Day 21
Location-Nepal, Somewhere in the Himalayas
Temp-42 C Altitude-7500ft Weather-Chilly with strong wind
City population-25-30 Witnesses-2 (Tamara and Christopher)

“Please, help my baby.”

We leave the small town of Tatopani and follow the river up into the mountains. We actually aren’t traveling on the mountains, just between them following the ever-shrinking river. The land that makes up the mountains is brittle and seams to always be moving. Earthquakes are an every week occurrence. As we move further into the mountains they are no longer visible. The giant monoliths hide behind the clouds, even though we are right next to them. The vegetation has become scarcer and more desert like in appearance.

I am not sure where we are on the map; I just know that we are on the same trail that heads to Tibet. As long as we stay on this trail we can’t get lost. Yet, the trail has become difficult to follow at times. With the all the landslides, we have to pick our way around many unstable areas. Sometimes the canyon becomes impossible to follow on one side and so we must cross to the other side on long wire bridges.

The bridges are built out of steel cable and wood planks. The Nepali government and even foreign governments pay for the materials to build the bridges. The bridges are well built, yet the maintenance is very poor. Every bridge we have crossed has had cracked or broken planks. To fix the holes in the bridge, the locals set flat rocks over the holes. At times the wind will pick up and causes the bridge to rock back and forth. So the process of crossing a bridge is complex, you try to step around the weak areas of the bridge while trying to fight the wind but you must not touch the steel cables as they have sharp steel slivers. It makes for a memorable 5 minutes, each time you attempt a crossing.

Here it is, a few days later and we are feeling much better physically. Our bodies have become used to the effort of hiking up and down hills. Also, we are getting used to listening to our bodies when they tell us to do or not to do something.

Tatopani was the last real town that we have seen. At night we stop at small collections of homes that are glued into a small pocket of the canyon. At these homes we eat a dozen different types of soup, but only one type of bread, Tibetan bread. Tibetan bread is a thick and heavy wheat patty that is boiled in animal fat of some sort. With full bellies and tired legs we sleep well under the provided thick wool blanket.

Thin tin roofs cover the stone and wood homes. Newspapers and wool rags are stuffed in every crack, to keep out the intensely cold nights. Outside of each home there is a dog. They are rarely visible in the daytime; in fact I think the owners keep them locked up. But when the sun sets, the dogs are loosed. When we started the hike the dogs were small and so didn’t notice them. However, as we have been traveling the dogs have increased in size and fierceness. The dogs are now to a size that I am fearful to leave the home after nighttime.

We are seeing less and less hikers as we progress toward Tibet. Today we haven’t seen one westerner the whole time. Kauncha says that most hikers turn back after a few days. I don’t blame them but Tamara and I really want to make it to the other side of the mountains and into the Kingdom of Mustang.

The trail we are following has just stopped at a large landslide. The thin trail is completely obliterated. The landslide looks like it happened ten or twenty years ago. It was so large of a slide that the “British Geographic Society” built a 120-foot steel cable bridge to the other side. For the last half-hour we have been waiting for our turn to cross. We are waiting because; on the other side of the bridge is one of the largest collections of sheep I have ever seen. The sheep have stopped at their side of the bridge. We would cross but there is now were to go, the sheep fill the trail for as far as I can see. They are everywhere, except for on the bridge. I understand their hesitation; the bridge looks to be a particularly scary one. Some of the wood slates are broken; leaving gaping holes that look down, a 150 feet, to the wild river below.

A man comes into view on the other side, fighting his way to the front. He kicks and beats the sheep to clear a path to the front. As he claws his way to the front of the line, one sheep behind him almost falls off of the cliff; it panics and pushes its way back onto the trail and into the flock. This action causes a visible wave of pushing and shifting that runs upstream and downstream of the wool river of sheep. When the wave hits the man, he is almost knocked off of the trail too. He yells and curses as he finally makes it to the front of the line. After he rests for a minute, he grabs one of the first sheep by its extra long horns. The kicking animal is dragged screaming across the bridge. Slowly, one then two sheep cross the bridge following the frantic long horn sheep. Then the spell is broken, a flood of sheep pour across the now undulating wire bridge. The entire pack of short white sheep starts to surge forward.

