Drive Like Jehu? Who's Jehu?

Casey and I are headed out to begin our Khumbu (Everest region) trek tomorrow morning. We'll be hiking the long route from Jiri all the way up to Everest Base Camp, Kalla Pattar, and Gokyo. Should be nice. We added a Brit named Ali to our entourage for this trek. We met him in Pokhara after the Annapurna Trek and he seems like a good guy.Should have some funny stories after this one too. I'll try to post something when I can during the trek hut I fear that the prices for internet access while en route will be too high. We'll be gone for twentyfive to thirty days most likely.

Motorcycle mayhem

I noticed the rear wheel on Keiths motorcycle lock up and skip sideways a little as he was headed into a curve but then it was back to normal. A second later he and his bike were on their sides and sliding off the side of the gravelly paved road into the drainage ditch. He had some substantial scrapes but no major injuries thankfully. I was a bit concerned since when I pulled over to assist I noticed his calf was pinned under his bike in a sort of odd fashion. It was not as bad as it looked however and when I lifted the bike off his leg he got up and was already more concerned with the condition of his rented motorcycle than he was with his own ability to funtion properly. Crazy Australians. He'll have some minor gashes and a couple of good scrapes to tend to for a while but nothing requiring more than some antiseptic and maybe a few bandages.

Yesterdaey we had taken a ride up from Pokhara to the lookout tower at the top of a small ridge. A place called Sarangkot. You leave Pokhara and head out onto the more rural streets and wind your way up the hill through many sharp turns. About two thirds of the way from the top the paved road ends and it's a rocky (at timess VERY rocky) and steep jeep path. It was Keith, Karl, and myself. The guys had picked up fancy newer bikes that were a bit more of a standard or sport bike style in design while I had what would be better described as a cruiser. The picture here is of a newer version of the bike I had rented. If you have ever ridden a dirt bike you will know that to be scrambling uphill over lots of loose rocks, big bumps, protruding boulders, washouts, etc such as you encounter on a jeep road things are much more comfortable in a standing position. My bike is more like sitting in a recliner with your feet up. Its certainly not for off orad use. It was quite a bit of excersize to just get my ass up off the seat when hitting the bumpy stuff.

Nevertheless we made it to the top and enjoyed the view, despite the odd military post and the cellphone tower there as well. We even made it back down through the rough stuff. It was back on the paved roads that Keith had his little slip up. Today I'm probably going to go for a ride about 15 kilometers out of town to a couple of lakes that are supposdly tourist free which could be nice. The bike I rented seems to be reliable enough but it doesn't like to idle very much. If I hold the clutch in too long or leave it in neutral for more than a few seconds it has a habit of stalling out. I suppose I can't exptect too much for 350 rupees a day, that's about $5 US.

Glutton For Punishment

One thing that I will always take away from this trip as being singularly and profoundly "Nepali" to me will be Dal Bhat. Dhal Bat is a simple meal that consists of white rice, vegetable curry, some lentil soup (that gets poured on the rice) and something they call pickle but in reality is sort of like a glob of spicy yet slightly sweet something. A couple of times I have identified mango but usually the "pickle" is a blob or chunks of spicy unidentifiable plant matter. It's most commonly served on a partitioned metal plate with a seperate bowl for the lentil soup (dal). This dish is sometimes served with other items such as papadum (a crispy cracker type of fried bread with pepper in it) or you can order a non-vegetarian version for the carnivores.

There are two things that stand out about this meal. The first is that Nepalis seem to eat it like mad. IT's available in every restaurant, any time of the day. In the mountains they would have it at at 10am, then again for a later lunch, and again after that for dinner. Just insane amounts of dal bhat which brings me to the second thing that will make this meal so memorable for me. It's an all you can eat meal. They continue to fill your plate until you forcibly turn them away. If you know me at all I need to be in pain before I do such a thing so many times now I have eaten my way to a near comatose state combined with stomach cramps. I will probably come back home with stretch marks. It's usually quite cheap (last night it was the equivalent of $1.30) and it's damn good most of the time. You should probably just come out to Nepal and try it sometime. It's worth the flight.

To The Bat Cave!

I was up on the roof of the hotel watching the sunset when Sina came up to join me. We were sitting for a few moments when she pointed out a little dried blood spot on my foot, "Looks like you had a leech too". I discounted the small spot of dried blood as just an unnoticed cut from walking around barefoot at the hotel. It was a short while later when I was getting ready to go out for dinner that I discovered the huge spot of wet blood in my sock.

Earlier in the day Sina, Irena, Yvette and I went on a long walk out of town and up a ridge to the "World Peace Pagoda". You start off on city streets and then cross a dam at the base of the largest lake in Nepal before entering the woods and ascending to the pagoda. We crossed paths with a herd (?) of monkeys but thankfully they were more concerned with frenziedly chasing each other rather than frenziedly chasing us. We pushed on and arrived at the gleaming white and quite monstrous pagoda about 30 minutes later. We took off our shoes and headed up to the white steps when Sina realized she was leaving bloody footprints on the massive shrine. She was wearing teva sandals for the walk and had picked up a few little leeches on way up. Three to be exact. The rest of us did a quick leech check but didn't spot anything. I was wearing shoes and socks so I just checked my calves and all was clear. I must have missed the little bugger who comitted the atrocities in my sock. We rested and took in the views from the pagoda before descending a different route to the lake where we negotiated a reasonable price for passage back across the lake on a small flat bottom canoe style boat.


