So today is my halfway to home day…the days have actually been moving pretty slow here, so I’m excited to see this one come. I still have 33 days here so it will be an adventure to see what they bring…but let me update y’all (I know. I’m southern.) about the last couple.
Ok, the short version. My roommate got appendicitis so we went to the traveller’s clinic and then to Norvic Int. Hospital where she had an appendectomy, not exactly what you plan for as your Nepali Adventure. Bless her heart she was so scared before surgery. Two very nice elderly nepali anesthesiologists came in and tried to calm her down. She said she nicknamed them Willie and Nelson. Anyway, that was quite an adventure being on the patient side of the hospital system here….
After that, went on a 6 day trek in the Himalayas and I feel pretty BA just being able to say that. We started out in Pokhara, a really touristy, but little town about a 6 hour bus ride from Kathmandu (I’ve described the bus rides already so you already know that part pretty much) unfortunately our bus ride was a little longer, closer to 9 hours because while we were stuck in traffic at the very beginning of the trip something flew up out of the road and shattered our bus windshield–as a consequence we had to switch buses later on. I sat next to an interesting fellow traveler, a girl from switzerland named Julie. She had been traveling around southeast asia by herself for about 7 months and talked about celebrating christmas by herself somewhere in India. It sounded rough.
Day ONE
Anyway, from Pokhara (and a hotel room with A TV!!) we got a local bus early the next morning to the trailhead. A little roadside town called Naya Pul. It was so funny because we were just riding along and the bus conductor suddenly got Mat (btw, Mat and Laurel were my trekking buddies for this) and said “here, get off” and basically dumped us by the side of the road in Nowhere, Nepal. We kind of looked at each other and then went in search of some milk tea. We had some difficulties actually finding the trailhead but managed to get off ok.
The trail here starts through a beautiful stone village called Birethanti–lots of stone on all of this trek–and is pretty wide and easy. However reading the guidebook (no guides, just us) we anticipated that the day would hold a set of “relentless stairs” after lunch and crossing a swinging Indiana Jones Bridge, we found the stairs. 3,327 of them to be exact. They were killer. At one point I sat down with Laurel to take a break and told her to just go on without me! It took us about two hours to reach another stone village, this one perched on the side of a cliff, called Ulleri. At this point I went into hysterics–kind of. I can’t explain except to say that I just literally couldn’t stop laughing. Mat and Laurel proceeded up a little ladder like staircase to check out the room at the first guesthouse we came to, while I sat at the bottom and just died laughing. The whole thing was ridiculous in a goofy I’m-Trekking-In-Nepal-What-The-Heck kind of way. Anyway the room was acceptable, or as Mat said “I;m taking a picture of this so I can see how crappy it actually is when I’m back to normal.” Regardless I loved it. They had a western style toilet that I’m pretty sure operated like an airplane toilet because it was over a cliff…they also had hot water and the beds, although they were just wooden frames really with a little two inch thick mattress, were possibly the most comfortable thing ever.
Because it was the first day, we spoiled ourselves with pre-dinner treats of milk tea and banana porridge and sat on the rooftop of another little guesthouse (we were trying to spread our money around because its the off-season there (monsoon season) and we were the only game in town tourist-wise). Later we went back to our own guesthouse and fried rice and momos and apple fritters (not the kind you’re picturing…) Anyway, during dinner we calculated out our money and began to worry that we wouldn’t make it out of that AtM-less land before running out of cash on hand. Hence the rest of the trip wherever we went we split an order of fried rice and an order of vegetable noodles.
(Now being connoseiours of the fried rice on this trekking route we planned to send our reviews to Lonely Planet to publish in their next guidebook–Ghorepani: the best fried rice you’ll ever eat on top of a mountain, watch your host go out into the garden and pick the herbs just minutes before it arrives on your plate. Trekkers Sanctuary Lodge: a little “earthy” for most tastes, but this is understandable due to the fact that it is cooked in a little dug out UNDERNEATH the lodge.)
Slept like a sack of rocks while Laurel claims that the rain threatentened to wash us right back down the mountain. I probably wouldn’t have cared except there was NO way I was doing those stairs again.
Day TWO
In what was probably the least eventful day of the trek, we left Ulleri early to climb more stairs and hills (this was an all uphill day). Through a rhodedendron forest and a Jurassic Parkesque jungle.