There is a small village of three to four homes on this side of the river, tucked between the river and the trail. Children and their mothers have come out of their homes to watch the migration of mutton. Tamara and I sit down by the locals and watch the sheepherder pass us, dragging his sheep. He lets go and the sheep tries to run back across the bridge. The man looses all of his composure and tries to beat the stupid animal with a slender stick. A few old farmers join our seated audience, and we all start laughing as the sheep out maneuvers the herder and runs ahead to eat some grass.

Just then, back on the bridge, a sheep gets its horn caught in the wire cables and stops. The unstoppable force of sheep behind him doesn’t stop moving. Some sheep try to jump over him but something bad is going to happen. I can tell because the entire group of people watching it, all make the same sound, “Oooohhh!” The stuck sheep busts free but the damage has been done. The build up of sheep causes one of them to fall threw one of the many holes in the bridge. We all, including the herder, yell as the sheep falls 150 feet into the churning water. The rest of the sheep merrily keep crossing the bridge as the humans’ watch the one lost sheep resurface and swim to the opposite shore. The entire audience cheers with relief! It climbs onto the shore and runs up the bank 50 feet and then stops. It just sits there; not believing it survived such a drop. Another herder appears on the other side and starts to climb down the bank, towards the sheep. By the time he and another herder get to the one lost sheep, the entire herd has crossed the bridge and is resting on our side of the river.

We should cross now while we have the chance. Nevertheless, we stay and watch the show. The audience cheers for the injured and scared sheep as he out maneuver his way around the two herders. The now angry men trap the sheep in a corner and move in to capture it. Our side of the bank explodes with shouts and cheers as the sheep again escapes. “Yaaaa!” rumbles down the valley. I look over to Tamara and she, along with everyone else, has tears in her eyes from laughing so hard.

Carefully we continue on our journey across the bridge and on down the path. We are used to the altitude now, although we are still climbing. The nights are getting colder and colder but the daytime weather is very pleasant. To help fight the cold, I buy a scarf from a local weaving woman. The dark blue scarf is beautifully made with soft wool of some kind. In Kathmandu, Tamara and I both purchased sweaters made of prickly Yak wool. These sweaters now serve us well in the hills. When the wind blows we put on our light rain jackets over the sweater and we become immune to the chill.

Small lizards sit on rocks sunning themselves as we walk. Tamara keeps trying to sneak up on one of the lizards and take a close up picture. The lizards have other ideas, so she runs from rock to rock with her camera in hand, chasing the quick reptiles. Kauncha quietly laughs at her and says that she acts like a “Newar”. I ask what a Newar is and he says that it is a caste of people that is very interested in nature and art. This whole caste thing is very interesting to me. Being from America, I pretend that there is no such thing as a caste system. But in this part of Asia, they live and die by the caste system. Instead of feeling trapped by their caste, most people feel protected by it. To better understand the caste system, Kauncha and I talk about it for a long time.Nepal’s population is around 21 million. It is growing at an incredible rate of 2.3% a year. All those people fit into about 60 ethnic groups and each group has their own language. The Nepali language is used to communicate between the different groups.

In places like Kathmandu, it was hard to tell the difference between the castes. However, as we have been traveling through the hills, we have passed though many identifiable ethnic pockets. Usually I can identify them by their hats or cloths. Here are the major castes that I know about. I have gathered most of this data from talking to locals about their and other castes.

Brahmans are the largest caste and look the most “Nepali”. They are the Hindu priest caste. They are always Hindu in religion, but have the most modern dress and mannerisms of all the castes. I find that they act slightly proud when dealing with other castes. Brahmans own most of the businesses in Nepal.

