturday is Pemba.
Although it didn't seem possible, the thick mist that greeted us when we arrived has now partially cleared, and when Gurmu came back from gathering more firewood, he told us to come outside. To the East, we can see the mountains of Langtang. To the South, we can see the pass we will take to Gosaikund. To the North, we can see the mountains of Tibet, and to the West, we can see still more white peaks. For 360 degrees, we can see mountains. It's gorgeous.
Gurmu tells us that tomorrow we can walk up to a view point, and from there, we will be able to see villages in Tibet. He says it's much better than Poon Hill, and we already believe him.
While I write, Gyurme talks to Joshua, telling him about Nagthali and the road that's being built to Tibet. Apparently, it's the Chinese who are funding the road building, but he doesn't seem to fussed about it. He tells Joshua that Nagthali means 'Snake Hill,' and Joshua nervously looks into the bushes. 'Snakes?' he asks, just to make sure. Gurmu nods emphatically.
Joshua takes out the camera and takes photos of the gorgeous view. Gyurme asks me if I'm writing an e-mail to my family, and I try to explain what a blog is. He gets excited, thinking that I have a website, and then he asks Joshua to take a picture of him and Nima in front of his guest house. He wants us to post the picture on our website. We agree.
Both Gyurme and Nima are wonderful, and they follow us around, being perfect hosts. On just our second night of the Tamang trek, we've already met some incredible people and seen more of Nepali village life than we've seen in two months.
Back in the kitchen, we sit by the fire, reading, writing, and talking to Gyurme. Nima is shifting pots and pans over the fire and stirring something that smells delicious. After a while, she takes out pappadam and carefully fries it over oil until it crisps and hardens. Then, she serves us heaping plates of rice, dahl, vegetable curry, and fried greens. Gyurme proudly tells us that it's all local, and then he points to the rice. 'Tamang rice,' he says.
It's amazing. The rice is the best I've ever had. It's shaped a little differently - a bit rounder and a little irregular - but it's got a flavor all of its own. The dahl is full of lentils and spices. The curry is savory and rich. The greens were just picked from the garden, and we tell them over and over again how delicious and wonderful it is. It's the best dahl bat in Nepal.
Nima serves herself and Gyurme heaping plates, and they eat, picking up the rice and beans with the fingers of their right hand. Afterwards, they sit and watch the fire, belching quietly. We're all full, and we're sleepy in that way you get when you've just eaten really well. We sit for a while longer, watching the flames, and then we all say goodnight.
November 21, 2010
Thankfully, no one snored. We slept soundly through the night, despite the thin walls, and in the morning, we packed up before breakfast at 7. In the dining room, we both ate pancakes, and once we had finished, we paid and headed back on the trail.
From Upper Rimche, you can either head back the way you came to Syraphru Besi or you can head up along the ridge to Sherpagaun. The trail heading to Sherpagaun connects with the Tamang Heritage Trail, and it affords trekkers a closer look at Tamang culture and landscape.
Although it's not as high altitude as some other treks, it's less traveled, and in the Lonely Planet, it's compared to Langtang '20 years ago.' The trek takes us the closest we've been to Tibet yet, and we hope to spend three to four nights in the traditional villages along the way. The trail opened within the past 5 years as a part of a program to stimulate economic growth in rural regions, and we're intrigued to see a place that's less commercialized and more genuine.
From Rimche, it took a little less than two hours to reach Sherpagaun. The trail follows a steep ridge, and just inches from the path the mountain drops off into nothing. The views are stunning, but it is a bit nerve wracking, especially when stones that have dislodged by your feet go tumbling down, down, down.
In Sherpagaun, we ran a gauntlet of lodge and restaurant proprietors. 'Eat here!' 'Where you going?' 'You stay at my brother's lodge!' 'Tea? Rest?' One woman even cleverly gave us a gift to bring to her brother in Briddim. She wrapped up two carrots in a plastic bag, handed them to us, and then told us to give them to the owner of 'Briddim number 3.' We reluctantly agreed.
We kept walking through the village, and on the other side, we began to climb again. We took our time, stopping frequently to look out over the valley. We talked a little bit, but mostly, we were preoccupied by the steep trail and its lovely views. After about an hour, we encountered our first pair of trekkers. They asked us if we were going to Briddim, and when we said that we were, they recommended the Red Panda Homestay, saying that the people were very friendly, the food was good, and prices were cheap. We like these sort of recommendations, so we resolved to find the Red Panda when we arrived in Briddim.
Two hours after Sherpagaun, we finally reached Kyanjim. Tashi, one of the porters that we had met in Kyanjin Gompa, had asked us to seek out his lodge, so we kept our eyes peeled for Small Star Guest House. When I found the sign, we were so hungry, we didn't stop to assess. We sat down right away.
Unfortunately, it was one of the shabbiest restaurants in the village. The table was rickety and covered with a grubby table cloth. Roosters were pecking around our feet and calling wildly. Instead of a view, dirty clothes were draped over a line. The kitchen was dark and mysterious, and I felt nervous ordering even our usual chowmein and potatoes.
When Joshua went over to the kitchen to order, an older woman dressed in traditional Tibetan clothing began to strip. At first, I wasn't sure what she was doing, and then, once a breast popped out, I thought there might be something a bit odd going on. She walked up to Joshua with both breasts hanging out and stood very close. A gentleman, Joshua played ignorant and avoided looking at her. The woman who took his order looked at the woman but didn't say anything.
The whole exchange left me confused. Was this woman crazy? Is this culturally acceptable? What about all the signs that compel trekkers to dress modestly? Do tatas not count?
The bare-breasted woman walked off to the garden to pick the vegetables for our veggie chowmein, and Joshua suggested that we begin an epic game of Rummy 5000 (instead of 500). We agreed that the winner gets to name our next pet, and now that we're playing for keeps, I started trouncing Joshua.
Fortunately, our food came out looking fairly normal, and we ate it all. Afterwards, we paid, and already, the prices are much lower.
Just before we left, a man walked up to us and asked us where we were intending to stay in Briddim. Luckily, we had an answer. 'We're staying with a friend,' we said, hoping that might deter him. 'Who?' he asked, not detered in the least. We told him that we were staying at the Red Panda. 'I'm Red Panda!' he said, smiling but confused. We laughed and explained that we had met a couple of trekkers who had recommended his homestay. He smiled wider. 'Yes, you stay with friend.'
When we loaded our backpacks onto our backs and headed for Briddim, the owner of Red Panda followed us. Deducing that we had acquired a guide, we struck up a conversation with him. First, names. His is Pemba, and he and his family are Tamang. Once, a long time ago, they were Tibetan, but now, they are Tamang.
Pemba is missing one of his front teeth, but he has a wonderful smile. He was wearing a Michael Jackson t-shirt under a jacket, and on his head, he had a jaunty wide-billed trucker's cap. He told us that his wife cooks well, and judging from the rare little belly bulging beneath Michael Jackson's peace sign, this is true.
On our way to Briddim, we passed a few other Nepali, and although we couldn't understand what Pemba was saying to them, we joked that it was something like, 'these guys are mine. Hands off.' At one point, Pemba dropped behind and we thought we had lost him, but he came running up a couple of minutes later with a tree over his shoulder. Casually, he pointed at the correct path over a landslide, and I couldn't help but laugh. He made it seem as though he was carrying no weight at all, but the tree had to have been almost 15 feet long and very heavy. Pemba looked confused when I started laughing, so I imitated him carrying a tree as if it were as light as a feather, and he laughed too.
Eventually, we came to Briddim. Of the 45 houses in the village, 23 are homestays. We followed Pemba down the path to his home at the bottom of the village. The Red Panda was a series of four or five homes with gardens surrounding the compound. In the courtyard, chickens and children were running about and playing. Women were washing dishes under a spigot, and another older woman was weaving on a loom. Besides a sign that said, 'Red Panda,' there was nothing to indicate that this was a place to seek shelter and food.
Leading us up a ladder, Pemba showed us a small room on the second floor of their barn. With two beds, this is were we'll sleep the night. We thanked him and took off our packs to rest. A little while later, Pemba knocked on the door and handed us two cups of sweet tea.
Drinking our tea, we looked out over the compound, watching everyone at work. On the roof, vegetables and chilies were drying in the sun. On the porch of another home, one woman was carefully picking through another woman's scalp. A half naked baby toddled between them, leaning against the rails. In the kitchens, men and women were chopping vegetables for dal bhaat, and the chimneys were smoking from the stove fires.
Before we left to go explore the village, we checked in the kitchen to tell Pemba where we were going. Sitting by the fire, he urged us to come inside. We took off our shoes, and once we were inside, Pemba introduced us to his wife, Kami. Kami is wearing traditional Tibetan dress, and around her waist, she has a golden belt that looks a little bit like a key-hole. Right away, she begins laughing and smiling, and this is mainly how we communicate with one another. Neither Pemba nor Kami speak much English, but it doesn't seem to matter. They're welcoming and smiling, and they're lovely.
In the village, we walk by dozens of homes just like Pemba and Kami's. In the courtyards, women in lovely Tibetan dresses and shawls are busy sweeping or setting out things to dry. Dogs are curled up on the steps, sleeping, and the whole place has this wonderful lived in feel. Everyone presses their hands together to say Namaste, and a couple people ask us where we are 'living.' When we say Red Panda, they nod their heads and shout back into their homes. It's a small town; everybody knows everybody's business.
We walk up to the gompa. Prayer flags and a mani wall line the courtyard, and a man lets us inside the temple. We look inside at the altar and lovely paintings, and when he gestures to the donation box, we step forward to stuff in 100 rupees.
Back at Red Panda, we sit outside and read until the light goes down. Once it's dark, we join Pemba, Kami, and Pemba's mother, Nima, in the kitchen. Kami is stirring up the dal bhaat while she sits cross-legged in front of the fire, and she tells us that it's almost ready. Pemba sits down with us at the table, and he takes out photos of his two children. Both of them are at school in Dhunche, and he tells us that it's very expensive - 3,000 rupees a month (almost an entire Nepali salary). We thank him for showing us the photos, and then Kami calls him over to serve us our dal bhaat.
They watch us while we eat, sitting by the fire. Kami offers us seconds of everything, including her special chili sauce, and once we've cleaned our plates, she serves first Pemba, then Nami, and finally, herself. We feel a bit uncomfortable, but they're still smiling and laughing, so we just roll with it. When everyone's done, Kami makes us sweet tea.
Before we go to bed, we thank both Pemba and Kami. They've been wonderful, and we feel so honored to have been welcomed into their home. Kami laughs her beautiful laugh, and I notice small tattoos on her face, just like the tattoos I saw on Tashi's sister, the woman who cooked us lunch. I point to my own forehead and chin, and then I point to her face. 'Tattoos?' I say. Then, I pull up my sleeve and point at my tattoo. She laughs and nods her head. She tries out the word, 'tattoo,' and Pemba nods, smiling too.
In bed, we listen to the sound of a bell tied around a horse's neck. Chickens are scratching at the wood on the porch, and far away, we hear chanting. We fall asleep to the sounds of Briddim.
We arrived in Nagthali at 3 PM. The clouds had settled over the pass, so there was no view to be seen, but judging from the names of all the lodges - Hotel Good View, Nagthali Top View Point, Nagthali All View - it will be spectacular once the mist clears.
As it should be. We climbed over 1700 meters to get here.
From Briddim, we walked an hour and a half down hill to the river. The whole way, we could see Thuman directly across the valley, just a couple hundred meters above Briddim. If we could have flown, it would have taken less than 10 minutes. As it was, we had to walk all the way down to the river, Bhote Koshi Nadi, and then all the way back up.
It took an hour an a half to climb the switchbacks up to Thuman, and after lunch, it took another two and a half hours of climbing to reach Nagthali. By the time we saw the lodges of Nagthali, we were more than ready to sit down and rest.
Before we left, Pemba and Kami made us a breakfast of Tibetan bread and fried eggs. As we ate, Pemba and Kami were drinking a milky, steamy liquid from bowls, like cafe au lait. When they saw us eyeing their bowls, they told us that it was Tibetan tea and asked us if we would like to try it. We agreed, and they poured us small cups.
It was the same sort of tea that the monks had served us at the Dalai Lama seminar; it was salty, and the milk and butter that they had used created a little film of grease at the top. I swallowed it down, trying not to taste it. Afterwards, it was all I could do not to shudder.
Pemba and Kami seemed proud of us for drinking the Tibetan tea, and once we were finished, they sat with us and we settled the bill. Pemba took out a notebook and began writing down the meals, drinks, and room in Nepali. He wrote the prices down in Nepali, too, but at first, we didn't realize that. Instead, we were looking at 900, 800, 900, and so on, thinking, holy shit, we've just broken the bank. We forgot that Nepali numbers look similar but have completely different denominations, thank god. In the end, the bill came out to 1060 rupees (that's 15 dollars for four meals and a room), and we were much relieved.
Packing up the last of our things, we said goodbye to Pemba and Kami and began to head out. Pemba stopped us, asking us to come inside one last time. He wanted our e-mail, and we gave it to him. He told us that he'd like us to e-mail him when we get back to the USA, and we shouldn't worry that he can't read English; he'll get his friend to read it for him. Then, he held out his hand a showed us a few friendship bracelets that Kami had woven. He asked us to choose two, and then he tied them on our wrists.
Walking out of the Red Panda compound, we turned around, took one last photo, and waved goodbye. Pemba stood at the door of his kitchen until we were out of sight.
As we walked, we agreed that Briddim was a wonderful start to our Tamang Heritage trek. Already, the trail and the people we've met have been much different, and we feel lucky to experience Tibetan-Nepali village life in a place that has had so few tourists come through.
We descended. We climbed. Just before noon, we arrived in Thuman, and taking out one of the business cards Pemba had given us, we headed for the Buddha Guest House. With a table sitting overlooking the valley and a brightly painted guest house, it was a lovely point, and we ordered the usual chowmein and potatoes. Joshua took out the cards, and we continued 5000, looking out at the mountains of Tibet and in the distance, the peaks of Langtang. Clouds began to flirt with the peaks, and the air in the valley was thick with mist or dust, we're not sure which. Our cook came out and asked us where we were planning to spend the night. When we told him that we were interested in hiking up to Tatopani, he shook his head. 'No good,' he said. 'Too far, and bad weather. Need stop in Nagthali to see view. Weather no good today. You see tomorrow morning.'
We asked him how far was too far. He said that it would take five hours to reach Tatopani and three hours to get to Nagthali.
Nagthali it is. We ate our chowmein and potatoes, served to us by a woman with the largest earrings we've ever seen, and when we finished, we paid. Our cook walked us out to the trail and gave us directions to Nagthali. We began to climb.
We were silent most of the way, and by the time we reached the misty forests, the temperature had fallen drastically. We climbed and climbed, never stopping, and then finally, we saw buildings through the mists. The first lodge that we came across, although lovely, was deserted. A little nervous, we kept hiking. A few minutes later, we met a Nepali couple coming down the trail with their backpacks on. They asked us if we were staying in Nagthali, and when we answered in the affirmative, they turned around and walked back with us.
At their lodge, Nagthali All View, they showed us to one of their rooms. Large with simple wooden walls, it is one of the most pleasant rooms we've stayed in thus far. The whole place sits high on a hill in a clearing, and it's painted a cheery white and yellow. We're doubly lucky to have run into the couple, because Gyurme and Nima had actually just finished closing up the lodge for the season. They were headed home when we ran into them.
Shedding our packs, we donned all of our extra layers. It may be mid-afternoon, but already, it's freezing. In the kitchen, we sat next to the fire with Gyurme and Nima, and they gave us a huge thermos full of hot water. I took out the computer to write and got much the same response I've gotten so far - awe. The Nepalis that I've met on trail are all amazed by laptops, and it's common for me to have an audience as I'm writing. I've taken to showing them pictures, because I know they can't read what I'm writing, and it must be very dull to look over my shoulder and watch letters race across the screen.
So I showed Gyurme and Nima my slideshow of the Annapurna, and Gyurme, in particular, seemed thrilled to see all the places that he's heard of. When I said Annapurna II or Manang or Machupucchre, he excitedly repeated the words and then explained them to Nima, who doesn't understand as much English.