Here we first encountered the leeches. If they moved at all (they move like inch worms) we could flick them off, however if they latched on we had to get out the salt. Mat had found an old tin medicine container to carry the salt in however it turned out to be the most frustrating thing in the world to open so our leech adventures went like this: Someone (usually Mat) would look down and say “Oh I have a leech” I would run back carrying the salt and struggle for ten minutes to get the container open while the poor leech victim looked helplessly at the foriegn body sucking their blood. It was really quite an interesting experience.
Anyway we only hiked for about 4 hours this day, making it one of our shortest. We arrived promptly at the small mountain village of Ghorepani. This was my favorite stop of the trip. The views of snow-capped peaks were incredible and the air was finally a bit cooler. We stayed at a tall yellow guesthouse called the Hungry Eye and had a top corner room that made you feel like you were living in a tower. We watched the local youngsters play volleyball down below. They were really quite good–with the added interest of playing around the donkeys that trotted through the court and an old Nepali woman who stood in the corner and did little dances whenever they scored a point.
Here I traded Les Mis, which Laurel and I had both consumed in our empty hours between trekking and sleep, for Jingo by Terry Pratchet at a little local bookstore.
Day THREE
This was my favorite day of the trek. We started out going up (AGAIN), passing many Lord of the Rings type stone porter stops. We exited the trees with a herd of horses and came into the most beautiful views of trip. We hiked to the top of the mountain and ate gummy animals at the top (a tradition in Laurel’s family) and danced to Mat’s theme song “Live your Life” (see the video on facebook) and watched the little adorable rodents, one of which we named Baxter.
From there the trail went pretty steeply down (more stone stairs)by a mile long waterfall. We got caught in the rain a bit and stopped at a little lodge for lunch. We did a double day this day so our hike was about 9 hours…the longest day of our trek. We got caught in the rain again at the end of the trek and arrived at Ghandruk in the rain. We stayed at a lodge with stone floors that made me feel like I was in a convent (Mat thought I said I felt like a “convict” haha). Our fellow trekkers were a group of very loud Nepali men who sang a lot of songs-including Baby, baby, baby by Jusitn Bieber.
Day FOUR
This was the most exciting day of our trek due to leaving Ghandruk on the wrong trail. According to the guidebook this day was an easy 2-3 hour hike so we set out sloowly (and very painfully due to sore calves) down stone stairs. Once again we stopped for milk tea. After four hours of hiking we began to think we were going VERY slow. We stopped and asked directions only to discover that we had been on the wrong trail the whole time. We headed down to a riverside village called Syauli Bazaar where we examined one of the handy billboard like trekking maps and talked to a local man and woman who tried to convince us to just continue on the path we were on and catch a bus back to Pokhara that night. Mat and I were offended, thinking they were underestimating our trekking abilities and while we were conferring Laurel heard the Nepali woman point to our path and shake her head and say “very steep.” What we learned from this (later on) was that when a Nepali woman says it is very steep she means it!
Obstinately we set out to backtrack our way to our original path. This meant we had to take a 3-4 hour trail up to the town or Landruk where we would spend the night. The trail took off through a cornfield and a herd of goats. From the very first we could tell that this was indeed a LOCAL trail and not used very much by the western trekking crowd (later it turned out that it was a porter trail used to bring water and beer up to the lodges). We crossed a river and a pasture, still feeling very “adventur-y” and then headed uphill.
This uphill was possibly the longest and hardest thing I have ever done. Henceforth it will be referred to as the Hill From The Devil. It took us about two hours to climb and the heat was oppressive. It was difficult mentally as well as we were never sure if we were on the right path and Mat and Laurel both ran out of water and I only had a little left. Finally we passed a little hut and a Nepali man in snow boots follwed us a ways to another hut where little girls were playing outside. Here we were able to get water and things began to look up. In a little ways we stopped for a rest and I noticed a leech on my foot ( I hiked mostly in flip flops). “It’s like a 6th toeee—I mean, you’ll be FINE” Mat exclaimed as we struggled with the salt container.
Finally, finally, we made it to Landruk. It had only taken us 3 hours from the river bottom (the Nepali man said it would take us four..that’s right we showed him!) but it was a VERY harrowing three hours!
Ate apple fritters as a treat and went to bed.
Day FIVE
Not much to report, hiked in the rain for a bit about 6 hours out to the side of the road where we caught a bus back to Pokhara.
The rest of the trip was composed of various other adventures including: When Your Hotel TV Starts Smoking, Awakening to a Two Inch Roach on Your Arm and Watching Futbol at a Nepali Pub (Cinderella Mocktail for me…)
And that’s all for now. Stay tuned for more of your favorite adventures!