Chhetris is the other major Hindu group. They are the warrior caste, but are usually farmers. By having the highest social, political and ritual status they hold most of the powerful positions in Nepal. The Royal family, the Ranas, is of this caste, as is most of the army Generals. Chhetris have lighter skin, are taller and walk in a manner that makes themselves known as Chhetris. Head high and nose even higher.

The Newars are the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley. They can be Hindu or Buddhists. Of the few Christians in Nepal, most I met were Newars. They are known as very intelligent and quick witted. They are likely to hold very important jobs because of their high intelligence. Interestingly, most artists are Newars. Navin and his family belong to this caste.

Tibetans are the easiest for me to spot. Their eyes are very bright and their faces are wide, slightly Mongoloid. They are very friendly and always speak good English. In fact, they usually don’t know Nepali. They value education very highly. Somewhere around every large town in Nepal, there is a Tibetan refugee camp. When the Chinese killed the government and took over the country in the 50′s, they outlawed the Buddhism religion. Many Tibetans left the country to escape death or imprisonment. Even still, Tibetans flee Tibet using this very same road. The Dalai Lama is the most famous Tibetan.

The Tamangs are the largest hill group. They live outside towns and usually stay away from civilization. Their name means, “horse soldier”, as their ancestors came over the mountains with Genghis Khan, as his cavalry. Their faces are very Mongoloid like. Most of the “Sherpas” are actually of this caste. The real Sherpa people make up only a very small percentage of Nepal’s population. In the 1920′s, adventurers from England came to the Himalayas to climb the mountains. Nepal at that time was a closed country and fiercely protected its borders from outsiders. So the mountain climbers would travel into Tibet and China to climb the other side of these mountains. To get there, they would travel through the valley of the Sherpa people. Since that time, the name “Sherpa” has become more of a buzzword. Even though they have a reputation known worldwide as being nice and proud people, the truth is much different. Their small valley, by Mount Everest, has become so westernized that it severely affects their morality and attitude. Sherpa economy has become totally dependent on tourism to the point that they have no other skills or trades. A common joke in Nepal is that white people think Sherpa’s are everywhere and friendly, when in fact they are nowhere and always want something from everyone, except a job.

Then there are the Gurkhas. The Gurkhas are not a caste but more of a job. A Gurkha is someone of any caste that joins the British, Nepali or Indian army. Many Gurkha families live off of their fathers or husbands army wages. Back two hundred years ago the British needed some people to fight their wars. So they developed a specialized unit called the Gurkha. There is even a British recruitment center in Kathmandu and Pokhara. I remember during the war between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands an incident involving the Gurkhas. Gurkha units have a well-deserved reputation of being vicious and of never retreating. Because of this reputation, a whole division of Argentines retreated off of an island because of a rumor that a Gurkha unit was about to land.

The other group that I know about is the Manangis. They are a strange, isolated people that live on the other side of the Himalayas. They came from Tibet centuries ago and now live in their own Kingdom. The Kingdom of Mustang is tucked between Tibet and the Tibetan side of the Himalayas. The Chinese have tried to take the land but it is so small and the people so fierce that it remains free from Chinese control. Nepal has taken a diplomatic route and bribed the King of Mustang with money and a General position in the Nepali army. We are traveling to their ancient capital, a city called Muhtinath. It is the closest that we can travel to Political Tibet, even though we will be in geographic Tibet. The political Tibet, or China as it is now called, is 4 hours walk from Muhtinath. I am excited to be traveling to the Kingdom of Mustang.

The area we are traveling though just keeps changing. I find it strange how quickly the land can move here. Maybe if I explain about the Geography of Nepal you can better understand what it looks like.

Nepal is a small land locked country, only 500 miles long and 125 miles deep. It is maybe the size of the top half of Oregon. Even though it is very small, it has some incredible variation in Geography. The far south of Nepal is hot and humid jungle. The elevation there is only 400-500 feet above sea level. As you move north, 30,000-foot mountain ranges rise up out of nowhere. Just behind the Himalayas, is a huge 15,000-foot plateau. This plateau is called the “roof of the world, or as most people know it “Tibet”. Most rivers in Asia start in Tibet and travel around the mountains to the east or west. However, a few rivers flow through deep gorges in between the Himalayan Mountains. These rivers are actually older than the mountains that they flow threw. How is that possible?