I showed them a couple pictures of the house in New Orleans that we used to live in, and that set off a series of questions about our family. Are we married? How many brothers and sisters do you have? How many children do you have?
Gurmu and Nima told us that they have three children, two girls and one boy, and all of them are going to boarding school. Telling us their names, they explained that lamas choose the names for children once they are born, and almost all Tibetan children have names associated with the day of the week that they were born. I wrote them down as they told us: Sunday is Nima. Monday is Douwah. Tuesday is Mingmar. Wednesday is Lakbah. Thursday is Purba. Friday is Pasang. Saturday is Pemba.
Although it didn't seem possible, the thick mist that greeted us when we arrived has now partially cleared, and when Gurmu came back from gathering more firewood, he told us to come outside. To the East, we can see the mountains of Langtang. To the South, we can see the pass we will take to Gosaikund. To the North, we can see the mountains of Tibet, and to the West, we can see still more white peaks. For 360 degrees, we can see mountains. It's gorgeous.
Gurmu tells us that tomorrow we can walk up to a view point, and from there, we will be able to see villages in Tibet. He says it's much better than Poon Hill, and we already believe him.
While I write, Gyurme talks to Joshua, telling him about Nagthali and the road that's being built to Tibet. Apparently, it's the Chinese who are funding the road building, but he doesn't seem to fussed about it. He tells Joshua that Nagthali means 'Snake Hill,' and Joshua nervously looks into the bushes. 'Snakes?' he asks, just to make sure. Gurmu nods emphatically.
Joshua takes out the camera and takes photos of the gorgeous view. Gyurme asks me if I'm writing an e-mail to my family, and I try to explain what a blog is. He gets excited, thinking that I have a website, and then he asks Joshua to take a picture of him and Nima in front of his guest house. He wants us to post the picture on our website. We agree.
Both Gyurme and Nima are wonderful, and they follow us around, being perfect hosts. On just our second night of the Tamang trek, we've already met some incredible people and seen more of Nepali village life than we've seen in two months.
Back in the kitchen, we sit by the fire, reading, writing, and talking to Gyurme. Nima is shifting pots and pans over the fire and stirring something that smells delicious. After a while, she takes out pappadam and carefully fries it over oil until it crisps and hardens. Then, she serves us heaping plates of rice, dahl, vegetable curry, and fried greens. Gyurme proudly tells us that it's all local, and then he points to the rice. 'Tamang rice,' he says.
It's amazing. The rice is the best I've ever had. It's shaped a little differently - a bit rounder and a little irregular - but it's got a flavor all of its own. The dahl is full of lentils and spices. The curry is savory and rich. The greens were just picked from the garden, and we tell them over and over again how delicious and wonderful it is. It's the best dahl bat in Nepal.
Nima serves herself and Gyurme heaping plates, and they eat, picking up the rice and beans with the fingers of their right hand. Afterwards, they sit and watch the fire, belching quietly. We're all full, and we're sleepy in that way you get when you've just eaten really well. We sit for a while longer, watching the flames, and then we all say goodnight.
November 21, 2010
Thankfully, no one snored. We slept soundly through the night, despite the thin walls, and in the morning, we packed up before breakfast at 7. In the dining room, we both ate pancakes, and once we had finished, we paid and headed back on the trail.
From Upper Rimche, you can either head back the way you came to Syraphru Besi or you can head up along the ridge to Sherpagaun. The trail heading to Sherpagaun connects with the Tamang Heritage Trail, and it affords trekkers a closer look at Tamang culture and landscape.
Although it's not as high altitude as some other treks, it's less traveled, and in the Lonely Planet, it's compared to Langtang '20 years ago.' The trek takes us the closest we've been to Tibet yet, and we hope to spend three to four nights in the traditional villages along the way. The trail opened within the past 5 years as a part of a program to stimulate economic growth in rural regions, and we're intrigued to see a place that's less commercialized and more genuine.
From Rimche, it took a little less than two hours to reach Sherpagaun. The trail follows a steep ridge, and just inches from the path the mountain drops off into nothing. The views are stunning, but it is a bit nerve wracking, especially when stones that have dislodged by your feet go tumbling down, down, down.
In Sherpagaun, we ran a gauntlet of lodge and restaurant proprietors. 'Eat here!' 'Where you going?' 'You stay at my brother's lodge!' 'Tea? Rest?' One woman even cleverly gave us a gift to bring to her brother in Briddim. She wrapped up two carrots in a plastic bag, handed them to us, and then told us to give them to the owner of 'Briddim number 3.' We reluctantly agreed.
We kept walking through the village, and on the other side, we began to climb again. We took our time, stopping frequently to look out over the valley. We talked a little bit, but mostly, we were preoccupied by the steep trail and its lovely views. After about an hour, we encountered our first pair of trekkers. They asked us if we were going to Briddim, and when we said that we were, they recommended the Red Panda Homestay, saying that the people were very friendly, the food was good, and prices were cheap. We like these sort of recommendations, so we resolved to find the Red Panda when we arrived in Briddim.
Two hours after Sherpagaun, we finally reached Kyanjim. Tashi, one of the porters that we had met in Kyanjin Gompa, had asked us to seek out his lodge, so we kept our eyes peeled for Small Star Guest House. When I found the sign, we were so hungry, we didn't stop to assess. We sat down right away.
Unfortunately, it was one of the shabbiest restaurants in the village. The table was rickety and covered with a grubby table cloth. Roosters were pecking around our feet and calling wildly. Instead of a view, dirty clothes were draped over a line. The kitchen was dark and mysterious, and I felt nervous ordering even our usual chowmein and potatoes.
When Joshua went over to the kitchen to order, an older woman dressed in traditional Tibetan clothing began to strip. At first, I wasn't sure what she was doing, and then, once a breast popped out, I thought there might be something a bit odd going on. She walked up to Joshua with both breasts hanging out and stood very close. A gentleman, Joshua played ignorant and avoided looking at her. The woman who took his order looked at the woman but didn't say anything.
The whole exchange left me confused. Was this woman crazy? Is this culturally acceptable? What about all the signs that compel trekkers to dress modestly? Do tatas not count?
The bare-breasted woman walked off to the garden to pick the vegetables for our veggie chowmein, and Joshua suggested that we begin an epic game of Rummy 5000 (instead of 500). We agreed that the winner gets to name our next pet, and now that we're playing for keeps, I started trouncing Joshua.
Fortunately, our food came out looking fairly normal, and we ate it all. Afterwards, we paid, and already, the prices are much lower.
Just before we left, a man walked up to us and asked us where we were intending to stay in Briddim. Luckily, we had an answer. 'We're staying with a friend,' we said, hoping that might deter him. 'Who?' he asked, not detered in the least. We told him that we were staying at the Red Panda. 'I'm Red Panda!' he said, smiling but confused. We laughed and explained that we had met a couple of trekkers who had recommended his homestay. He smiled wider. 'Yes, you stay with friend.'
When we loaded our backpacks onto our backs and headed for Briddim, the owner of Red Panda followed us. Deducing that we had acquired a guide, we struck up a conversation with him. First, names. His is Pemba, and he and his family are Tamang. Once, a long time ago, they were Tibetan, but now, they are Tamang.
Pemba is missing one of his front teeth, but he has a wonderful smile. He was wearing a Michael Jackson t-shirt under a jacket, and on his head, he had a jaunty wide-billed trucker's cap. He told us that his wife cooks well, and judging from the rare little belly bulging beneath Michael Jackson's peace sign, this is true.
On our way to Briddim, we passed a few other Nepali, and although we couldn't understand what Pemba was saying to them, we joked that it was something like, 'these guys are mine. Hands off.' At one point, Pemba dropped behind and we thought we had lost him, but he came running up a couple of minutes later with a tree over his shoulder. Casually, he pointed at the correct path over a landslide, and I couldn't help but laugh. He made it seem as though he was carrying no weight at all, but the tree had to have been almost 15 feet long and very heavy. Pemba looked confused when I started laughing, so I imitated him carrying a tree as if it were as light as a feather, and he laughed too.
Eventually, we came to Briddim. Of the 45 houses in the village, 23 are homestays. We followed Pemba down the path to his home at the bottom of the village. The Red Panda was a series of four or five homes with gardens surrounding the compound. In the courtyard, chickens and children were running about and playing. Women were washing dishes under a spigot, and another older woman was weaving on a loom. Besides a sign that said, 'Red Panda,' there was nothing to indicate that this was a place to seek shelter and food.
Leading us up a ladder, Pemba showed us a small room on the second floor of their barn. With two beds, this is were we'll sleep the night. We thanked him and took off our packs to rest. A little while later, Pemba knocked on the door and handed us two cups of sweet tea.
Drinking our tea, we looked out over the compound, watching everyone at work. On the roof, vegetables and chilies were drying in the sun. On the porch of another home, one woman was carefully picking through another woman's scalp. A half naked baby toddled between them, leaning against the rails. In the kitchens, men and women were chopping vegetables for dal bhaat, and the chimneys were smoking from the stove fires.
Before we left to go explore the village, we checked in the kitchen to tell Pemba where we were going. Sitting by the fire, he urged us to come inside. We took off our shoes, and once we were inside, Pemba introduced us to his wife, Kami. Kami is wearing traditional Tibetan dress, and around her waist, she has a golden belt that looks a little bit like a key-hole. Right away, she begins laughing and smiling, and this is mainly how we communicate with one another. Neither Pemba nor Kami speak much English, but it doesn't seem to matter. They're welcoming and smiling, and they're lovely.
In the village, we walk by dozens of homes just like Pemba and Kami's. In the courtyards, women in lovely Tibetan dresses and shawls are busy sweeping or setting out things to dry. Dogs are curled up on the steps, sleeping, and the whole place has this wonderful lived in feel. Everyone presses their hands together to say Namaste, and a couple people ask us where we are 'living.' When we say Red Panda, they nod their heads and shout back into their homes. It's a small town; everybody knows everybody's business.
We walk up to the gompa. Prayer flags and a mani wall line the courtyard, and a man lets us inside the temple. We look inside at the altar and lovely paintings, and when he gestures to the donation box, we step forward to stuff in 100 rupees.
Back at Red Panda, we sit outside and read until the light goes down. Once it's dark, we join Pemba, Kami, and Pemba's mother, Nima, in the kitchen. Kami is stirring up the dal bhaat while she sits cross-legged in front of the fire, and she tells us that it's almost ready. Pemba sits down with us at the table, and he takes out photos of his two children. Both of them are at school in Dhunche, and he tells us that it's very expensive - 3,000 rupees a month (almost an entire Nepali salary). We thank him for showing us the photos, and then Kami calls him over to serve us our dal bhaat.
They watch us while we eat, sitting by the fire. Kami offers us seconds of everything, including her special chili sauce, and once we've cleaned our plates, she serves first Pemba, then Nami, and finally, herself. We feel a bit uncomfortable, but they're still smiling and laughing, so we just roll with it. When everyone's done, Kami makes us sweet tea.
Before we go to bed, we thank both Pemba and Kami. They've been wonderful, and we feel so honored to have been welcomed into their home. Kami laughs her beautiful laugh, and I notice small tattoos on her face, just like the tattoos I saw on Tashi's sister, the woman who cooked us lunch. I point to my own forehead and chin, and then I point to her face. 'Tattoos?' I say. Then, I pull up my sleeve and point at my tattoo. She laughs and nods her head. She tries out the word, 'tattoo,' and Pemba nods, smiling too.
In bed, we listen to the sound of a bell tied around a horse's neck. Chickens are scratching at the wood on the porch, and far away, we hear chanting. We fall asleep to the sounds of Briddim.
Kyanjin Gompa to Upper Rimche
November 20, 2010
We woke up to another clear, blue sky. We left our curtains open all through the day and night; when you wake up with the sun, there's no need to block out its light. When I opened my eyes, I could see the glacier in its still ice tumbles, catching and tossing rays.
We packed up, and by 7, we were in the kitchen. Our lovely guest house keeper was cooking again, letting his wife sleep. We ate pancakes and enjoyed the warmth coming from the fire. It's getting colder, and even our house keeper rubbed his arms brusquely, to ward off the chill.
Before we left, the wife woke up, and once we'd paid, we took turns bowing with our hands pressed together in thanks and Namaste. They went outside to wave us off.
Covering the same trail we took to get here, we made our way down to Langtang and the small trickle of villages that descend from there. The trail seemed sleepier and so did the villages. Few people passed us, and judging from the smoking chimneys, most people were still inside, sitting by the fire.
Ever so gradually, the sun warmed our shoulders enough for us to take off our jackets. Going downhill, we used less energy, and after three hours of hiking, I was surprised to find that we had gone so far. At checkpoints along the way, the soldiers seemed surprised that we had come all the way from Kyanjin Gompa. There were hardly any names in the ledger.
It felt like we had all of Langtang valley to ourselves, and as we walked through fallen leaves and crossed more streams, we felt lucky. Not only are we in a beautiful place uncrowded by tourists, but for the first time, we also have a pretty good idea about our plans for the future. We have plans, and we're excited about them, and that's exactly what we wanted from this trip: a beautiful place to walk and talk and think. We wanted to make plans, and we wanted to be excited about them.
I'm going to get a Masters in Social Work. I'm not sure exactly where and when quite yet, but I've decided that I'd like to go back to school, and for a while, the jobs I have been most interested in where all in the field of Social Work. Before I start the degree, I'm going to find a job for 40 hours a week. Joshua will go to peace officer training, and I will keep writing. I hope that if I have a job that doesn't suck up all my emotional energies, I will have plenty of time and motivation to write, and Joshua has promised to hold me to it.
While being a Social Worker or a Police Officer might not be our dream jobs, our dream jobs don't have paychecks we can count on. We're still going to do those things: we'll farm and I'll write, and we'll even try to make money at it. But for now, we're pursuing the next best thing. Jobs that we'll enjoy and a paycheck on the other end. In exchange, we get a farm and a family and the chance to pay off our debts.
We spent most of our time today just thinking our own thoughts. I'm already planning a schedule where I work, exercise, and write. I'm already carving out space and time. I'm also thinking about going back to school, and I'm excited about it. I'm thinking about all the different places I could work with a degree in Social Work - a hospital, a school, government, therapy... I think I could be interested in any of them.
Joshua's thinking about baking bread, making cheese, investigating crimes, and shooting ducks (I'm serious; his words, not mine). They're all good things, and with the sun shining down on the path and the leaves crunching under our feet, we are really, really happy.
For lunch, we stopped at a lodge in Goda Tabela. We ordered the usual - veg chowmein with fried potatoes - and played cards. Our cook's little boy toddled about in the yard, pulling a cheese-grater behind him with a shoelace. Every once in a while, he'd stop and look at us and shout something in Nepali, then he'd go inside and shout at his mother. It seemed like he was running the place.
After lunch, we walked the last couple of hours to Upper Rimche. We saw a few more trekkers, but even the Lama Hotel - one of the biggest collection of lodges on the Langtang trail - seemed empty. To our left, the river rushed over boulders the size of cars, and even though we admired the view on our way up, we're still admiring it on the way down.
In Rimche, the Hotel Ganesh was buzzing. Oddly enough, here were all the trekkers that we hadn't seen all day. We debated for a bit, wondering if we should go back or forward, but ultimately, we decided to stay. There are six other couples here, but none of them are traveling in groups, and hardly any of them speak the same language. We're just hoping no one snores.
For a while, we sat outside, reading. Hotel Ganesh is on top of a ridge, and it catches a lot of late-afternoon sunlight. I finished The Hobbit in that sort of glow you get when the sun is just setting. Despite myself, I grew to rather like Mr. Baggins by the end, and I closed the pages satisfied.
When the sun went down, we all gathered into the lodge for Dal Bhaat near the fire. It's warm in here, and Joshua's reading while I'm writing. See? I'm already carving out the time :)
After we eat the Dal Bhaat, we sit and chat with a guy from Germany and another from Holland. Both are in the midst of long trips, and the guy from Holland tells us a little bit about his months in Northern India. Apparently, he's also done the bus ride from Leh to Manali, but instead of reaching Manali, the bus stopped at the parachute cafe in the middle, and he was stuck there for 6 days. The passes were too snowy, so rather than heading to Manali, they just carted him back to Leh. He made his way south via Kashmir. He was very laid back about it all, and he tells us that he'll spend days at a time in one place, just wandering around and reading. After hiking Annapurna Base Camp, he stayed for two weeks in Pokhara, just reading, sleeping, and eating. When he went to go pay the bill, they told him he had been there for 9 days, and he was floored. 'I thought it had been 4!' he said, laughing.
