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| Day 2 |
I actually woke up at 3:30am and couldn’t go back to sleep –
excitement, I guess, or perhaps it was the hard plywood bed. It was too dark to go outside and do any
touristy exploration, let alone navigate down those crazy stair steps; thank
goodness I hadn’t needed to use the bathroom in the night, or I’m sure I would
have broken my neck in the dark. I did
need to use it now, but was still afraid of both the stairs and the possibility
of being kidnapped and never heard from again.
So, I patiently waited and watched the world slowly become light with
the morning dawn. Then, at 5:30am, as
quietly as I could while tripping over our backpacks, I made my way out of the
room, down the Stairs of Death, out of the teahouse and into a light drizzle of rain. I walked to the suspension bridge and took a
couple of photos: I’m still learning how to use my new camera, a CanonPowerShot SX260 HS, bought especially for this trip.
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| Bhulbhule before sunrise, as viewed from the middle of the bridge. |
The local women, dressed in their brightly colored and loosely flowing garments, were sweeping their doorsteps and the path in front of their houses and establishments with crude straw and twig-like brooms. I didn’t think the area was especially dirty until I saw their accumulated piles of debris, consisting of a variety of leaves, scraps of paper, animal poo, plastic bags, and small colored scraps of whatnot. Their front stoops then appeared as immaculate as dirt porches and stone paved paths are capable of looking. As I stood there marveling at the women’s fastidiousness for order and cleanliness, I watched these industrious gals scoop up their buckets of debris, march out to the middle of the suspension bridge, and dump the contents of the buckets into the river 50 feet below them. Hmm, that’s one way of getting rid of your trash; it lends an explanation as to how the river is so dirty further downstream.
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| Woman heading to dump her trash. |
Breakfast was supposed to be ready at 7:00am, but it arrived
at 7:30. As the four of us sat and
waited for our food to cook, we discussed what we were carrying in our
packs. This arose because Johnathan had
blisters on his feet and no first-aid kit.
I offered him some of my moleskin, which he readily accepted, and this
led the conversation to our gear. They
were all amazed to hear that I had a spare hip belt buckle, sunscreen,
first-aid kit, string, spare batteries for my SPOT, headlight, and camera,
snickers bars (though Sam had put all 25 bars, in his pack yesterday to help me
out with pack weight), other snacks, spare pens for my journal and for filling
out travel documents (most places, including the airport do not have pens for
folks to use), and other bits of spare parts that a trekker might need in an
emergency. Panic flicked across their
faces as they contemplated breaking a hip belt buckle and not being able to
replace it. Combined, my spare parts
only weigh about 3lbs and the security of them is well worth the added pack
weight.
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| I feel like a pack donkey. |
At 8:00am we hit the trail.
It was a gloriously sunny day with a slight breeze – hazy and warm. We walked from village to village, most
places consisting of only a couple buildings, and terraced fields were
everywhere. The trail roughly parallels
the Marshyangdi river through a valley with steep mountains on both sides,
though we quickly lost sight of the river as we climbed higher and higher up
the side of the valley. The road runs
along the opposite side of the valley: only bits and pieces of it were visible
as it cut a line across the mountainside and only the occasional rumble of a
Mahindra or other vehicle could be heard from across the valley, jostling along
the rocky terrain.
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| Leaving our Bhulbhule teahouse. |
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| Little village along the trail. |
Several waterfalls became visible throughout the day, like
crisp surprises around bends in the trail.
Some were flowing right next to the trail and it was glorious to wet my
hat in the refreshingly cool mountain water as it hurried down hill to meet the
river. Other falls were way high up on
the mountain and I could only gaze up at them, open mouthed, and marvel at their
length.
Suspension bridges broke up the monotony of the trail with
their bouncy cables and adrenalin inducing heights. Some were short; some were impossibly long;
all were thrilling to traverse.
We were able to avoid walking on the road all morning and
could enjoy the more domestic aspect of hilly Nepali life. The trees were marvelous: there were large
plumes of bamboo clumps, leafy green deciduous trees, and leggy poinsettia
trees (didn’t know they were tree size in their natural habitat) in red bloom. I kept oohing and aahing and I’m sure my
companions could only roll their eyes at my flora enthusiasm.
By 10:30am we began the arduous ascent to Bahundanda. It was a very steep climb, some sections of
the trail nothing more than the seasonal washout of a now (thankfully) dry
creek bed, and the entire trail was strewn with rocks and boulders. Though torturously steep, the views were
spectacular and behind me were all the terraces and fields serrating the
hillside. Looking at them was a
marvelous excuse for taking a breather break.
I finally reached the top of the hill 15 minutes later and
there sat the village of Bahundanda.