Imagine that India does not exist. Tibet is beachfront property on the Mediterranean Sea. This is how it was 6 million years ago. The landmass that makes up India and Australian moved up from the south and hit the Tibetan land mass. As the Indo-Australian plate continues its push, it slides under the Eurasian plate. This causes the Eurasian plate to buckle and fold in the form of the Himalayan Mountains. Mountains like Mt Everest rise an inch every 8-10 months. Think of the energy it would take to raise Mt. Everest an inch!

So back to the river story. This river, that we are following, was flowing here before India hit Tibet. But, now it just has further to travel until it finds the sea. Tamara has even found some fossils of seashells on our walk. It is strange to think of this area, thousands of miles from the sea as once being a beach.

We have passed the half waypoint of our hike and are now leaving the mountains. They rise up on both sides of us like 15,000-foot cliffs. As we wind our way up out of the mountains we enter a different type of weather. The land is becoming drier and the sun always shines. It is slowly looking more and more like the pictures I have seen of Tibet.

During a rest stop I find a large rock that has an obvious seashell fossil in it. Tamara points out that it is very cool, but basically it is a large heavy rock. Our packs are already heavy and the addition of this rock could break me in half. So for the next 30 minutes I dig around looking for a fossil small enough to take home. I end up finding two, one I will give to my brother in law.The sun starts its decent and so we pick up the pace. In the distance we can see a small town on a hill. The town is made of stone homes with flat roofs of wood slats. On top of every home is a year supply of chopped wood, ready to be brought in and burned in barrel stoves. The trail leads up, out of the riverbed and into the quiet town.

A stone paved road divides the town. In front of every home, is a post provided for tying up your horse. At a small store a couple of horses are tied up in front of a building and I look around for the cowboys. It looks just like a cowboy movie. The only difference is that in this area, everyone is Buddhist. Being a Buddhist town, a large arch protects the entrance to the town. Inside the arch is a collection of prayer wheels on each side. As a thin man enters the arch behind us, he spins each wheel.

A prayer wheel is a metal cylinder that has a prayer engraved on it. When people walk by it they spin the cylinder and so say their prayers.

Kauncha halts our ragged train at a small teahouse and we drag our stuff inside. The polite Tibetan woman, who is the owner, invites us to stay. Kauncha says his goodbyes and again disappears.

The location looks so strange that, Tamara and I spend a long time just looking around the seemingly forgotten town. At a small home, we see a sign that offers garlic soup. Inside the stone and wood home sits three tables and a cooking fire, burning in the far corner. Up the stairs I can see two small boys playing with a ball made of a part of some animal. We visit with the owner, a Tibetan woman. She is polite but is concerned about her small daughter. She says that about a week ago, a hot bowl was dropped and the little girl burned her arm. She asks if I can look at the burn. I tell her that I am not a doctor, but she shakes her head and says that I can fix it. The little girl is so sweet maybe a year old.

The burn on the little girls arm looks like it is healing well. As I am looking at the burn, the mother whispers, “Please, help my baby.” I check our backpack but Tamara and I don’t have anything to help the burn heal any faster. I explain to the mother that the wound is not infected and is healing very quickly. The best thing to do is to keep it clean. The woman looks deeply into my eyes and then to my bag. “Please give medicine and make it better. She is small.” My insides tie into a knot as I again tell her that I don’t have anything to help. She turns away disappointed. I feel really strange about not being able to live up the expectations of the four-foot woman.

Day 18
Location-Nepal, Tatopani (three days walk into the Himalayas)
Temp-36 C Altitude-6000ft Weather-Clear and cold at night
City population-85, Witnesses-2 (Tamara and Christopher)

“I don’t know, but those cows look sort of Yakish.”