As Joshua and I headed off to bed, we both agreed that we could never spend 9 days doing nothing, but that we liked the sound of someone who could and not realize it, just the same. Before we fell asleep, Joshua asked, amazed, 'how did he travel in Northern India and Nepal for almost a year and still retain that pudge?!'
November 19, 2010
Joshua was still grumbling in irritation when the alarm went off. Last night, the Germans had stayed up until late, singing, stomping, clapping, and shouting. Their renditions of Old Country Road and Whatcha Gonna Do With a Drunken Sailor were surprisingly sonorous, but Joshua was unimpressed. Especially when they devolved into humming at the same pitch until everyone's ears rang and then broke it with loud guffaws and shouts. I believe Joshua's exact words were, 'Fuck all the Germans.'
Anyway, we were awake, the sun was shining, and it was time for some retribution. Joshua clomped his boots through the halls and heedlessly (or heedfully?) ran into doors and slammed them. My ear plugs had carried the brunt of the noise, so I went about packing our day bag and going down to breakfast a bit more quietly.
In the kitchen, our pancakes were already steaming on our plates. In a plastic bag, our guest house keeper had wrapped Tibetan bread and boiled eggs with a little satchet of salt. We were ready to go, and the Nepali guides for the Germans came in, telling us that we had chosen a great day to hike Tsergo Ri - the skies are exceptionally clear, and there's little wind.
We headed out. Following the same path we had taken to Langshisha Kharka, we crossed the river, carefully avoiding ice-slick stepping stones and glacial melt. On the other side, we followed the trail up.
And up and up and up. 1300 meters up, to be exact.
It took us three and a half hours to reach the summit of Tsergo Ri, and during that time, the trail only went up. At first, we were walking behind a group of three hikers. Behind us, two couples were within eyesight. We'd climb and stop, climb and stop, catch up and then split up again.
I could pretend to be humble, but here's the thing: we dominated Tsergo Ri. Now, you could tell me that this isn't a competition, and in the end, you're probably right, but you'd also have to admit that leaving a dozen hardened trekkers in the dust feels pretty damn good. And it does.
An hour an a half from the top, our fellow trekkers began to huff and puff and take longer, more frequent water breaks. We kept plodding along, and within the half hour, we were so far away from the other trekkers, they looked just like little spots of blue and red on the mountain. Victory was made all the sweeter because they were French. And you know how we feel about the French.
After the first two enormous ridges, we came to a field of boulders that we had to pick across. On the other side, the trail pitched up over slippy dirt. The trail devolved into a series of cairns to mark the way, and at the top of one scramble, we met a slope of scree. The wind picked up, and a centimeter of snow dusted everything. One set of footprints led the way.
Thirty minutes from the top, I grew very worried about making our way down. The stones were slick with snow and ice, and the going was very steep. I could see the prayer flags at the top, but I made Joshua stop. We debated whether or not we should continue, but finally, the allure of the top drew us on. Far below, the trekkers we had passed long ago were still resting. We decided to show them how it's done :)
100 meters from the top, the scree turned into an easy, dirt trail. No one was there. Hundreds of prayer flags flapped madly in the wind, and for 360 degrees, mountain peaks rose up to the sky. It was unspeakably beautiful.
On our way down, a woman asked us if the climb was worth it. We nodded emphatically, and then I told her that it was better than Annapurna Sanctuary and Thorung La. It may have even been better than our side trek to Ice Lake. Once she had passed, I almost felt badly for setting her expectations so high. I don't know if it's better for everyone, but it was for us.
In a way, Tsergo Ri feels like a defining moment in our travels. Like Annapurna, it was an amphitheater of mountains, but it was wider and we could see for further. The sky was clear, and the prayer flags were particularly beautiful. Up on this peak, all alone, there was no question that this was the best. Behind a couple of boulders, we huddled out of the wind and ate our packed lunch. From our perch, we could see the mountains of Tibet and Langtang. Above us, the sky was impossibly blue. It was perfect.
Forty five minutes later, once we had finished taking photos and eating, other trekkers began to arrive. They seemed just as speechless and we felt, and we quietly nodded and smiled as we headed back down the trail.
Luckily, the trail wasn't quite as treacherous as we had dreaded. Keeping low to the ground and using my hands, I was able to keep from slipping on the scree. At the bottom, still more trekkers were worried about the way down, and we reassured them that it was worth it, and it wasn't so bad.
It took a little over two hours to make our way back down. During that time, the clouds started to slowly creep in, and the tops of the mountains were covered. We had arrived at just the right time.
Back at the lodge, I took a shower. It takes a good deal of bravery to get naked and stand under water when it's this cold outside, and I hadn't braved it for five days. Thankfully, the solar water heater had done its job, and the water that came out of the spout was steaming hot. I stood under it, dreading having to turn it off.
In our room, I let my hair dry in the sun while we read. Joshua went to go get some tea and came back with a thermos and two rolls of coconut cookies. We nibbled and drank and read until dinner.
Downstairs, the fire was going. The French couple with whom we had ridden to Syraphru Besi had coincidently selected the same lodge, and they were sitting near the fire, reading.
When our Dal Bhaat came, we gobbled it down and then began playing cards. Intrigued, the French couple came over and asked if we would teach them our game. We agreed, and together, we played an open hand. Afterwards, we asked them about their travels.
Cecelia and Victor left France 16 months ago. Arriving in South America, they toured Peru, Bolivia, and Chile for four months and then hopped a plane to San Francisco. There, they rented a car for a couple of months and explored the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Moab, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff, and Vancouver Island, camping the whole time. From Seattle, they flew to New Zealand where they spent a couple months trekking. Next, they went to Australia and then Bali, Lombok, and Malaysia. For a change of pace, they flew to Madagascar and then on to a small, French volcanic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Back in France, they visited family for a couple of weeks, and then it was on to Moscow, where they caught the Trans-Siberian Railway to China. From China, they visited Mongolia, and then they arrived here, in Nepal. They go home just before Christmas.
I asked Cecelia what they plan to do once they get home. 'Celebrate Christmas,' she said, smiling and purposely evading my real question. I laughed. What will be doing next? I asked. 'Celebrate the New Year,' she said.
Before they left on their travels, they were both engineers living in the south of France near the Alps. Within 15 minutes, they could be in the mountains, and it was less than a three hour train ride to Paris, where they grew up. When they go back, they're not sure where they'll end up.
They've avoided planning so far.
It was nice chatting with the two of them (even though they were French :) ), and we talked until a little after 8. After a long day of trekking and early morning, we were exhausted, so we wished each other well and went off to bed.
We woke up to another clear, blue sky. We left our curtains open all through the day and night; when you wake up with the sun, there's no need to block out its light. When I opened my eyes, I could see the glacier in its still ice tumbles, catching and tossing rays.
We packed up, and by 7, we were in the kitchen. Our lovely guest house keeper was cooking again, letting his wife sleep. We ate pancakes and enjoyed the warmth coming from the fire. It's getting colder, and even our house keeper rubbed his arms brusquely, to ward off the chill.
Before we left, the wife woke up, and once we'd paid, we took turns bowing with our hands pressed together in thanks and Namaste. They went outside to wave us off.
Covering the same trail we took to get here, we made our way down to Langtang and the small trickle of villages that descend from there. The trail seemed sleepier and so did the villages. Few people passed us, and judging from the smoking chimneys, most people were still inside, sitting by the fire.
Ever so gradually, the sun warmed our shoulders enough for us to take off our jackets. Going downhill, we used less energy, and after three hours of hiking, I was surprised to find that we had gone so far. At checkpoints along the way, the soldiers seemed surprised that we had come all the way from Kyanjin Gompa. There were hardly any names in the ledger.
It felt like we had all of Langtang valley to ourselves, and as we walked through fallen leaves and crossed more streams, we felt lucky. Not only are we in a beautiful place uncrowded by tourists, but for the first time, we also have a pretty good idea about our plans for the future. We have plans, and we're excited about them, and that's exactly what we wanted from this trip: a beautiful place to walk and talk and think. We wanted to make plans, and we wanted to be excited about them.
I'm going to get a Masters in Social Work. I'm not sure exactly where and when quite yet, but I've decided that I'd like to go back to school, and for a while, the jobs I have been most interested in where all in the field of Social Work. Before I start the degree, I'm going to find a job for 40 hours a week. Joshua will go to peace officer training, and I will keep writing. I hope that if I have a job that doesn't suck up all my emotional energies, I will have plenty of time and motivation to write, and Joshua has promised to hold me to it.
While being a Social Worker or a Police Officer might not be our dream jobs, our dream jobs don't have paychecks we can count on. We're still going to do those things: we'll farm and I'll write, and we'll even try to make money at it. But for now, we're pursuing the next best thing. Jobs that we'll enjoy and a paycheck on the other end. In exchange, we get a farm and a family and the chance to pay off our debts.
We spent most of our time today just thinking our own thoughts. I'm already planning a schedule where I work, exercise, and write. I'm already carving out space and time. I'm also thinking about going back to school, and I'm excited about it. I'm thinking about all the different places I could work with a degree in Social Work - a hospital, a school, government, therapy... I think I could be interested in any of them.
Joshua's thinking about baking bread, making cheese, investigating crimes, and shooting ducks (I'm serious; his words, not mine). They're all good things, and with the sun shining down on the path and the leaves crunching under our feet, we are really, really happy.
For lunch, we stopped at a lodge in Goda Tabela. We ordered the usual - veg chowmein with fried potatoes - and played cards. Our cook's little boy toddled about in the yard, pulling a cheese-grater behind him with a shoelace. Every once in a while, he'd stop and look at us and shout something in Nepali, then he'd go inside and shout at his mother. It seemed like he was running the place.
After lunch, we walked the last couple of hours to Upper Rimche. We saw a few more trekkers, but even the Lama Hotel - one of the biggest collection of lodges on the Langtang trail - seemed empty. To our left, the river rushed over boulders the size of cars, and even though we admired the view on our way up, we're still admiring it on the way down.
In Rimche, the Hotel Ganesh was buzzing. Oddly enough, here were all the trekkers that we hadn't seen all day. We debated for a bit, wondering if we should go back or forward, but ultimately, we decided to stay. There are six other couples here, but none of them are traveling in groups, and hardly any of them speak the same language. We're just hoping no one snores.
For a while, we sat outside, reading. Hotel Ganesh is on top of a ridge, and it catches a lot of late-afternoon sunlight. I finished The Hobbit in that sort of glow you get when the sun is just setting. Despite myself, I grew to rather like Mr. Baggins by the end, and I closed the pages satisfied.
When the sun went down, we all gathered into the lodge for Dal Bhaat near the fire. It's warm in here, and Joshua's reading while I'm writing. See? I'm already carving out the time :)
After we eat the Dal Bhaat, we sit and chat with a guy from Germany and another from Holland. Both are in the midst of long trips, and the guy from Holland tells us a little bit about his months in Northern India. Apparently, he's also done the bus ride from Leh to Manali, but instead of reaching Manali, the bus stopped at the parachute cafe in the middle, and he was stuck there for 6 days. The passes were too snowy, so rather than heading to Manali, they just carted him back to Leh. He made his way south via Kashmir. He was very laid back about it all, and he tells us that he'll spend days at a time in one place, just wandering around and reading. After hiking Annapurna Base Camp, he stayed for two weeks in Pokhara, just reading, sleeping, and eating. When he went to go pay the bill, they told him he had been there for 9 days, and he was floored. 'I thought it had been 4!' he said, laughing.
As Joshua and I headed off to bed, we both agreed that we could never spend 9 days doing nothing, but that we liked the sound of someone who could and not realize it, just the same. Before we fell asleep, Joshua asked, amazed, 'how did he travel in Northern India and Nepal for almost a year and still retain that pudge?!'
November 19, 2010
Joshua was still grumbling in irritation when the alarm went off. Last night, the Germans had stayed up until late, singing, stomping, clapping, and shouting. Their renditions of Old Country Road and Whatcha Gonna Do With a Drunken Sailor were surprisingly sonorous, but Joshua was unimpressed. Especially when they devolved into humming at the same pitch until everyone's ears rang and then broke it with loud guffaws and shouts. I believe Joshua's exact words were, 'Fuck all the Germans.'
Anyway, we were awake, the sun was shining, and it was time for some retribution. Joshua clomped his boots through the halls and heedlessly (or heedfully?) ran into doors and slammed them. My ear plugs had carried the brunt of the noise, so I went about packing our day bag and going down to breakfast a bit more quietly.
In the kitchen, our pancakes were already steaming on our plates. In a plastic bag, our guest house keeper had wrapped Tibetan bread and boiled eggs with a little satchet of salt. We were ready to go, and the Nepali guides for the Germans came in, telling us that we had chosen a great day to hike Tsergo Ri - the skies are exceptionally clear, and there's little wind.
We headed out. Following the same path we had taken to Langshisha Kharka, we crossed the river, carefully avoiding ice-slick stepping stones and glacial melt. On the other side, we followed the trail up.
And up and up and up. 1300 meters up, to be exact.
It took us three and a half hours to reach the summit of Tsergo Ri, and during that time, the trail only went up. At first, we were walking behind a group of three hikers. Behind us, two couples were within eyesight. We'd climb and stop, climb and stop, catch up and then split up again.
I could pretend to be humble, but here's the thing: we dominated Tsergo Ri. Now, you could tell me that this isn't a competition, and in the end, you're probably right, but you'd also have to admit that leaving a dozen hardened trekkers in the dust feels pretty damn good. And it does.
An hour an a half from the top, our fellow trekkers began to huff and puff and take longer, more frequent water breaks. We kept plodding along, and within the half hour, we were so far away from the other trekkers, they looked just like little spots of blue and red on the mountain. Victory was made all the sweeter because they were French. And you know how we feel about the French.
After the first two enormous ridges, we came to a field of boulders that we had to pick across. On the other side, the trail pitched up over slippy dirt. The trail devolved into a series of cairns to mark the way, and at the top of one scramble, we met a slope of scree. The wind picked up, and a centimeter of snow dusted everything. One set of footprints led the way.
Thirty minutes from the top, I grew very worried about making our way down. The stones were slick with snow and ice, and the going was very steep. I could see the prayer flags at the top, but I made Joshua stop. We debated whether or not we should continue, but finally, the allure of the top drew us on. Far below, the trekkers we had passed long ago were still resting. We decided to show them how it's done :)
100 meters from the top, the scree turned into an easy, dirt trail. No one was there. Hundreds of prayer flags flapped madly in the wind, and for 360 degrees, mountain peaks rose up to the sky. It was unspeakably beautiful.
On our way down, a woman asked us if the climb was worth it. We nodded emphatically, and then I told her that it was better than Annapurna Sanctuary and Thorung La. It may have even been better than our side trek to Ice Lake. Once she had passed, I almost felt badly for setting her expectations so high. I don't know if it's better for everyone, but it was for us.
In a way, Tsergo Ri feels like a defining moment in our travels. Like Annapurna, it was an amphitheater of mountains, but it was wider and we could see for further. The sky was clear, and the prayer flags were particularly beautiful. Up on this peak, all alone, there was no question that this was the best. Behind a couple of boulders, we huddled out of the wind and ate our packed lunch. From our perch, we could see the mountains of Tibet and Langtang. Above us, the sky was impossibly blue. It was perfect.
Forty five minutes later, once we had finished taking photos and eating, other trekkers began to arrive. They seemed just as speechless and we felt, and we quietly nodded and smiled as we headed back down the trail.
Luckily, the trail wasn't quite as treacherous as we had dreaded. Keeping low to the ground and using my hands, I was able to keep from slipping on the scree. At the bottom, still more trekkers were worried about the way down, and we reassured them that it was worth it, and it wasn't so bad.