That was two days ago and we travelled on foot. Yesterday our goal was a bit further away so we opted to rent bicycles. We were headed out to the Bat Cave. It's a medium to smallish cave that houses a medium to small amount of bats as far as gatherings of bats goes. The ride was sketchy at times in hectic city streets. I believe it was Sina who admitted a little trepidation since she was unfamilliar with the rules of the road to which I helpfully responded, "There are rules?". The cave had a modest 10 rupee entrance fee and it seemed to support a local school which was good. We picked up a local kid to guide us through the maze and it was quick but well worth it. The cave entrance was a large opening and you climb down a flight of stairs to get in however the exit was like being reborn and not in a religious sense. You climb vertically up a few gaps in the rock then slide on your belly through an area not much wider than your shoulders (or your hips for the ladies). We had a nice break before hand and a nice long break afterwards. I have discovered that Pokara is all about taking breaks. I've been making the most of this bit of enlightenment.

The Glacier and Shooter McGavin

Here's just a few photos from the Annapurna Trek so far. This first one is of Myself, Sina, Casey and Irena crossng one of the many wire bridges along the trek. We met these two hoolgans along with Livio (thanks to him for these photos) on the arduous bus ride from Kathmandu to the start of the trek. They're still putting up with us as a matter of fact!

I mentioned in the last post that I would be back with more stories. I'm not much of a story teller so I'll say agan to read Casey's blog for more details and better use of adjectves. Here now though will be a short recounting of what was possibly my favorite day on the Annapurna Circuit although technically the day was spent entirely off the trail. We took a day off to acclimatize at a small village called Manang. It was one of the more lively of the small villages we passed through and in fact boasted no less than four movie houses but more on that later. For our day "off" a few of us decided to hike up to a viewpoint that looked across to a glacier working it's way down from the Annapurnas. It was a bit of a climb and a rewarding view but being only near to a glacier seems like a tease to me and we opted to find a route to the base of it. Our guides who hiked up to the viewpoint with us seemed to dissapear shortly after we decide to push on despite the lack of any real trail. I ended up further ahead of Livio, Sina, Irena, and our new friend Nora and I suspected that they had turned back to town. That suspicion was based on the fact that I was traversing along some rather steep scree slopes, around large icefalls, through small birch forests and all with no trail to follow. There was just occasonal glimpses of the glacier ahead to keep me going the right direction. I finally worked my way there in a fashion that was going against numerous basic concepts of safety in the backcountry. Once I arrived it was pretty incredible. Sheer walls of ice standing at least 50 feet high directly above. I took some photos and started to head back to town by following the small river that was fed by the ice melt. About 15 minutes down spotted the rest of my expedition working their way up the river bed as well. I joined up with them as it started to snow and we walked back up to the base of the glacier. The picture above is of myself, nora, sina, and irena being dwarfed by the massive ice flow. We eventually worked our way back to town in a steadily growing snow fall and it was probably the second most tiring day of the whole trek.
Now back to the movie theatres of Manang. This same evening we went to one of these theaters to watch "Into Thin Air", the tragic book turned into an even more tragic made for TV movie featuring the actor who played Shooter McGavin in Happy Gilmore as the lead. The theater was a small slanted room with wooden benches lined with yak fur. There was a wood stove in the center of the room and you had the option to order popcorn which was brought out to you in a small silver bowl during the movie. It was rather surreal.
After that it was back to our guesthouse for dinner and lots of games of cards with the rest of our crew. It was a good day.

Maoists and Marijuana

We left the village of Thorung Phedi at 4 am after be awakened by our guide Suresh with an abrupt knocking on the door at 3 am and the explanantion of, "I did not sleep, we go now.". We packed up out gear, had a stale cinnamon roll and some black tea and headed up to the Thorung La Pass. The highest mountain pass in the world. It was a rugged 3-4 hour hike uphil through some snow fields and well below freezing before the sun rose over the nearby mountans. It tends to get cloudy and windy in the afternoons at 5140 meters (17,800 or so feet) elevetaion so you want to head over the pass in the morning. After the pass however it's literally all downhill.

Thorung La Pass was maybe our 10th day out on the trail. Things went pretty well. We didnt have to "donate" too much money at the maoist checkpoint, I think the amount they settled with was equivalent to around $16 US. I'm still working on my Nepali rupee to US dollar conversions. We climbed steadly through lush low elevaton valleys with waterfalls and and banana trees up to more arid landscapes with fields of wild marijuana plants then further up to pine forests and eventually up above tree line entirely. Many of the guesthouses we slept in were quite nice (relatively speaking) and we met a bunch of great people we were treking along with. There was a bit of concern with Casey and a bout of altitude sickness when we got up to around 4000 meters but we took an extra day off, backtracked a little ways downhill and the next morning he was feelling well enough to go on.

We've eaten a lot of Tibetan bread, Dal bhat, Fried momos and black tea (and of course coca-cola's as well). I relaxed in a hot spring and then jumped in a glacier fed river. I pinched a nerve in my knee but after a couple of days of limping that seems to be mostly healed. I am still allergic to the sun but at least this time I'm prepared. We found out that sometimes nepali menu items are more literal than you would think such as a "cheeseburger" a friend ordered which turned out to be a sweet bread bun with some shredded yak cheese on it, then a big patty of fried yak cheese, then some more shredded cheese on top and then another piece of bread. I bushwhacked my way off to the trail from the village of Manang and officially touched my first real glacier.

It's been a good time so far. We'll be staying here in Pokhara, Nepal for a few days to a week before catching a bus for the 6-8 ride back to Kathmandu. then it's off to the long version of the Everest Base Camp Trek. I'll attempt to post some funy treking stories the next few days but that's the basic rundown of what we have been up to thus far. I think I am going to rent a motorcycle for a day here too and bomb around the crazy roads filled with water buffalo and ornately decorated buses. wish me luck.