After some very relaxing days spent in Pokhara, we finally get serious about going on a hike into the Himalayas. After Sunday meeting we met a Brother, Kiran Thapa, and he is the manager of the “Fishtail Lodge and Hiking”. He agreed to talk to us about hiking. We must have spent two hours talking about what we wanted to do and what was possible for us to do.

One of the most popular hikes in Nepal is the Annapurna circuit. It starts out at Pokhara and travels north, around the three main mountains of the area to the border of Tibet. Then the circuit turns east and passes threw the Kingdom of Mustang, then over the Turlong pass and then south back to Pokhara. It takes about 4-6 weeks to finish and travels up to 16,000 feet over the very dangerous Turlong pass.

Another hike we could do is called the Annapurna Sanctuary. The three main mountains in the area are positioned in a triangle shape. In the center of the mountain is an isolated area called the “Sanctuary”, it is used as a base camp for mountain climbing. Kiran tells us that when you are in the heart of the Sanctuary the sun only shines for six hours. The mountains, all extremely high, rise so high above you that avalanches sometimes come down and cover the base camp. He showed us some pictures of the view there and it looked surreal.

Being that we only have a few weeks, we decide to do half of the Annapurna circuit. Just before the Turlong Pass we will turn around and on the way back, possibly travel into the Annapurna Sanctuary. The cost of a guide is very low compared to the peace of mind of not getting lost. It costs $4 a day plus food and lodging for us to have a guide. Kiran tells us that he has an expert guide, named Kauncha, which he trusts. To be legally allowed to travel on foot, out of the cities of Nepal you must have a Trek Permit. Depending on where you want to go and how long, you must get different types of permits. To get the permits is a long and multi-destination process, involving the police station, Immigration and some other conservation department. Kiran, at no extra cost, takes care of the permits for us as he is going to get some permits for some other hikers. Also he shows us where to rent sleeping bags at a good price. While he takes care of all that, Tamara and I spend the rest of the day resting up for our long hike into the Himalayas.

At four AM the next day, we leave our cold dark room and carry our packs down stairs. In the distance the mist has made the mountains look like they are floating on top of the clouds. As the sun comes over the horizon it lights up the stone monoliths with pink and dark shades of blue. It was very pretty and we are very excited to start our hike. When we get to the street, Kauncha our guide is waiting for us.

Kauncha is tall for a Nepali and wears an old dirty parka, sandals and worn pants. His thick hair has streaks of gray and his eyes look very old. When he greets us, he uses good but hesitant English and rarely looks us in the eye, instead looking at our feet.

Catching a taxi, we bounce our way out of town. I sit in the front seat and when ever we make a right turn my door swings open. The driver shows me a rope and indicates it can be used to hold the door closed, but the rope costs extra. Kauncha yells something at the smelly taxi driver and the rope is grudgingly provided for free. To make up for the lost “rope money” the driver speeds up to breakneck speed. When we arrive at the trailhead, ten miles later, we exit the vehicle bruised and very soar. Along the way, I took some pictures of children walking to school. When I got out of the Taxi, I forgot my camera on the seat. Remembering this I turn to walk back to the 35-year-old Chinese car. Before I could start, I see Kauncha snatch the camera back from the slimy driver. I quickly turn away before Kauncha turns around, because I am interested in how Kauncha will handle the situation. Would he try to keep it or extort money from me? The camera is an expensive but good test of his integrity. We will be relying on him for the next few weeks and I am unsure of how far to trust him. While I am thinking this, Kauncha walks up, hands me the small camera and escorts us away from the now upset and yelling driver.

Kauncha helps us put on our bulky packs. His own pack consists of a toothbrush, extra shirt, and an extra pair of sandals. I admire his simple pack. It is strange how western people throw money and technology at any situation only to complicate and over burden themselves. We show Kauncha on our map where we want to go and tell him that we are not sure how far we can or will want to go. He says that he doesn’t care how long we are away. He has no wife and no children, “My life is for Hiking!” he tells us.