It took a little over two hours to make our way back down. During that time, the clouds started to slowly creep in, and the tops of the mountains were covered. We had arrived at just the right time.
Back at the lodge, I took a shower. It takes a good deal of bravery to get naked and stand under water when it's this cold outside, and I hadn't braved it for five days. Thankfully, the solar water heater had done its job, and the water that came out of the spout was steaming hot. I stood under it, dreading having to turn it off.
In our room, I let my hair dry in the sun while we read. Joshua went to go get some tea and came back with a thermos and two rolls of coconut cookies. We nibbled and drank and read until dinner.
Downstairs, the fire was going. The French couple with whom we had ridden to Syraphru Besi had coincidently selected the same lodge, and they were sitting near the fire, reading.
When our Dal Bhaat came, we gobbled it down and then began playing cards. Intrigued, the French couple came over and asked if we would teach them our game. We agreed, and together, we played an open hand. Afterwards, we asked them about their travels.
Cecelia and Victor left France 16 months ago. Arriving in South America, they toured Peru, Bolivia, and Chile for four months and then hopped a plane to San Francisco. There, they rented a car for a couple of months and explored the Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce Canyon, Moab, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, Banff, and Vancouver Island, camping the whole time. From Seattle, they flew to New Zealand where they spent a couple months trekking. Next, they went to Australia and then Bali, Lombok, and Malaysia. For a change of pace, they flew to Madagascar and then on to a small, French volcanic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Back in France, they visited family for a couple of weeks, and then it was on to Moscow, where they caught the Trans-Siberian Railway to China. From China, they visited Mongolia, and then they arrived here, in Nepal. They go home just before Christmas.
I asked Cecelia what they plan to do once they get home. 'Celebrate Christmas,' she said, smiling and purposely evading my real question. I laughed. What will be doing next? I asked. 'Celebrate the New Year,' she said.
Before they left on their travels, they were both engineers living in the south of France near the Alps. Within 15 minutes, they could be in the mountains, and it was less than a three hour train ride to Paris, where they grew up. When they go back, they're not sure where they'll end up.
They've avoided planning so far.
It was nice chatting with the two of them (even though they were French :) ), and we talked until a little after 8. After a long day of trekking and early morning, we were exhausted, so we wished each other well and went off to bed.
Riverside Hotel to Kyanjin Gompa
November 18, 2010
Today, we walked to Langshisha Kharka. From Kyanjin Gompa, the round trip takes a little less than 8 hours, and by our best rough estimate, covers roughly 25 kilometers. It would be the makings of a killer hike, but fortunately, the trail only ascends 500 meters, and it feels comparatively level. Normally, this hike would give you all the benefits of high alpine scenery without all the strain.
I say normally, because it snowed today. It's tempting to conclude that we have terrible luck when it comes to our most scenic stretches of trail - Thorung La was in a white out when we reached the top and in Britain, it seemed like every time we came to an overlook, a thick fog would descend - but we have had wonderful luck as well. The day of our Ice Lake side trek was fabulously clear and gorgeous, with full views of the Annapurna range, and when we arrived in Annapurna Base Camp, we could see the whole amphitheater, crowned in blue skies.
So we could say we're unlucky to be in such a scenic place - and to have hiked to far to get here - and have thick clouds and snow obstruct our views of famous peaks and blue skies, but we also happen to love snow. A lot.
We woke up a little bit before 6:30 and padded downstairs to eat breakfast. Our lovely guest house keeper was cooking our porridge on his wood-burning, clay oven, and we warmed our toes next to the fire. In the corner, his wife was sleeping under a pile of blankets, and when he served us our steaming bowls, he whispered 'good morning' so as not to wake her.
After breakfast, we went upstairs to pack a small day bag. Although we had intended to hike up to a high overlook, Tsergo Ri, the sky was overcast and grey. We decided to walk to Langshisha Kharka instead and save Tsergo Ri for tomorrow, hoping it will clear up.
Before we left, we stepped back into the kitchen and asked for some bread to supplement our lunch of yak cheese. Whipping up a small batch of dough, the guest house keeper (must ask his name again) efficiently rolled out three patties and then cooked them over a dry griddle. To finish, he took each disc and set them on the coals until they puffed up and turned golden-brown. Tibetan Bread in less than 10 minutes.
From Kyanjin Gompa, we headed east, higher into the valley. Although the sky was overcast, the clouds hadn't yet descended. On either side of us, we could see tall, snowy peaks brushing a watery, pale sky. In the valley, a wide river bed sent stones sprawling for yards on either side, and the ice-blue water tumbled past, cutting slow arcs on its way down. Whether it's the wind or the sound of rushing water, the sound of silence in the Himalaya really sounds like a slow roar.
We crossed a number of streams, skipping and hopping to avoid wetting our toes. On the other side of the stream beds, the vegetation stays low to the ground. Thorny bushes with bright orange and red berries prickle our pant legs and bestow burrs. Yaks graze in the meadows, and although they are enormous, I see a few of them running and leaping over streams. It's not graceful, but it is a little intimidating to see something so large - with such very large and sharp horns - move with anything resembling speed. In general, they're fairly peaceful creatures, but a few have caught me looking and snorted while pawing the ground. I cower into Joshua and tell him to walk faster. I don't know if anyone has ever been gored by a yak, but I really don't want to wait and find out.
Gradually, the valley becomes more narrow. After a couple hours of hiking, we stop for a little break, and sitting on the ground, looking at a waterfall of ice across the river, we share a piece of still-warm bread and yak cheese. We're talking about our plans for the future again, and the more I talk about getting a Masters in Social Work, the more I like it. As for Joshua, we talk about whether or not having a grandfather who was a police officer has influenced his decision to pursue peace officer training. At first, he thinks maybe not. He arrived at the decision because he wanted to do something in the public service sector, and he was also attracted to working a job that has variety and gets him out of doors.
But then he keeps thinking and talking, and he remembers listening to stories of his grandpa as a police officer. He has bits and pieces of his old uniforms, and it was always something he felt proud about. I point out that he didn't really start thinking about becoming a police officer until after this Christmas, when we asked Papa BJ to tell us some of his old stories.
We start talking about family, and we go through our intricate family trees. We count cousins. We wonder what happens when one generation dies and the young generation begins to have their own families. How do Christmases work? When do you stop going to one in favor of another? Neither of us likes the idea of falling out of touch.
For the first time, the trail climbs up. Puffing from the altitude, we make our way over a hill, and on the other side, we can see Langshisha Kharka. It's just a little cluster of stone-stables and prayer flags, but there's also a rock. The story is that a lama lost his yak. In search of his yak, he walked all the way up Langtang Valley, and when he arrived at the end - Lashisha Kharka - he found his yak. Whether it was punishment or just time, he decided to kill the yak, and then he layed out the pelt on a large stone to dry. The pelt stained the stone red, and that's why this valley is named Langtang, lost yak. It's also why there's a big red stone in Lashisha Kharka.
Passing a few not-so lost yaks, we walked up past a curve in the river and climbed up on our very own big red stone (not THE big red stone - there's more than one). We finished the last of our bread and yak cheese, and it began to snow. I braved taking my fingers out of my gloves and snapped a few photos of glaciers and mountain tops peaking out of the clouds.
When we weren't moving, we got cold pretty quickly, so we started to head back. Along the way, I stopped to take a few photos, but with the snow blowing thicker by the minute, it was too cold to have bare hands for long. We started to sing Christmas songs. I know three or four lines of a bunch of carols, but unfortunately, I don't seem to know all the lines to any of them. We turned it into a medley of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Come All Ye Faithful, and Santa's Comin' on a Whirlybird. It devolved into a poorly remembered rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas, and by the tenth day, we just started making things up. Has anyone ever noticed how many birds my true love gave to me?
It snowed hard. We took photos for evidence, and then quickly hunched into our jackets and kept moving. The time passed quickly, and before we knew it, we were less than an hour from Kyanjin Gompa. Looking at the watch, we realized that we had been walking for almost 7 hours, and that whoever said this side trip was 6 hours (Lonely Planet) was full of you know what. We were hungry and getting a bit cold, so we stopped talking and began walking even faster.
Finally, we saw the prayer flags and then the lodges of Kyanjin Gompa. Before we retreated into the lodge, we investigated the village bakery. It was overpriced. We decided to order an early dinner instead. Back in the lodge kitchen, a couple of porters and guides were helping the guest house keepers peel and chop potatoes for curry. The lentils were simmering on the stove, and they were laughing as they cooked. We ordered two dal bhaat for 5 o'clock, and then we went into our room to read and write and pass the time.
After a bit, we ventured out of our quilts and sleeping bags to wait downstairs. The Germans were all huddled around the heater, and I experienced a moments hesitation that they had crowded us out from the heat source. Fortunately, the food came quickly, and it was piled high and steaming hot. After a couple cups of rice, a cup of lentils, and another cup of curried potatoes with cabbage and peas, I was feeling much warmer. After a day in the wind, my cheeks were hot to the touch, and I finally agreed to take my hands out of their pockets for a round of Rummy.
Joshua beat me in Rummy, as usual, but then we played a round of speed. Miraculously, I won. I say miraculously because I'm a hot mess when it comes to speed. Cards are flying all over the place, I'm squealing and squeeking, and I'm incredibly slow. The only explanation I can think of is that Joshua's brains dribbled out on the trail while we were hiking today. Don't worry; he's still as sweet and reliable as ever, he's just a bit more manageable when it comes to playing games. You might even win once in a while.
November 17, 2010
I felt like I had finally managed to get warm when the alarm went off. Actually, the entire bottom half of my body was still feeling a bit refrigerated, but at least my torso was warm. Judging by the lack of feeling in my nose (which the only exposed part of my body - god bless mummy bags), things weren't about to get much warmer.
The alarm went off again, and Joshua gracefully slapped his arm over my face, informing me that it was time to get up. Then he poked me and said, 'you're like a huge stay puff marshmallow! You must be boiling in there!'
Outside, the sun was up but the valley walls were so steep, there were no direct rays. Instead, the light fits through the peaks and hills, spreading visible rays. I think I've talked about this before, and at the risk of repeating myself, I shall just call them blessed-virgin-mary rays.
Anyway, we decided to sit outside. Joshua firmly believes in 'hardening yourself up.' It's a strange logic, but basically, he thinks it's very important to always be a little bit cold and never use all of your layers. The theory being, what happens once you've used all your layers and it gets colder? I've told him that he's an imbecile, but it's no use. He unzipped his jacket. I cinched in my hood.
Breakfast consisted of porridge and boiled eggs with cups of black tea. Ukchi, our guest house keeper, seemed to agree with Joshua's theory: he was just wearing a sweater and flip flops. God bless Nepalis.
Later, with our packs on our backs, we began to warm up. The first two or three hours took us through lovely mossy forests with low-lying, gnarly trees. Red berry bushes sprouted in the undergrowth, and yellowed leaves crunched beneath our feet. We crossed a number of waterfalls and a few more small guest houses with chimneys smoking. At a permit checkpoint, we eyed an officer with an enormous gun. He grinned and pointed at the sign in book with the point of his riffle. Nice.
More suddenly than gradually, the vegetation opened up. Up above, mountains stood over dry, mud- and yellow-brown fields. Yaks grazed and wild horses traveled in twos. It's the high alpine scenery that we love, and we walked on, looking up and smiling. Eventually, the sun rose high enough to light the valley, and with the sun on our backs, we stopped to shed our jackets.
About the same time, a old, toothless Nepali man with a sharpened scythe approached us on the trail. Gesturing with his blade, he asked us for a smoke. We apologized. 'No smoke,' we said. Then he pointed at my shoes with his scythe, and was it just me, or did it look like there was blood in the corners of his mouth? We shrugged our shoulders, not knowing exactly what he wanted (but suspecting it was either my shoes or our blood) and walked off quickly.
We climbed up a ways, feeling the altitude. We've climbed over 2000 meters in two days, and now we're at about 3400 meters - about the same elevation as Manang and Ladakh. At the top of the ridge, we could see Langtang in the distance. It looked closer than it really was, though. The trail took us up ridges and down to streams. We bobbed up and down, up and down, and along the way, we passed a number of sunlit guest houses. Each one we passed had a woman in Tibetan dress with marked perseverance: where you come from? Where you go? What you need? Stay! Rest! You need guest house? Where are you staying when you get where you're going? Stay at my place? My brother's place? Here, wait, I give you card. Hello? Come back!
After a while, we just said Namaste and plowed on through. We reasoned that they didn't really want to talk to us, they just wanted us to spend our money at their place (or their brother's). In some ways, it's heartbreaking to say no and see the desperation in their eyes, but in others... I don't know. Maybe I'm naive, but I wonder why they need our rupees so much. They have gardens that provide all their food. They have yaks to give them wool and milk and cheese. They build all their own shelter, and their fuel comes from yak dung and trees. Water flows through the valley, and they have family and friends living around them. They used to be subsistence farmers, eeking out a living in the Himalaya. Now, they seem so desperate for our rupees, and
I'm wondering what's changed. The gardens are still there and so are the yaks.
But I don't know the whole story, and I'm sure there's much more. Most of the Nepalis we've talked to have children going to school in Kathmandu or some other far-flung place. There aren't schools everywhere here, so they have to go away to attend. Husbands are gone for most of the trekking season, running lodges, guiding, or portering, and the families are separated. They need money for transportation, for their childrens' schooling, for a better life. I guess I just wonder what a better life is. There was good and bad with what they had, but at least there were self-sufficient and they lived together with their families. Now, they're dependent on tourist rupees and they have to spend most of the year away from the people they love. For what? A cell phone? A bus ride to Kathmandu? I'm even a bit dubious about boarding school. What will a better education do? Draw more people into the city, certainly. What you learn in school is best suited for jobs in offices or classrooms, not your garden or the Himalaya.
And with that, of course, comes all the problems of rural to urban immigration. People who live in the city begin to forget where their food and water comes from. They devalue the work that goes into the production of these things, and their health suffers. The farmers suffer and so does the environment. Even worse, they get locked into a cycle of working to keep things that they never needed before, a mortgage, a car, boarding school, and all the trappings of a professional job. People starve in the city. People beg. They move away from their families, and some of them are left to die on the streets alone.
But enough of death and doom for today. It was lovely, and once we arrived in Langtang, we followed our noses to the Cheese and Bakery Factory behind the Eco Village Lodge. The factory was set up by a charity, and all of the proceeds go towards funding the hydro-electric plant for the village of Langtang. We ordered a cheese and tomato roll as well as a slice of apple pie, and when it came out, it was all toasted and hot. Sitting in the sun, we looked over the valley and savored our snack. It was beyond delicious, and when a batch of yeasty rolls came out of the oven all hot and smelling gorgeous, we gobbled a couple of those down, too. Before we left, we purchased a ball of yak cheese, dipped in wax and hanging from the window from a bow of twine.
From Langtang, it takes about two and a half hours to reach Kyanjin Gompa, the last set of lodges in Langtang Valley. The walk includes a number of long, lovely mani walls, and we stopped to take photos of stupahs framed by mountains. At one point, I hid behind one of the ledges and spooked Joshua. He jumped so high in the air, I couldn't stop laughing for 20 minutes. He rolled his eyes, good-naturedly.
About an hour out of Kyanjin Gompa, we passed a small lodge and saw KB, the guide who had led the group of Canadians from Vancouver Island on the Circuit. Joshua immediately recognized him and remembered his name. He was leading another gentleman who appeared to be no more enchanted with surroundings than the Canadians had been. We stopped and chatted for a bit, and when his charge seemed to grow irritated, we waved good-bye and charged ahead.
The valley grew wider, and we crossed a number of streams as we went. The river bed sprawled out over the plain, and we picked our way over large stones. Eventually, we caught sight of prayer flags, and around the bend, we found the sprawl of guest houses that is Kyanjin Gompa.
Putting our heads down, we plowed through a series of persistent touts and wandered through until we found the cutest lodge - Nurali Kyanjin Gompa Guest House. The guest house keeper leapt up to show us a window-filled room overlooking the glacier, and for 100 rupees a night, we immediately accepted.
Depositing our packs, we ordered a snack of momos and sat on the sunlit porch, enjoying the view and the last rays of the afternoon.