Town square seemed to be right there at the terminus of the trail and
mercifully, there was a large bench that wrapped around an enormous tree in the
stone paved courtyard. Shops and restaurants
catering to every trekker desire lined the area and there were vendors
selling candy and fruit near the sitting tree.
A surprisingly large amount of people filled the 70x100sf sized court and there was much hub-bub and milling about, with children and dogs running
between folks’ legs. I staggered, sweaty
and irritated, over to the tree bench, unbuckled my red backpack that slumped
to the ground with a ‘thunk,’ and collapsed onto the seat. Perhaps it was my unwelcoming expression, or
my near death body posture that kept the vendor hawkers from approaching me –
regardless, I don’t think I would have had enough breath in me to have
responded to their sales pitch. Sam let
me regain a bit of oxygen and then enthusiastically suggested, and then
insisted when I balked, that we climb up even more stone steps to a restaurant
that had a view.
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| English is clearly not their first language, but good try folks. |
The hilarious sign said the restaurant was only 60 extra
steps away from the plaza, but I counted those evil steps and they actually
totaled 93. Lies. The restaurant, that is “probably the best hotel in town” and “not recommended by the Lonely Planet guidebook” did have a decent
view, so it really was worth the effort; it had a toilet and a shade tree,
which made the additional leg agony really worth it. We were the only customers and had the place
to ourselves the entire hour we took for lunch.
I ate my first platter of Dal Bhat (lentils, rice, and curry) and found
it spicy and filling. The friendly male
servers, there were two of them, kept bringing us serving after serving, until
we told them to stop or we’d have to roll our curry filled bodies down the
stairs.
After a trip to the toilet and a repacking of gear, the
steps were descended and the trek resumed.
The trail went up; the trail went down; there were many, many rocks.
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| We're clearly having too much fun on this trek. |
By 2:30pm we came to Ghermu – my planned destination for spending the night. However, I was feeling pretty good and wanted to press on to Chame, since it was still so early in the afternoon. Sam was up for anything, so we walked over the suspension bridge and onto the road (the trail unfortunately merging with the road here) upon which we walked all afternoon. A herd of goats joined us for a dusty mile or so and their frolicking and antics were excellent entertainment.
The road was rather steep in places and there was one
particular spot that had 7 or 8 lengthy switchbacks, stacked one on top of the
other. It was frustrating to be walking
and walking and still be in the same place in the valley, only higher up the
hillside; I felt as if we were going nowhere.
Also, the road consisted of rocks and pale tan dust that puffed from our
feet with every step. Happily, only
three Mahindras passed us, so the dusty road walking wasn’t too unpleasant in
that regard.
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| This was fun to walk past. Not. |
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| The Switchbacks of Doom, me, and a Mahindra |
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| Passed by a couple of porters. |
We came to Jagat at 5:00pm, just as it began to grow dusk and I knew this was where we should spend the night. Both of us were tired and it would take us another hour to reach Chame if we continued walking and it would be dark long before that. I’d been stung on the side of my hand by some unknown malicious bug during our last rest stop, as we looked down on Jagat in the fading light, so I was eager to get off the trail.
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| Jagat - we stayed in the tall light blue and pink building. |
Johnathan was ahead of us on the trail, but Sam and I didn’t
know which teahouse he had stopped at for the night. So the two of us walked through town and then
turned around and took a different street back up, while looking at all our
teahouse options. At each place, a
person or a group of people would be sitting out on the porch and they would
call to us as we walked past their establishment, asking if we wanted a
room. When we shook our heads ‘no’ they
would grumble something in Nepali that we were pretty sure were curse words. Again, we doubled back and this time found
Johnathan sitting beside the road waiting for us; reunited, we selected a
teahouse near the edge of the village, perched on a hill, with a second
story, so we could have nice views of the valley in the morning. The teahouse owner showed us our second floor
rooms, accessed by a spiral staircase, and the shower/toilet combo that was on
the same level as our room (no fear of kidnap for me this evening!). Our bedroom cost 250, has two enormous
glass paned windows, and is spacious enough that we could have fit 8 visitors,
if we knew that many people in Nepal.
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| House in Jagat, build under a huge rock. Do you think they have enough firewood? |
We ordered dinner, unpacked, and I showered a gloriously warm shower - after figuring out how to turn on the on-demand water heater that hung on the wall right next to the shower spigot. I tried to not think about how unsafe it was, nor did I try to think about the curtain-less window across from me and the voyeur dog chained in the backyard. Despite placing our order for dinner early, being the only guests, and all my activities in the interim, we still had to wait for dinner.
Data
Starting elevation: 2,756ft
Ending elevation: 4,265ft
Distance: 9 miles
Weather: Hazy and warm
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