It seams anticlimactic to start walking into the Himalayas when you get out of a taxi. But that is how we start. The trail is four feet across and crudely paved with stones. Kauncha says that the tax for the locals in this part of Nepal is to maintain their part of the trail. Each village has a particular part of the trail to maintain. We walk in the cool morning sun and slowly climb up and down small hills. At a small village, we stop at a home that has a sign that says “Phankakes and chikken eggs.” For just under $.45 we all eat too much.

As we walk further into the hills, the villages grow smaller and smaller. At the edge of a 10 home village we are confronted with a police checkpoint. Here, evil looking men with large sticks and silver stars on their caps take our visas and trekking permits. If any part of our paper work is wrong they will extort money from us or send us back to Pokhara. Our papers are heavily scrutinized for twenty minutes and then they reluctantly let us proceed.

We pass children pulling car size buffaloes, men gutting goats and women in the river cleaning rocks with water, soap and thin shirts. As we climb up higher and higher the land changes. For most of the morning, the land is very steep. All of the homes, gardens and even the trails are built on deep terraces built into the mountain. The locals strip the few trees that grow here of one third of their limbs every year, for firewood. This process keeps the trees alive but makes for some strangely shaped trees. As we pass an isolated group of dirt floor homes, a group of small children with runny noses run out. They stop behind a thin gate, point and chatter about Tamara’s blond hair.

As we reach the top of a particularly high hill, we are presented with an incredible view. Before us is a thin deep valley, snaking its way threw six glacier-covered mountains. The valley is so close to the mountains that when there is a landslide, it blocks the river till the river cuts through the blockage. With such a wonderful view, I feel much better about paying $120 in Government fees, Wildlife fees and the standard “White people” fees that make up the Trekking Permit. Even though the trail is used more by the local people than tourists, tourists use more resources and cause allot of damage in the form of garbage that they bring in. To help with the problem, the Government doesn’t allow plastic or aluminum on to the trails.

We stop at a small home for lunch. There a large Tibetan woman, wrapped in a thick wool skirt, cooks us flat bread and rice soup. We sit in front of her short, dirty home on bamboo chairs talking to Kauncha about animals. There are many animals around but they are hard to find he says. There are Panthers, Bears and Deer. I read that a hundred years ago Lions, Giraffes and Cheetahs lived in this part of Nepal. The British hunters killed most of the animals for trophies and the farmers finished the rest. So far we have only seen a monkey chained to a young boy.

When the woman brings us our food, Kauncha calls her “Didi”. He explains that “Didi” means older sister and shows her respect. Kauncha and Didi, talk like brother and sister while Tamara and I inhale our food. It is strong, hot and very spicy but gives us immediate strength. We finish our tea and pay Didi.

According to the guidebook that we bought in Kathmandu, the next part of the trek is called “the staircase”. It is a “endless staircase that rises 1000 meters”, the book says. Our packs, that seamed light at lower levels, have become evil packages of junk as the day progresses. For uncountable hours we walk up stairs and more stairs that are crudely cut into rock and dirt. When it gets dark, Kauncha suggests that we stop at a teahouse for the night. Teahouses are 1-5 room “bed and breakfasts”. They are very primitive but the only choice that you have, unless you bring your own tent. I have pushed myself to my physical limit on these stairs, so I gladly agree to stop. The newly discovered altitude makes our eyes feel strange. They feel like they want to pop out of our heads.