Just when we were revelling in our good luck at finding such a cute, empty lodge with great food, a herd of German trekkers pulled up. They were all built like you think Germans should be built - like Herrs and Fraus - and they clomped over the floorboards in their heavy hiking boots, speaking loudly in Deutsch.
We refused to be disappointed. They were polite enough, and as long as none of them snore, we'll get along just fine.
I plodded my way through The Hobbit while Joshua finished All the Pretty Horses. He's taken to responding to all of my questions with a distinct twang, and he's expressed an interest in drinking black coffee with egg shells (?!) at the bottom. This morning, he said that he was about to 'go pay the man what he's owed.' Needless to say, he's man-lovin' Cormac McCarthy. I'm not man-lovin' Mr. Tolkein, but I am appreciating certain parallels between the Hobbit's adventures and our own. Even the descriptions of walking through the Misty Mountains seem eerily familiar.
For dinner, we wandered down into the dining hall. The Germans had congregated by the heater, and naturally, they were well into their cups. We ate our Dal Bhaat, listening to them break into song at odd and frequent intervals, but in general, it was jovial and warming. It's sort of fitting to have a bunch of Germans singing and drinking, clapping their hands and stomping their feet in a fire-warmed lodge in the Himalaya - right?
After dinner, we pulled out the cards. I trounced Joshua in Rummy, for once, and we gained a little audience. Tashi, a porter for the German group, came to watch, and we invited him to join us in a round. He learned quickly, and he tied with Joshua for 500 in the end. While we played, we asked him a little bit about himself, and he told us that he's from Tamang Valley. Although he doesn't look much older than us, he has a wife and three kids, two of which go to school in Kathmandu. He usually serves as a guide, but he knows the guide for this group well and agreed to serve as a porter. He owns a lodge with his wife in Tamang Valley, and she's there right now, operating it.
Kadar, the guide for the German trekking group, is a little bit like the Energizer bunny. He's constantly on his feet, retrieving Dal Bhaat or seconds or blankets or water. He's laughing and singing and asking if there's anything you need, even to us. He stopped for a bit to chat with us, and he explained that he speaks German and French, he's been guiding for years, and he's even been to visit all of his friends in Europe. He had a wonderful time, but it was so different, and when he came home, he had no idea how to explain it to his mother. In the end, he decided not to explain it to her, kind of like how he doesn't tell her that he climbs mountains. Some things are too hard to explain.
When the Germans were looking particularly pink-cheeked and wasted, they stumbled off to bed, and we turned in, too. Someone did snore, but they were in a room further away from us, and if I tried hard enough, I could imagine that it was a yak breathing or the river running.
Today, we walked to Langshisha Kharka. From Kyanjin Gompa, the round trip takes a little less than 8 hours, and by our best rough estimate, covers roughly 25 kilometers. It would be the makings of a killer hike, but fortunately, the trail only ascends 500 meters, and it feels comparatively level. Normally, this hike would give you all the benefits of high alpine scenery without all the strain.
I say normally, because it snowed today. It's tempting to conclude that we have terrible luck when it comes to our most scenic stretches of trail - Thorung La was in a white out when we reached the top and in Britain, it seemed like every time we came to an overlook, a thick fog would descend - but we have had wonderful luck as well. The day of our Ice Lake side trek was fabulously clear and gorgeous, with full views of the Annapurna range, and when we arrived in Annapurna Base Camp, we could see the whole amphitheater, crowned in blue skies.
So we could say we're unlucky to be in such a scenic place - and to have hiked to far to get here - and have thick clouds and snow obstruct our views of famous peaks and blue skies, but we also happen to love snow. A lot.
We woke up a little bit before 6:30 and padded downstairs to eat breakfast. Our lovely guest house keeper was cooking our porridge on his wood-burning, clay oven, and we warmed our toes next to the fire. In the corner, his wife was sleeping under a pile of blankets, and when he served us our steaming bowls, he whispered 'good morning' so as not to wake her.
After breakfast, we went upstairs to pack a small day bag. Although we had intended to hike up to a high overlook, Tsergo Ri, the sky was overcast and grey. We decided to walk to Langshisha Kharka instead and save Tsergo Ri for tomorrow, hoping it will clear up.
Before we left, we stepped back into the kitchen and asked for some bread to supplement our lunch of yak cheese. Whipping up a small batch of dough, the guest house keeper (must ask his name again) efficiently rolled out three patties and then cooked them over a dry griddle. To finish, he took each disc and set them on the coals until they puffed up and turned golden-brown. Tibetan Bread in less than 10 minutes.
From Kyanjin Gompa, we headed east, higher into the valley. Although the sky was overcast, the clouds hadn't yet descended. On either side of us, we could see tall, snowy peaks brushing a watery, pale sky. In the valley, a wide river bed sent stones sprawling for yards on either side, and the ice-blue water tumbled past, cutting slow arcs on its way down. Whether it's the wind or the sound of rushing water, the sound of silence in the Himalaya really sounds like a slow roar.
We crossed a number of streams, skipping and hopping to avoid wetting our toes. On the other side of the stream beds, the vegetation stays low to the ground. Thorny bushes with bright orange and red berries prickle our pant legs and bestow burrs. Yaks graze in the meadows, and although they are enormous, I see a few of them running and leaping over streams. It's not graceful, but it is a little intimidating to see something so large - with such very large and sharp horns - move with anything resembling speed. In general, they're fairly peaceful creatures, but a few have caught me looking and snorted while pawing the ground. I cower into Joshua and tell him to walk faster. I don't know if anyone has ever been gored by a yak, but I really don't want to wait and find out.
Gradually, the valley becomes more narrow. After a couple hours of hiking, we stop for a little break, and sitting on the ground, looking at a waterfall of ice across the river, we share a piece of still-warm bread and yak cheese. We're talking about our plans for the future again, and the more I talk about getting a Masters in Social Work, the more I like it. As for Joshua, we talk about whether or not having a grandfather who was a police officer has influenced his decision to pursue peace officer training. At first, he thinks maybe not. He arrived at the decision because he wanted to do something in the public service sector, and he was also attracted to working a job that has variety and gets him out of doors.
But then he keeps thinking and talking, and he remembers listening to stories of his grandpa as a police officer. He has bits and pieces of his old uniforms, and it was always something he felt proud about. I point out that he didn't really start thinking about becoming a police officer until after this Christmas, when we asked Papa BJ to tell us some of his old stories.
We start talking about family, and we go through our intricate family trees. We count cousins. We wonder what happens when one generation dies and the young generation begins to have their own families. How do Christmases work? When do you stop going to one in favor of another? Neither of us likes the idea of falling out of touch.
For the first time, the trail climbs up. Puffing from the altitude, we make our way over a hill, and on the other side, we can see Langshisha Kharka. It's just a little cluster of stone-stables and prayer flags, but there's also a rock. The story is that a lama lost his yak. In search of his yak, he walked all the way up Langtang Valley, and when he arrived at the end - Lashisha Kharka - he found his yak. Whether it was punishment or just time, he decided to kill the yak, and then he layed out the pelt on a large stone to dry. The pelt stained the stone red, and that's why this valley is named Langtang, lost yak. It's also why there's a big red stone in Lashisha Kharka.
Passing a few not-so lost yaks, we walked up past a curve in the river and climbed up on our very own big red stone (not THE big red stone - there's more than one). We finished the last of our bread and yak cheese, and it began to snow. I braved taking my fingers out of my gloves and snapped a few photos of glaciers and mountain tops peaking out of the clouds.
When we weren't moving, we got cold pretty quickly, so we started to head back. Along the way, I stopped to take a few photos, but with the snow blowing thicker by the minute, it was too cold to have bare hands for long. We started to sing Christmas songs. I know three or four lines of a bunch of carols, but unfortunately, I don't seem to know all the lines to any of them. We turned it into a medley of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Come All Ye Faithful, and Santa's Comin' on a Whirlybird. It devolved into a poorly remembered rendition of The Twelve Days of Christmas, and by the tenth day, we just started making things up. Has anyone ever noticed how many birds my true love gave to me?
It snowed hard. We took photos for evidence, and then quickly hunched into our jackets and kept moving. The time passed quickly, and before we knew it, we were less than an hour from Kyanjin Gompa. Looking at the watch, we realized that we had been walking for almost 7 hours, and that whoever said this side trip was 6 hours (Lonely Planet) was full of you know what. We were hungry and getting a bit cold, so we stopped talking and began walking even faster.
Finally, we saw the prayer flags and then the lodges of Kyanjin Gompa. Before we retreated into the lodge, we investigated the village bakery. It was overpriced. We decided to order an early dinner instead. Back in the lodge kitchen, a couple of porters and guides were helping the guest house keepers peel and chop potatoes for curry. The lentils were simmering on the stove, and they were laughing as they cooked. We ordered two dal bhaat for 5 o'clock, and then we went into our room to read and write and pass the time.
After a bit, we ventured out of our quilts and sleeping bags to wait downstairs. The Germans were all huddled around the heater, and I experienced a moments hesitation that they had crowded us out from the heat source. Fortunately, the food came quickly, and it was piled high and steaming hot. After a couple cups of rice, a cup of lentils, and another cup of curried potatoes with cabbage and peas, I was feeling much warmer. After a day in the wind, my cheeks were hot to the touch, and I finally agreed to take my hands out of their pockets for a round of Rummy.
Joshua beat me in Rummy, as usual, but then we played a round of speed. Miraculously, I won. I say miraculously because I'm a hot mess when it comes to speed. Cards are flying all over the place, I'm squealing and squeeking, and I'm incredibly slow. The only explanation I can think of is that Joshua's brains dribbled out on the trail while we were hiking today. Don't worry; he's still as sweet and reliable as ever, he's just a bit more manageable when it comes to playing games. You might even win once in a while.
November 17, 2010
I felt like I had finally managed to get warm when the alarm went off. Actually, the entire bottom half of my body was still feeling a bit refrigerated, but at least my torso was warm. Judging by the lack of feeling in my nose (which the only exposed part of my body - god bless mummy bags), things weren't about to get much warmer.
The alarm went off again, and Joshua gracefully slapped his arm over my face, informing me that it was time to get up. Then he poked me and said, 'you're like a huge stay puff marshmallow! You must be boiling in there!'
Outside, the sun was up but the valley walls were so steep, there were no direct rays. Instead, the light fits through the peaks and hills, spreading visible rays. I think I've talked about this before, and at the risk of repeating myself, I shall just call them blessed-virgin-mary rays.
Anyway, we decided to sit outside. Joshua firmly believes in 'hardening yourself up.' It's a strange logic, but basically, he thinks it's very important to always be a little bit cold and never use all of your layers. The theory being, what happens once you've used all your layers and it gets colder? I've told him that he's an imbecile, but it's no use. He unzipped his jacket. I cinched in my hood.
Breakfast consisted of porridge and boiled eggs with cups of black tea. Ukchi, our guest house keeper, seemed to agree with Joshua's theory: he was just wearing a sweater and flip flops. God bless Nepalis.
Later, with our packs on our backs, we began to warm up. The first two or three hours took us through lovely mossy forests with low-lying, gnarly trees. Red berry bushes sprouted in the undergrowth, and yellowed leaves crunched beneath our feet. We crossed a number of waterfalls and a few more small guest houses with chimneys smoking. At a permit checkpoint, we eyed an officer with an enormous gun. He grinned and pointed at the sign in book with the point of his riffle. Nice.
More suddenly than gradually, the vegetation opened up. Up above, mountains stood over dry, mud- and yellow-brown fields. Yaks grazed and wild horses traveled in twos. It's the high alpine scenery that we love, and we walked on, looking up and smiling. Eventually, the sun rose high enough to light the valley, and with the sun on our backs, we stopped to shed our jackets.
About the same time, a old, toothless Nepali man with a sharpened scythe approached us on the trail. Gesturing with his blade, he asked us for a smoke. We apologized. 'No smoke,' we said. Then he pointed at my shoes with his scythe, and was it just me, or did it look like there was blood in the corners of his mouth? We shrugged our shoulders, not knowing exactly what he wanted (but suspecting it was either my shoes or our blood) and walked off quickly.
We climbed up a ways, feeling the altitude. We've climbed over 2000 meters in two days, and now we're at about 3400 meters - about the same elevation as Manang and Ladakh. At the top of the ridge, we could see Langtang in the distance. It looked closer than it really was, though. The trail took us up ridges and down to streams. We bobbed up and down, up and down, and along the way, we passed a number of sunlit guest houses. Each one we passed had a woman in Tibetan dress with marked perseverance: where you come from? Where you go? What you need? Stay! Rest! You need guest house? Where are you staying when you get where you're going? Stay at my place? My brother's place? Here, wait, I give you card. Hello? Come back!
After a while, we just said Namaste and plowed on through. We reasoned that they didn't really want to talk to us, they just wanted us to spend our money at their place (or their brother's). In some ways, it's heartbreaking to say no and see the desperation in their eyes, but in others... I don't know. Maybe I'm naive, but I wonder why they need our rupees so much. They have gardens that provide all their food. They have yaks to give them wool and milk and cheese. They build all their own shelter, and their fuel comes from yak dung and trees. Water flows through the valley, and they have family and friends living around them. They used to be subsistence farmers, eeking out a living in the Himalaya. Now, they seem so desperate for our rupees, and
I'm wondering what's changed. The gardens are still there and so are the yaks.
But I don't know the whole story, and I'm sure there's much more. Most of the Nepalis we've talked to have children going to school in Kathmandu or some other far-flung place. There aren't schools everywhere here, so they have to go away to attend. Husbands are gone for most of the trekking season, running lodges, guiding, or portering, and the families are separated. They need money for transportation, for their childrens' schooling, for a better life. I guess I just wonder what a better life is. There was good and bad with what they had, but at least there were self-sufficient and they lived together with their families. Now, they're dependent on tourist rupees and they have to spend most of the year away from the people they love. For what? A cell phone? A bus ride to Kathmandu? I'm even a bit dubious about boarding school. What will a better education do? Draw more people into the city, certainly. What you learn in school is best suited for jobs in offices or classrooms, not your garden or the Himalaya.
And with that, of course, comes all the problems of rural to urban immigration. People who live in the city begin to forget where their food and water comes from. They devalue the work that goes into the production of these things, and their health suffers. The farmers suffer and so does the environment. Even worse, they get locked into a cycle of working to keep things that they never needed before, a mortgage, a car, boarding school, and all the trappings of a professional job. People starve in the city. People beg. They move away from their families, and some of them are left to die on the streets alone.
But enough of death and doom for today. It was lovely, and once we arrived in Langtang, we followed our noses to the Cheese and Bakery Factory behind the Eco Village Lodge. The factory was set up by a charity, and all of the proceeds go towards funding the hydro-electric plant for the village of Langtang. We ordered a cheese and tomato roll as well as a slice of apple pie, and when it came out, it was all toasted and hot. Sitting in the sun, we looked over the valley and savored our snack. It was beyond delicious, and when a batch of yeasty rolls came out of the oven all hot and smelling gorgeous, we gobbled a couple of those down, too. Before we left, we purchased a ball of yak cheese, dipped in wax and hanging from the window from a bow of twine.
From Langtang, it takes about two and a half hours to reach Kyanjin Gompa, the last set of lodges in Langtang Valley. The walk includes a number of long, lovely mani walls, and we stopped to take photos of stupahs framed by mountains. At one point, I hid behind one of the ledges and spooked Joshua. He jumped so high in the air, I couldn't stop laughing for 20 minutes. He rolled his eyes, good-naturedly.
About an hour out of Kyanjin Gompa, we passed a small lodge and saw KB, the guide who had led the group of Canadians from Vancouver Island on the Circuit. Joshua immediately recognized him and remembered his name. He was leading another gentleman who appeared to be no more enchanted with surroundings than the Canadians had been. We stopped and chatted for a bit, and when his charge seemed to grow irritated, we waved good-bye and charged ahead.
The valley grew wider, and we crossed a number of streams as we went. The river bed sprawled out over the plain, and we picked our way over large stones. Eventually, we caught sight of prayer flags, and around the bend, we found the sprawl of guest houses that is Kyanjin Gompa.
Putting our heads down, we plowed through a series of persistent touts and wandered through until we found the cutest lodge - Nurali Kyanjin Gompa Guest House. The guest house keeper leapt up to show us a window-filled room overlooking the glacier, and for 100 rupees a night, we immediately accepted.
Depositing our packs, we ordered a snack of momos and sat on the sunlit porch, enjoying the view and the last rays of the afternoon.
Just when we were revelling in our good luck at finding such a cute, empty lodge with great food, a herd of German trekkers pulled up. They were all built like you think Germans should be built - like Herrs and Fraus - and they clomped over the floorboards in their heavy hiking boots, speaking loudly in Deutsch.
We refused to be disappointed. They were polite enough, and as long as none of them snore, we'll get along just fine.
I plodded my way through The Hobbit while Joshua finished All the Pretty Horses. He's taken to responding to all of my questions with a distinct twang, and he's expressed an interest in drinking black coffee with egg shells (?!) at the bottom. This morning, he said that he was about to 'go pay the man what he's owed.' Needless to say, he's man-lovin' Cormac McCarthy. I'm not man-lovin' Mr. Tolkein, but I am appreciating certain parallels between the Hobbit's adventures and our own. Even the descriptions of walking through the Misty Mountains seem eerily familiar.
For dinner, we wandered down into the dining hall. The Germans had congregated by the heater, and naturally, they were well into their cups. We ate our Dal Bhaat, listening to them break into song at odd and frequent intervals, but in general, it was jovial and warming. It's sort of fitting to have a bunch of Germans singing and drinking, clapping their hands and stomping their feet in a fire-warmed lodge in the Himalaya - right?
After dinner, we pulled out the cards. I trounced Joshua in Rummy, for once, and we gained a little audience. Tashi, a porter for the German group, came to watch, and we invited him to join us in a round. He learned quickly, and he tied with Joshua for 500 in the end. While we played, we asked him a little bit about himself, and he told us that he's from Tamang Valley. Although he doesn't look much older than us, he has a wife and three kids, two of which go to school in Kathmandu. He usually serves as a guide, but he knows the guide for this group well and agreed to serve as a porter. He owns a lodge with his wife in Tamang Valley, and she's there right now, operating it.
Kadar, the guide for the German trekking group, is a little bit like the Energizer bunny. He's constantly on his feet, retrieving Dal Bhaat or seconds or blankets or water. He's laughing and singing and asking if there's anything you need, even to us. He stopped for a bit to chat with us, and he explained that he speaks German and French, he's been guiding for years, and he's even been to visit all of his friends in Europe. He had a wonderful time, but it was so different, and when he came home, he had no idea how to explain it to his mother. In the end, he decided not to explain it to her, kind of like how he doesn't tell her that he climbs mountains. Some things are too hard to explain.
When the Germans were looking particularly pink-cheeked and wasted, they stumbled off to bed, and we turned in, too. Someone did snore, but they were in a room further away from us, and if I tried hard enough, I could imagine that it was a yak breathing or the river running.
Kathmandu to Syaphru Besi to Riverside Hotel
November 16, 2010
We had 4 days off trail. During two of those days, we endured epic bus journeys. On another, we navigated Nepali bureaucracy.
So this morning, there was no mumbling or groaning or complaining when the alarm went off at six. In fact, we leapt out of our sleeping bags, our feet itching to get on the trail. We packed up, ate Tibetan bread with eggs, slurped piping hot tea, and then got out of town.
At the permit checkpoint, we glanced at the ledger. Yesterday, nearly 30 trekkers had passed in and out of Langtang. That about 150 less than in the Annapurna. We were the first trekkers today.
Crossing a suspension bridge, we looked up at the different valleys. One takes you to the Tamang Heritage Trail, another takes you to Langtang, and the other goes up to the Gosainkund Lakes. We'll do all of these trails by the time we're done, but for now, we're headed to Langtang.
On the other side of the river, old Syraphru Besi looks like a town out of a western filmset.
There's smoke coming out of the chimneys, chickens and cows in the street, and women coming out of swinging wooden doors with buckets of water that they toss onto the gravel road that runs through the center of town.
We crossed another suspension bridge and began heading up through thick, green undergrowth. The air smelled like wood. There weren't pines around, so it wasn't that, but it had the same tangy, woodsy smell. Around us, the trees are starting to change colors, and the whole place is just on the edge of summer and fall.
We felt great. It sounds silly, but for some reason, finding out that Red Wing is a 20 minute drive from Ellsworth and then reading that it was ranked in the top 100 of historical destinations in National Geographic put a whole new spin on things. I started to get excited about going home and exploring it. I'm not even as worried about jobs. I've been kicking around the idea of waitressing, and also of getting my masters in Social Work. I've got all these new ideas, and I'm not feeling so anxious. The trail helps, too.
We passed through a number of small little villages with guest houses. Each of them sat on the same river, rioting past over enormous bolder the size of buses or buildings. We saw a few trekkers descending from the other direction, but otherwise, not a soul passed us (except for a weird Dutchman. He tried to walk with for a while, but I was so put off by his awkward/competitive vibe that I hardly said a word to him.).
After four and a half hours of hiking, we hit Upper Rimche. Stopping at Hotel Ganesh View, we sat at a picnic table overlooking the valley. We ordered a couple plates of veg chowmein, played a few hands of cards, and just generally marveled at our good fortune. This place rocks.
From Rimche, it was a 20 minute walk to Lama Hotel, the village where most Langtang trekkers stay on their first night. Hoping to avoid the 'crowds,' we decided to head on to a lone guest house, about an hour away.
The air started to cool off, and low, misty clouds rolled in and then out again. I stung my hand on a mean set of stinging nettles and had to take a Benadryl, but mostly, it was wonderful. Up ahead, we could see our first glimmers of snowy mountains.
At Riverside Hotel, a small string of rooms sits next to loud, white water. A beautiful red tree hangs over the path. The guest house keeper invited us in, and we took off our packs.
Before we lost the motivation, we ran out and did 60 push-ups and 60 sit-ups. Joshua's training to be a policing bad-ass, and I don't need any such excuse. Afterwards, we layered up and sat by the river. For 50 rupees, we ordered a thermos full of hot water, and feeling very thrifty, we added in our own tea bag. We saved 5 dollars. (Tea is more expensive than food here.)
We read, looking up and enjoying the view at the end of every page. At five, our guest house keeper brought out tons of Dal Bhaat, and we ate until we were stuffed. We finished the thermos of tea.
When the light went down over the hills, we moved into the kitchen where the fire under the stove was still burning. It's warm in here, and the guest house keeping, Ukchi, is very friendly. I'm typing, and Joshua's reading. In a bit, it'll be bedtime.
Once I'd finished writing, Ukchi, our guest house keeper, asked to see some of our photos. I showed him our little slide show from the Annapurna. Although he's never been there, he seemed pleased that it wasn't too different from his Langtang Valley. He told us that his wife runs a lodge in Langtang while he runs Riverside. They spend the tourist season apart, and his three sons are all in a Kathmandu boarding school. The come home two months a year for the holidays, during Deshain and Deuwali. He seemed lonely, and he told us that life felt hard here.
Like others we've spoken to, he's not impressed with the government.
We talked for a little while, and when the fire started to die out, we all said goodnight. In our sleeping bags, Joshua and I scooted in close to catch each other's warmth, but it was a long while before we were warm enough to sleep.
November 15, 2010
Have you heard of those gravity simulators? I haven't personally seen one in action, but I get the impression that you sit in one and then it whips you about and you feel your cheeks flap back towards your ears. Ok. Maybe that's a bit abstract. Have you ever seen a rock tumbler? They're the sort of craft novelty that sounds like a really great idea at the time, and I'm sure that there's someone somewhere who has put this appliance to really great use, but the for the rest of us, once purchased, it sits on the shelf and collects dust.
Well, anyway. Imaging that you're sitting in a little cockpit, and by whatever method, that cockpit is taken through motions one part gravity simulator and one part rock tumbler. It's bumpy; it's bone-jarring; and it's one hell of a ride. Now, imagine that you are in that little cockpit for 10 hours.
Actually, I'm beginning to think that this metaphor doesn't really do our bus ride yesterday any justice. A 'little cockpit' sounds quite cozy and sterile, and the bus - I assure you - was neither of these things. For a vehicle containing 30 tightly packed seats, there were an astounding number of passengers. Every seat was full, there were people standing in the aisle, the driver's cab was bursting, and there were over a dozen perched on the roof. I would estimate that there were nearly twice as many passengers as there were seats.
There was some screaming (more on that later), some vomitting, quite a bit of dust, even more exhaust, and the distinct smell of body ordor. It was a bouncing, heaving, breathing mass of humanity that crossed mountains and teetered over the edge of chasms that seemed to fall forever. More than once, our back tire met the loose gravel on the edge of cliff face, and I watched as those little stones fell down, down, down.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We woke up at 6:15 and quickly scrambled to pack up the last of our things and make it to the dining room for breakfast. After a short wait, our toast, eggs, and tea arrived, and we gobbled it all down. Outside, our taxi driver was already waiting, so we hurried to pay and check our big bags in their storage room.
The taxi ride took less than 10 minutes. Our buses stood in the street, and they already looked full. A bit apprehensive, we double and thrice checked that this bus was, in fact, headed to Syraphru Besi. Judging by nods and gestures, we boarded.
Our tickets said seats 7 and 8, and while Nepali bus rides tend to be life-threatening, chaotic ventures, the Nepali are very serious about people sitting in their proper seats. We sat.
Looking around, there were perhaps eight other Westerners who appeared to be trekking-bound. A few of them had guides, but others seemed to be going it alone, like us. Gradually, the bus became even more packed, and at 7:30 - our estimated time of departure - the bus driver started the engine and began to inch forward. Joshua was shocked. Starting on time is unheard of.
But not so fast. One irrate Nepali man stood over a couple of Westerners two rows ahead of us, telling them that these were his seats, and they need to get out. The money collector got involved, and somehow, he decided that where they needed to be sitting is where we were sitting. We looked behind us. We looked in front. There were no more seats.
Showing the money collector our tickets, we explained that these seats, in fact, were ours. We would not be moving. He disagreed. He told us that we should take 'those seats.' By way of explaining 'those seats,' he gestured to the back of the bus. There were none. Now, you might think that perhaps this was a large bus and maybe he couldn't see 'those seats.' Maybe he didn't realize that they were all full.
Nope. This was a tiny-ass bus, and I can most certainly assure you that every bleedin' passenger could see for his or herself that there were no such seats available. The man was quite clearly trying to screw us over.
In my firmest terms, I politely availed this man of his notion. By now, the situation had escalated. There were people screaming. The man who believed that the two Westerners in front of us had taken his seats unjustly was getting in the woman's face and gesturing angrily. I took my cues.
'Do you see seats back there?' I asked. 'No, you don't, because there are no seats back there. You are lying to me, and you know it. I bought tickets. These are mine, you see? We're not moving.'
I could feel the blood pumping in my ears. I was pissed. Joshua, unsure of what had gotten ahold of me, put a warning hand on my arm. When the man once again tried to tell me to get out of our seats and go back to 'those seats,' he restrained me from, as my students would say, 'clicking out.' That's right. I was about to go New Orleans on his ass.
So there was some more screaming and more gesturing. It went on like this for about 30 minutes, and then, when it became clear that our asses were rooted to those bus seats, the bus driver started the bus and made his way out of Kathmandu. The horrible, rotten-toothed money collector man tried once more to tell us to move to 'those seats.' I didn't respond to him; I just gave him my meanest possible mean look. He seemed to get the idea.
It was hostile for a bit, the locals hating the tourists for taking up bus seats and the tourists resenting the locals for feeling like we're all just money trees and as long as we hand over our rupees, they don't give a damn what happens to us. It was the start to a fine ride.
A couple of hours later, the bus came to a stop in front of a little road-side cafe. People stumbled off to use the restroom and load up on snacks, but I stayed put. You had better believe I'm not falling for that one. Sure enough, as soon as everyone had disembarked, the Nepali man with double-booked tickets came on the bus, moved the bags from the seats, and deposited his mother and sister. He had been thoroughly awful to the Western couple, screaming and spewing spittle in their faces, but now I felt a little bit bad for him. He had paid for the bus too, and his mother was very, very old. His sister sat on the floor with her face on the seat, clutching her stomach and groaning. It was a bad situation all around.
When everyone came back on the bus, there was surprisingly little fuss. Two people volunteered to sit on the roof, and everyone who insisted on seats had them. I drowsed off and on for hours. The bus bounced over potholes and switchbacks. I took a dramamine.
At one of the stops, I hopped off and purchases a couple of mandarins and some bananas. We ate them slowly, trying to pass the time. It was only noon.
The bus kept going. Below us, the gorge dropped so far down that it went out of sight. The edge of the road crumbled away into nothingness. I tried not to look. When we hit bumps or holes so hard that our butts flew out of our seats, I wondered how the people on the roof were managing to hang on.
At 3, we arrived in Dhunche. Checking in at the permit office, we all stretched our legs for a bit. The air had gotten much cooler since Kathmandu, and everyone took out extra layers.
Back in the bus, we rode for another two hours, stopping to pick up and drop off locals along the way. This part of the road was one of the worst yet, and people began vomiting from motion sickness. I kept my eyes closed. As long as I can pretend to sleep, I'm ok.
About an hour from Syraphru Besi, I started to have that I'm-going-to-absolutely-lose-it-if-I-don't-get-off-this-godforsaken-bus-very-very-soon feeling. By the time we got to the village, I was already half way out the door. I stumbled out onto solid ground and thanked whatever diety it was that had decided we were fit to live another day. This was our last bus ride in Nepal, and we lived to tell the tale. Now, I can tell you that Lonely Planet tells travelers to use the bus system as little as possible, because there are more bus fatalities here than anywhere else. That was my little secret that I was going to wait to tell you until it was all over, and now it is.
In Syraphru Besi, we found the first guest house, Hotel Peaceful, and immediately dumped our packs. Joshua went to order Dal Bhaat, and I went to go take care of a problem that only a course of anti-biotics can take care of.
The rest of the trekkers seemed to all lodge themselves at Hotel Peaceful too, and within minutes, the place was full. It took them a while to churn out that much Dal Bhaat, so while we waited, we played cards in the candlelight. With frequent power outages, candles are always nearby.
Dal Bhaat was delicious, and we scarfed it all down, barely coming up for air. When it was all said and done, it was nearly 7. We looked around, and no one seemed ready to head off to bed, but we reasoned that it's trail-time. We led the way.
In our room, we laid out our sleeping bags on one of the narrow twins. It's funny, because although we technically met and began dating in high school, I wouldn't call us 'high school sweethearts.' We don't reminisce about the good old days or all the teachers and friends that we had who were the same. Sometimes, we'll start a story and we'll realize that the other actually does know who we're talking about, but it almost always comes as a surprise. We didn't have the same friends in high school, and although we met on the school bus and we had crushes on each other for a couple of years, we didn't start dating until the very last semester.
Sometimes though, it's fun to take out those old stories. We tease each other about what we were thinking and when. We debate who really asked out who. We talked for a while, thinking about old friends that we haven't seen or heard of in a long time, and then, when our eyes started to close, we learned over, kissed cold noses, and fell asleep.
We had 4 days off trail. During two of those days, we endured epic bus journeys. On another, we navigated Nepali bureaucracy.
So this morning, there was no mumbling or groaning or complaining when the alarm went off at six. In fact, we leapt out of our sleeping bags, our feet itching to get on the trail. We packed up, ate Tibetan bread with eggs, slurped piping hot tea, and then got out of town.
At the permit checkpoint, we glanced at the ledger. Yesterday, nearly 30 trekkers had passed in and out of Langtang. That about 150 less than in the Annapurna. We were the first trekkers today.
Crossing a suspension bridge, we looked up at the different valleys. One takes you to the Tamang Heritage Trail, another takes you to Langtang, and the other goes up to the Gosainkund Lakes. We'll do all of these trails by the time we're done, but for now, we're headed to Langtang.
On the other side of the river, old Syraphru Besi looks like a town out of a western filmset.
There's smoke coming out of the chimneys, chickens and cows in the street, and women coming out of swinging wooden doors with buckets of water that they toss onto the gravel road that runs through the center of town.
We crossed another suspension bridge and began heading up through thick, green undergrowth. The air smelled like wood. There weren't pines around, so it wasn't that, but it had the same tangy, woodsy smell. Around us, the trees are starting to change colors, and the whole place is just on the edge of summer and fall.
We felt great. It sounds silly, but for some reason, finding out that Red Wing is a 20 minute drive from Ellsworth and then reading that it was ranked in the top 100 of historical destinations in National Geographic put a whole new spin on things. I started to get excited about going home and exploring it. I'm not even as worried about jobs. I've been kicking around the idea of waitressing, and also of getting my masters in Social Work. I've got all these new ideas, and I'm not feeling so anxious. The trail helps, too.
We passed through a number of small little villages with guest houses. Each of them sat on the same river, rioting past over enormous bolder the size of buses or buildings. We saw a few trekkers descending from the other direction, but otherwise, not a soul passed us (except for a weird Dutchman. He tried to walk with for a while, but I was so put off by his awkward/competitive vibe that I hardly said a word to him.).
After four and a half hours of hiking, we hit Upper Rimche. Stopping at Hotel Ganesh View, we sat at a picnic table overlooking the valley. We ordered a couple plates of veg chowmein, played a few hands of cards, and just generally marveled at our good fortune. This place rocks.
From Rimche, it was a 20 minute walk to Lama Hotel, the village where most Langtang trekkers stay on their first night. Hoping to avoid the 'crowds,' we decided to head on to a lone guest house, about an hour away.
The air started to cool off, and low, misty clouds rolled in and then out again. I stung my hand on a mean set of stinging nettles and had to take a Benadryl, but mostly, it was wonderful. Up ahead, we could see our first glimmers of snowy mountains.
At Riverside Hotel, a small string of rooms sits next to loud, white water. A beautiful red tree hangs over the path. The guest house keeper invited us in, and we took off our packs.
Before we lost the motivation, we ran out and did 60 push-ups and 60 sit-ups. Joshua's training to be a policing bad-ass, and I don't need any such excuse. Afterwards, we layered up and sat by the river. For 50 rupees, we ordered a thermos full of hot water, and feeling very thrifty, we added in our own tea bag. We saved 5 dollars. (Tea is more expensive than food here.)
We read, looking up and enjoying the view at the end of every page. At five, our guest house keeper brought out tons of Dal Bhaat, and we ate until we were stuffed. We finished the thermos of tea.
When the light went down over the hills, we moved into the kitchen where the fire under the stove was still burning. It's warm in here, and the guest house keeping, Ukchi, is very friendly. I'm typing, and Joshua's reading. In a bit, it'll be bedtime.
Once I'd finished writing, Ukchi, our guest house keeper, asked to see some of our photos. I showed him our little slide show from the Annapurna. Although he's never been there, he seemed pleased that it wasn't too different from his Langtang Valley. He told us that his wife runs a lodge in Langtang while he runs Riverside. They spend the tourist season apart, and his three sons are all in a Kathmandu boarding school. The come home two months a year for the holidays, during Deshain and Deuwali. He seemed lonely, and he told us that life felt hard here.
Like others we've spoken to, he's not impressed with the government.
We talked for a little while, and when the fire started to die out, we all said goodnight. In our sleeping bags, Joshua and I scooted in close to catch each other's warmth, but it was a long while before we were warm enough to sleep.
November 15, 2010
Have you heard of those gravity simulators? I haven't personally seen one in action, but I get the impression that you sit in one and then it whips you about and you feel your cheeks flap back towards your ears. Ok. Maybe that's a bit abstract. Have you ever seen a rock tumbler? They're the sort of craft novelty that sounds like a really great idea at the time, and I'm sure that there's someone somewhere who has put this appliance to really great use, but the for the rest of us, once purchased, it sits on the shelf and collects dust.
Well, anyway. Imaging that you're sitting in a little cockpit, and by whatever method, that cockpit is taken through motions one part gravity simulator and one part rock tumbler. It's bumpy; it's bone-jarring; and it's one hell of a ride. Now, imagine that you are in that little cockpit for 10 hours.
Actually, I'm beginning to think that this metaphor doesn't really do our bus ride yesterday any justice. A 'little cockpit' sounds quite cozy and sterile, and the bus - I assure you - was neither of these things. For a vehicle containing 30 tightly packed seats, there were an astounding number of passengers. Every seat was full, there were people standing in the aisle, the driver's cab was bursting, and there were over a dozen perched on the roof. I would estimate that there were nearly twice as many passengers as there were seats.
There was some screaming (more on that later), some vomitting, quite a bit of dust, even more exhaust, and the distinct smell of body ordor. It was a bouncing, heaving, breathing mass of humanity that crossed mountains and teetered over the edge of chasms that seemed to fall forever. More than once, our back tire met the loose gravel on the edge of cliff face, and I watched as those little stones fell down, down, down.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We woke up at 6:15 and quickly scrambled to pack up the last of our things and make it to the dining room for breakfast. After a short wait, our toast, eggs, and tea arrived, and we gobbled it all down. Outside, our taxi driver was already waiting, so we hurried to pay and check our big bags in their storage room.
The taxi ride took less than 10 minutes. Our buses stood in the street, and they already looked full. A bit apprehensive, we double and thrice checked that this bus was, in fact, headed to Syraphru Besi. Judging by nods and gestures, we boarded.
Our tickets said seats 7 and 8, and while Nepali bus rides tend to be life-threatening, chaotic ventures, the Nepali are very serious about people sitting in their proper seats. We sat.
Looking around, there were perhaps eight other Westerners who appeared to be trekking-bound. A few of them had guides, but others seemed to be going it alone, like us. Gradually, the bus became even more packed, and at 7:30 - our estimated time of departure - the bus driver started the engine and began to inch forward. Joshua was shocked. Starting on time is unheard of.
But not so fast. One irrate Nepali man stood over a couple of Westerners two rows ahead of us, telling them that these were his seats, and they need to get out. The money collector got involved, and somehow, he decided that where they needed to be sitting is where we were sitting. We looked behind us. We looked in front. There were no more seats.
Showing the money collector our tickets, we explained that these seats, in fact, were ours. We would not be moving. He disagreed. He told us that we should take 'those seats.' By way of explaining 'those seats,' he gestured to the back of the bus. There were none. Now, you might think that perhaps this was a large bus and maybe he couldn't see 'those seats.' Maybe he didn't realize that they were all full.
Nope. This was a tiny-ass bus, and I can most certainly assure you that every bleedin' passenger could see for his or herself that there were no such seats available. The man was quite clearly trying to screw us over.
In my firmest terms, I politely availed this man of his notion. By now, the situation had escalated. There were people screaming. The man who believed that the two Westerners in front of us had taken his seats unjustly was getting in the woman's face and gesturing angrily. I took my cues.
'Do you see seats back there?' I asked. 'No, you don't, because there are no seats back there. You are lying to me, and you know it. I bought tickets. These are mine, you see? We're not moving.'
I could feel the blood pumping in my ears. I was pissed. Joshua, unsure of what had gotten ahold of me, put a warning hand on my arm. When the man once again tried to tell me to get out of our seats and go back to 'those seats,' he restrained me from, as my students would say, 'clicking out.' That's right. I was about to go New Orleans on his ass.
So there was some more screaming and more gesturing. It went on like this for about 30 minutes, and then, when it became clear that our asses were rooted to those bus seats, the bus driver started the bus and made his way out of Kathmandu. The horrible, rotten-toothed money collector man tried once more to tell us to move to 'those seats.' I didn't respond to him; I just gave him my meanest possible mean look. He seemed to get the idea.
It was hostile for a bit, the locals hating the tourists for taking up bus seats and the tourists resenting the locals for feeling like we're all just money trees and as long as we hand over our rupees, they don't give a damn what happens to us. It was the start to a fine ride.
A couple of hours later, the bus came to a stop in front of a little road-side cafe. People stumbled off to use the restroom and load up on snacks, but I stayed put. You had better believe I'm not falling for that one. Sure enough, as soon as everyone had disembarked, the Nepali man with double-booked tickets came on the bus, moved the bags from the seats, and deposited his mother and sister. He had been thoroughly awful to the Western couple, screaming and spewing spittle in their faces, but now I felt a little bit bad for him. He had paid for the bus too, and his mother was very, very old. His sister sat on the floor with her face on the seat, clutching her stomach and groaning. It was a bad situation all around.
When everyone came back on the bus, there was surprisingly little fuss. Two people volunteered to sit on the roof, and everyone who insisted on seats had them. I drowsed off and on for hours. The bus bounced over potholes and switchbacks. I took a dramamine.
At one of the stops, I hopped off and purchases a couple of mandarins and some bananas. We ate them slowly, trying to pass the time. It was only noon.
The bus kept going. Below us, the gorge dropped so far down that it went out of sight. The edge of the road crumbled away into nothingness. I tried not to look. When we hit bumps or holes so hard that our butts flew out of our seats, I wondered how the people on the roof were managing to hang on.
At 3, we arrived in Dhunche. Checking in at the permit office, we all stretched our legs for a bit. The air had gotten much cooler since Kathmandu, and everyone took out extra layers.
Back in the bus, we rode for another two hours, stopping to pick up and drop off locals along the way. This part of the road was one of the worst yet, and people began vomiting from motion sickness. I kept my eyes closed. As long as I can pretend to sleep, I'm ok.
About an hour from Syraphru Besi, I started to have that I'm-going-to-absolutely-lose-it-if-I-don't-get-off-this-godforsaken-bus-very-very-soon feeling. By the time we got to the village, I was already half way out the door. I stumbled out onto solid ground and thanked whatever diety it was that had decided we were fit to live another day. This was our last bus ride in Nepal, and we lived to tell the tale. Now, I can tell you that Lonely Planet tells travelers to use the bus system as little as possible, because there are more bus fatalities here than anywhere else. That was my little secret that I was going to wait to tell you until it was all over, and now it is.
In Syraphru Besi, we found the first guest house, Hotel Peaceful, and immediately dumped our packs. Joshua went to order Dal Bhaat, and I went to go take care of a problem that only a course of anti-biotics can take care of.
The rest of the trekkers seemed to all lodge themselves at Hotel Peaceful too, and within minutes, the place was full. It took them a while to churn out that much Dal Bhaat, so while we waited, we played cards in the candlelight. With frequent power outages, candles are always nearby.
Dal Bhaat was delicious, and we scarfed it all down, barely coming up for air. When it was all said and done, it was nearly 7. We looked around, and no one seemed ready to head off to bed, but we reasoned that it's trail-time. We led the way.
In our room, we laid out our sleeping bags on one of the narrow twins. It's funny, because although we technically met and began dating in high school, I wouldn't call us 'high school sweethearts.' We don't reminisce about the good old days or all the teachers and friends that we had who were the same. Sometimes, we'll start a story and we'll realize that the other actually does know who we're talking about, but it almost always comes as a surprise. We didn't have the same friends in high school, and although we met on the school bus and we had crushes on each other for a couple of years, we didn't start dating until the very last semester.
Sometimes though, it's fun to take out those old stories. We tease each other about what we were thinking and when. We debate who really asked out who. We talked for a while, thinking about old friends that we haven't seen or heard of in a long time, and then, when our eyes started to close, we learned over, kissed cold noses, and fell asleep.
Back in Kathmandu
November 14, 2010
After a day and a half back in Kathmandu, I know that we've made the right choice. We've been travelling for five months, and we're tired. Our defenses are weakened, and we're having a harder time maintaining low expectations, staying patient, and keeping a positive attitude.
Don't get me wrong; I love Kathmandu. Even when I'm tired and impatient, I can still see those old medieval courtyards and corridors, and I know I'm someplace special. This is like no-where I've ever been before: it has a little bit of everything and yet, emulates nothing. This place isn't trying to be anything but itself.
But I'm tired. Haggling over taxi prices and necessities leaves me irritated. Ignoring touts makes me feel both rude and frustrated. The honking horns make me draw in my shoulders and cringe. We've run a dozen errands in the past three days, and with every shop and meal, I watch the rupees drain away. Part of me wants to hibernate, but our room is dark and a little bit smelly. The bed is hard, and when I open my book, the words blur on the page. I'm distracted and anxious.
Between errands, we seek out internet, wanting something familiar. I browse through job search engines, and the blank pages bring me to a fevered pitch. I am, as ever, frantic about the prospects of finding a job and being happy while doing it.
In the state I'm in, four more weeks of wandering through India might have felt more like an obstacle than an adventure. I feel a bit embarrassed that I'm not the unflappable, come-what-may sort of traveller that I admire. I wish I could compartmentalize my fears about the future and focus my energies on the moment. I wish I weren't tired and only excited. I'm across the world, and I'm getting to see and experience the most incredible things. Why do I feel so thread-bare?
The truth is that I'm relieved that we'll be trekking in less than 24 hours. I'm already craving the quiet hours on trail and the bed times that come with darkness. There's never any question of 'what shall we do next?' The map tells us. There are no errands, and there is nothing to buy; there are no shops. The money we spend is for food and shelter, nothing else. We're never bored, and hopefully, in Langtang, we'll never have to worry about the guest houses having enough room.
So there's some guilt that we're not stepping out of the familiar and taking India by the horns, but there's also quite a bit of relief.
***
This morning, the plank of wood beneath our thin mattress threatened to bruise my hip. I told it to shut up. When Joshua threw in the towel and went off to read in the garden, I rolled over and slept another hour.
A little after 8, we walked through Thamel. Kathmandu is early to bed and late to rise, so most stalls and shops were still closed. Some school children were tugging at their collared shirts and rubbing sleep out of their eyes as they walked to class. We made our way to the German Bakery.
Sitting at the same table we sat at four weeks ago, we ordered the set breakfast and nursed cups of hot tea. The weather has gotten a bit cooler, and while we're comfortable wearing pants and long sleeve shirts, it's nice to warm our hand with a steaming mug.
Once we'd finished breakfast, we headed to the nearest pharmacy and loaded up on some trail basics: ibuprofen, anti-biotics, foot powder, and water purification tablets. It was one of those rewarding experiences where you ask, 'how much?' and the man behind the counter informs you that two courses of anti-biotics will run you less than three dollars, while fifteen tablets of ibuprofen will cost less than 20 rupees (that's about 30 cents).
With our first aid kit refreshed, we hailed a taxi and asked him to bring us to the National Park Permit Office. He named an outlandish price, and we bargained him down to 200 rupees. We got in, but less than five minutes later, he drove us up to the wrong place and told us that he couldn't turn around. 'Don't worry,' he said, 'it's only a one minute walk to the office.'
We'd already been to the office, so we knew that this was the wrong place and we knew that walking there would take about 15 minutes. Too irritated to argue, we gave him 150 rupees and got out. He didn't even complain when we told him we wouldn't be paying the full fare; he knew he was screwing us over.
We walked the fifteen minutes to the office, and when we got there, we filled out the paper work for a Langtang National Park Permit and a new TIMS card. We showed the men behind the desk our passports, and for 4,800 rupees, we secured all the neccessary paperwork. As we left, we wondered why Nepal is the poorest Asian country. There are so many tourists here, and they make a fortune off of things like permits and visas. Where does it all go?
Following our map, we walked another ten to fifteen minutes to the Immigration Office. We filled out another form for another fifteen day extension, and then we paid an additional fifteen dollars to get the extension in fifteen minutes. Otherwise, they ask you to leave the passport and retrieve it after 3:30 PM. It would take almost that much time to walk to Kathmandu and back, and it would cost almost that much to get a taxi three ways, so we bit the bullet.
As we were waiting for our extension, a British couple asked us where they could find the permit office. We told them that we were headed back in that direction, and we would walk with them. The two were from Brighton, and for the next 28 days, they planned to hike in the Everest region. Last year, they hiked the Annapurna Circuit for the second time. In 1987, they had hiked it the first time, and although they had found the area much changed, they still loved Nepal enough to come back for more.
While we walked, we asked them a bit more about their lives. They travel every winter for four to six weeks, and although they can't be much past their mid-fifties, they're retired. They bought property in the 90s, and after the housing boom, they were pretty much able to live off their rental assets. They have two allotments, and they grow all their vegetables. They train and race in triathalons. They travel. Helen, the woman, smiled and said, 'we have a pretty wonderful life.'
At the permit office, we said goodbye. On the walk, Joshua's flip flop had broken, and although he tried to convince me that he could walk through Kathmandu barefoot, I told him to stay put. I had seen an open-air market down the road, and I thought I might be able to find another pair of sandals.
Sure enough, after a five minute walk, I found a little market filled with tables of shoes, jeans, and other odds and ends. It was the sort of place where everything has a brand name, but nothing costs more than five dollars. It was also the sort of place where absolutely no Westerners ever come. People looked so surprise to see me there, they didn't even harass me to buy their wares. When I finally found a table with flip flops, I picked out the largest pair and offered the woman 150 rupees. She shook her head and told me that she wanted 250 rupees. Feeling irritated, I said, 'No. I pay 150 rupees. That man,' I gestured toward a Nepali looking at another pair of flip flops, 'pays 100 rupees. See? I'm already paying tourist price.'
The woman looked at me and laughed a little. 'Okay,' she said. I handed her 150 rupees. She handed me the flip flops.
I walked back to my husband who was standing on the corner of a busy street, looking out at the racing autorickshaws and holding his broken flip flops in his hand. A dog came over and sniffed his bare feet, as if to say, 'dude, that is SO unsanitary.'
Handing him a new pair of 'Nike' flip flops, we made our way back to the heart of Kathmandu. Joshua went to go see if one of the ATMs would let him take out more than 10,000 rupees, and I waited on the other side of the street, watching a man weild a sharp peice of wood like a samurai. Other Nepalis watched too. It was clear that he had a few screws loose, but he looked like he could do some damage anyway. When Joshua walked out of the ATM alcove, I gestured for him to make a wide detour around the crazy samurai. A couple Nepalis standing next to me noticed our sign language and nodded in approval. I felt like I got an 'A' for street smarts.
We walked back through our favorite part of Kathmandu. It wasn't as busy as it had been during Deshain, but there were still wares spilling out of lovely wooden door frames and women selling spices on the curb. Although we had agreed not to buy anything, we spied one of the thermoses we love so much and broke down. Every Nepali family owns a lovely thermos. They are in all sorts of gorgeous colors, and they have pretty, flowered designs. They're much to big to even consider bringing back with us, so we went inside and bought one. Joshua reassures me that he'll be able to make it fit. I'm pretty sure that there's not a chance in hell, but I loved it so much, I conceeded anyway. For only 300 rupees, at least I could say it was ours until we left Nepal.
Back in Thamel, we conducted some super-secret errands that I'm not allowed to tell you about, and then we bought our bus tickets to Syrubesi. In the Lonely Planet, they say that the worst part of the Langtang trek is the bus ride to get there. Ours leaves tomorrow at 7. It takes 10 hours to get there and only covers 117 kilometers. I can't wait.
Seeking a little bit of refreshment and respite from the honking horns, we went to the Organic Green Cafe. There was free internet, and Joshua sat with me as we searched for jobs. At this point, it's a bit too early to apply, but I want the reassurance that there are jobs out there. Unfortunately, there wasn't much reassurance to be had. Fortunately, we discovered that Ellsworth is 18 minutes away from a 'Top 100 Historic Destination!' named by National Geographic - Red Wing, MN. And you know what? We can't wait to explore. They even had a cross country skiier on the front page. Sounds like our kind of city.
With nothing much else to do, we moved on to another cafe and ordered another pot of tea (actually hot chocolate) and a plate of our favorite, chips chilly. Now, I'm writing and Joshua's reading. Like every other man who loves to read, he's currently falling in love with Cormac McCarthy and All the Pretty Horses.
November 13, 2010
This is the seventh bus ride that we've taken in Nepal, and I can say, with a small degree of expertise, that they stink. The 'highway' from Pokhara to Kathmandu may be Nepal's central artery, but most other people would think twice about traversing this stretch of road with a hardy, four-wheel drive Jeep, much less a 30 passenger bus.
To bake a Nepali busride, first add switchbacks. Next, whip in multiple rest stops when all you really want to do is get the whole thing over with. Add a pinch of motion sickness, a dollop of heart-stopping cliff-side drops, and a healthy serving of dust. Serve it all up with a bus driver who has a death wish, and a radio station blaring non-stop Indian pop.
I can't read on buses, so I sleep, sort of. By the time I'm done, my hair always looks like a rat's next, and my neck is smarting from whip-lash. Joshua is cranky, and the two of us want nothing more than a shower and a bed.
When we arrived in Kathmandu, it was nine hours after we had left Pokhara. Once we retrieved our bags, the taxi drivers set upon us like hounds who've had their first smell of blood. Joshua growled and snarled back at them, but we eventually selected one who was relatively benign and agreed to drive us to Tibet Peace Guest House for a reasonable price.
Arriving at a little guest house tucked away on a side street, we happily deposited our bags in a double room. While Joshua sat down to calm his nerves, I ran off to the shower. It was the first truly hot shower I've had in a very long time.
Feeling a bit more human, we went in search of some food. At an Indian restaurant, we ordered curry and rice, and Joshua decided to be adventurous: he ordered the Special Taj Mahal Cold Drink. The woman taking our ordered looked dubious, and when the drink came, we understood why. It had crushed mint, salt, and savory masala spice mixed in with lemon soda. It was absolutely disgusting. The curry, however, was wonderful.
Back outside, we wandered around for a bit. In a little shop, we purchased tea and tang for the trek. I loaded posts onto my blog for the first time in a long while, and then we headed back to the guest house. Sitting in bed, we looked through our photos from Annapurna and selected the best ones. Then, absolutely weary, we fell asleep.
After a day and a half back in Kathmandu, I know that we've made the right choice. We've been travelling for five months, and we're tired. Our defenses are weakened, and we're having a harder time maintaining low expectations, staying patient, and keeping a positive attitude.
Don't get me wrong; I love Kathmandu. Even when I'm tired and impatient, I can still see those old medieval courtyards and corridors, and I know I'm someplace special. This is like no-where I've ever been before: it has a little bit of everything and yet, emulates nothing. This place isn't trying to be anything but itself.
But I'm tired. Haggling over taxi prices and necessities leaves me irritated. Ignoring touts makes me feel both rude and frustrated. The honking horns make me draw in my shoulders and cringe. We've run a dozen errands in the past three days, and with every shop and meal, I watch the rupees drain away. Part of me wants to hibernate, but our room is dark and a little bit smelly. The bed is hard, and when I open my book, the words blur on the page. I'm distracted and anxious.
Between errands, we seek out internet, wanting something familiar. I browse through job search engines, and the blank pages bring me to a fevered pitch. I am, as ever, frantic about the prospects of finding a job and being happy while doing it.
In the state I'm in, four more weeks of wandering through India might have felt more like an obstacle than an adventure. I feel a bit embarrassed that I'm not the unflappable, come-what-may sort of traveller that I admire. I wish I could compartmentalize my fears about the future and focus my energies on the moment. I wish I weren't tired and only excited. I'm across the world, and I'm getting to see and experience the most incredible things. Why do I feel so thread-bare?
The truth is that I'm relieved that we'll be trekking in less than 24 hours. I'm already craving the quiet hours on trail and the bed times that come with darkness. There's never any question of 'what shall we do next?' The map tells us. There are no errands, and there is nothing to buy; there are no shops. The money we spend is for food and shelter, nothing else. We're never bored, and hopefully, in Langtang, we'll never have to worry about the guest houses having enough room.
So there's some guilt that we're not stepping out of the familiar and taking India by the horns, but there's also quite a bit of relief.
***
This morning, the plank of wood beneath our thin mattress threatened to bruise my hip. I told it to shut up. When Joshua threw in the towel and went off to read in the garden, I rolled over and slept another hour.
A little after 8, we walked through Thamel. Kathmandu is early to bed and late to rise, so most stalls and shops were still closed. Some school children were tugging at their collared shirts and rubbing sleep out of their eyes as they walked to class. We made our way to the German Bakery.
Sitting at the same table we sat at four weeks ago, we ordered the set breakfast and nursed cups of hot tea. The weather has gotten a bit cooler, and while we're comfortable wearing pants and long sleeve shirts, it's nice to warm our hand with a steaming mug.
Once we'd finished breakfast, we headed to the nearest pharmacy and loaded up on some trail basics: ibuprofen, anti-biotics, foot powder, and water purification tablets. It was one of those rewarding experiences where you ask, 'how much?' and the man behind the counter informs you that two courses of anti-biotics will run you less than three dollars, while fifteen tablets of ibuprofen will cost less than 20 rupees (that's about 30 cents).
With our first aid kit refreshed, we hailed a taxi and asked him to bring us to the National Park Permit Office. He named an outlandish price, and we bargained him down to 200 rupees. We got in, but less than five minutes later, he drove us up to the wrong place and told us that he couldn't turn around. 'Don't worry,' he said, 'it's only a one minute walk to the office.'
We'd already been to the office, so we knew that this was the wrong place and we knew that walking there would take about 15 minutes. Too irritated to argue, we gave him 150 rupees and got out. He didn't even complain when we told him we wouldn't be paying the full fare; he knew he was screwing us over.
We walked the fifteen minutes to the office, and when we got there, we filled out the paper work for a Langtang National Park Permit and a new TIMS card. We showed the men behind the desk our passports, and for 4,800 rupees, we secured all the neccessary paperwork. As we left, we wondered why Nepal is the poorest Asian country. There are so many tourists here, and they make a fortune off of things like permits and visas. Where does it all go?
Following our map, we walked another ten to fifteen minutes to the Immigration Office. We filled out another form for another fifteen day extension, and then we paid an additional fifteen dollars to get the extension in fifteen minutes. Otherwise, they ask you to leave the passport and retrieve it after 3:30 PM. It would take almost that much time to walk to Kathmandu and back, and it would cost almost that much to get a taxi three ways, so we bit the bullet.
As we were waiting for our extension, a British couple asked us where they could find the permit office. We told them that we were headed back in that direction, and we would walk with them. The two were from Brighton, and for the next 28 days, they planned to hike in the Everest region. Last year, they hiked the Annapurna Circuit for the second time. In 1987, they had hiked it the first time, and although they had found the area much changed, they still loved Nepal enough to come back for more.
While we walked, we asked them a bit more about their lives. They travel every winter for four to six weeks, and although they can't be much past their mid-fifties, they're retired. They bought property in the 90s, and after the housing boom, they were pretty much able to live off their rental assets. They have two allotments, and they grow all their vegetables. They train and race in triathalons. They travel. Helen, the woman, smiled and said, 'we have a pretty wonderful life.'
At the permit office, we said goodbye. On the walk, Joshua's flip flop had broken, and although he tried to convince me that he could walk through Kathmandu barefoot, I told him to stay put. I had seen an open-air market down the road, and I thought I might be able to find another pair of sandals.
Sure enough, after a five minute walk, I found a little market filled with tables of shoes, jeans, and other odds and ends. It was the sort of place where everything has a brand name, but nothing costs more than five dollars. It was also the sort of place where absolutely no Westerners ever come. People looked so surprise to see me there, they didn't even harass me to buy their wares. When I finally found a table with flip flops, I picked out the largest pair and offered the woman 150 rupees. She shook her head and told me that she wanted 250 rupees. Feeling irritated, I said, 'No. I pay 150 rupees. That man,' I gestured toward a Nepali looking at another pair of flip flops, 'pays 100 rupees. See? I'm already paying tourist price.'
The woman looked at me and laughed a little. 'Okay,' she said. I handed her 150 rupees. She handed me the flip flops.
I walked back to my husband who was standing on the corner of a busy street, looking out at the racing autorickshaws and holding his broken flip flops in his hand. A dog came over and sniffed his bare feet, as if to say, 'dude, that is SO unsanitary.'
Handing him a new pair of 'Nike' flip flops, we made our way back to the heart of Kathmandu. Joshua went to go see if one of the ATMs would let him take out more than 10,000 rupees, and I waited on the other side of the street, watching a man weild a sharp peice of wood like a samurai. Other Nepalis watched too. It was clear that he had a few screws loose, but he looked like he could do some damage anyway. When Joshua walked out of the ATM alcove, I gestured for him to make a wide detour around the crazy samurai. A couple Nepalis standing next to me noticed our sign language and nodded in approval. I felt like I got an 'A' for street smarts.
We walked back through our favorite part of Kathmandu. It wasn't as busy as it had been during Deshain, but there were still wares spilling out of lovely wooden door frames and women selling spices on the curb. Although we had agreed not to buy anything, we spied one of the thermoses we love so much and broke down. Every Nepali family owns a lovely thermos. They are in all sorts of gorgeous colors, and they have pretty, flowered designs. They're much to big to even consider bringing back with us, so we went inside and bought one. Joshua reassures me that he'll be able to make it fit. I'm pretty sure that there's not a chance in hell, but I loved it so much, I conceeded anyway. For only 300 rupees, at least I could say it was ours until we left Nepal.
Back in Thamel, we conducted some super-secret errands that I'm not allowed to tell you about, and then we bought our bus tickets to Syrubesi. In the Lonely Planet, they say that the worst part of the Langtang trek is the bus ride to get there. Ours leaves tomorrow at 7. It takes 10 hours to get there and only covers 117 kilometers. I can't wait.
Seeking a little bit of refreshment and respite from the honking horns, we went to the Organic Green Cafe. There was free internet, and Joshua sat with me as we searched for jobs. At this point, it's a bit too early to apply, but I want the reassurance that there are jobs out there. Unfortunately, there wasn't much reassurance to be had. Fortunately, we discovered that Ellsworth is 18 minutes away from a 'Top 100 Historic Destination!' named by National Geographic - Red Wing, MN. And you know what? We can't wait to explore. They even had a cross country skiier on the front page. Sounds like our kind of city.
With nothing much else to do, we moved on to another cafe and ordered another pot of tea (actually hot chocolate) and a plate of our favorite, chips chilly. Now, I'm writing and Joshua's reading. Like every other man who loves to read, he's currently falling in love with Cormac McCarthy and All the Pretty Horses.
November 13, 2010
This is the seventh bus ride that we've taken in Nepal, and I can say, with a small degree of expertise, that they stink. The 'highway' from Pokhara to Kathmandu may be Nepal's central artery, but most other people would think twice about traversing this stretch of road with a hardy, four-wheel drive Jeep, much less a 30 passenger bus.
To bake a Nepali busride, first add switchbacks. Next, whip in multiple rest stops when all you really want to do is get the whole thing over with. Add a pinch of motion sickness, a dollop of heart-stopping cliff-side drops, and a healthy serving of dust. Serve it all up with a bus driver who has a death wish, and a radio station blaring non-stop Indian pop.
I can't read on buses, so I sleep, sort of. By the time I'm done, my hair always looks like a rat's next, and my neck is smarting from whip-lash. Joshua is cranky, and the two of us want nothing more than a shower and a bed.
When we arrived in Kathmandu, it was nine hours after we had left Pokhara. Once we retrieved our bags, the taxi drivers set upon us like hounds who've had their first smell of blood. Joshua growled and snarled back at them, but we eventually selected one who was relatively benign and agreed to drive us to Tibet Peace Guest House for a reasonable price.
Arriving at a little guest house tucked away on a side street, we happily deposited our bags in a double room. While Joshua sat down to calm his nerves, I ran off to the shower. It was the first truly hot shower I've had in a very long time.
Feeling a bit more human, we went in search of some food. At an Indian restaurant, we ordered curry and rice, and Joshua decided to be adventurous: he ordered the Special Taj Mahal Cold Drink. The woman taking our ordered looked dubious, and when the drink came, we understood why. It had crushed mint, salt, and savory masala spice mixed in with lemon soda. It was absolutely disgusting. The curry, however, was wonderful.
Back outside, we wandered around for a bit. In a little shop, we purchased tea and tang for the trek. I loaded posts onto my blog for the first time in a long while, and then we headed back to the guest house. Sitting in bed, we looked through our photos from Annapurna and selected the best ones. Then, absolutely weary, we fell asleep.
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