The homeowner, an old bent man, lights an oil lantern and his wife gives us two bowls of Garlic soup. It has large chunks of raw garlic floating in it but we eat like tired hikers. After our soup, we climb up the ladder to the second story of their wooden home. The entire building shifts as we enter our small room. The room is made of crude wood planks and a tin roof, with two cots taking up the entire floor area. We are provided with a candle at no charge. The thing about Nepal teahouses is that they look like dumps as you pass them in the morning, yet resemble palaces as you stumble into one at the end of the day. With our shoes removed we slide into our rented sleeping bags and mumble about the wonderful soup. The stars watch us fall asleep through the cracks in the wall and eleven hours later, the sun wakes us up the same way. At some point during the night I remember waking up and I couldn’t remember where I was. I was obviously outside, was I camping somewhere in Oregon? It took several minutes to remember I was sleeping in a thin house on the side of a mountain in Nepal. It was a strange experience in itself.

The morning is so cold that our angry leg muscles decide not to help us as we climb down the ladder. However, we are rewarded with the warm sun rising over the snowy mountains. Kauncha is up and is brushing his teeth with a ten-year-old toothbrush. The old woman is picking ash from inside the teakettle as the old man squats off the cliff. They all look at us, smile and continue their activities.

We start out slow, trudging up the last part of the “endless staircase”. When we reach the top, we are greeted with a mystic forest. Gigantic rhododendron trees with arms, faces and evil shapes block our path. Some of the trees are bigger than pine trees and they grow in bizarre directions because of years of selective trimming by the locals. As we enter the trees I being to experience a feeling of dread. After a while I understand why. The trees look like the trees from “Babes in Toyland” that came to life and attacked people. I tell Tamara and she says, “I knew I had seen these trees before!” The effect becomes complete as we enter a part of the trail that has us ducking under mangled arms that snag our cloths and stepping over twisted roots that lunge for our feet.

The air is clear and the sun is bright but I don’t feel so great. I pushed myself so hard yesterday that I over did it. After large hills, I have to rest and a few times I had to lie down to catch my breath. No one says anything, but I can see Kauncha and Tamara are walking slower so I can keep up. I am not used to being the weakest in a group. Tamara has no problems at all in carrying her pack. Her vitality somehow makes me feel worse. The people of this part of the world don’t measure distances in meters or feet but in the distance that a man can walk in an hour’s time. It is called a “kos”, I find that a kos takes me a hour and fifteen minutes. After a while the trail starts to take more out of me than just muscle, I am left running on only pride and gristle.

The path leaves the forest and climbs higher. The trail slowly deteriorates into a narrow dirt path almost glued to the side of steep cliffs. At times, landslides completely obliterate the trail and we have to detour. At one point I hear a young boy yelling something but don’t see anyone. Kauncha quickly signals for us to climb up the bank, off of the path. Just as we do a herd of cows rumble past us on the small trail. On the back of the second cow clings a boy of 10 years, hitting his cow with a stick yelling some sort of warning. The agitated cows look strange, with weird horns and wild eyes. Tamara say, “I don’t know, but those cows look sort of Yakish.” Kauncha tells us the cows are a hybrid of cow and yak. Yaks can only live at an altitude of 12,000 feet or above so the locals make hybrids that are much stronger than normal cows and can live below 12,000 feet. He also says that they are evil. “Never stand between a cow and a cliff. They hate their masters and so will knock off anyone they can. ” The yak hybrid cows do have a strange look in their eyes, so we give them as much distance as we can.Most of the homes are made of mud and bamboo with straw for roofs. Bare foot children sweep dirt patios and play with large longhaired dogs, as ancient women weave bright cloth. I ask Kauncha where the men are and he says that they are in the hills chopping wood, catching fish or snaring animals.

After eight hours of climbing with 12 kilos on my back, I make it to our stopping point for the day at 9000 feet. It was just in time as I had run out of all I had, ten minutes ago. Kauncha has ran ahead and reserved a room for us in a large teahouse. I collapse on the bed, thinking about how Kauncha took care of us by getting us a room. Normally, like most American men, I like to be involved in all the procedures of my travels, but it was nice of him. It almost feels like a Discovery Channel Expedition, where I would hire a guide to help us organize a trip into the mountains. I guess that is what I did.

I wake up two hours later with my boots still on and spiders in my hair. A moment of panic comes over me when I realize I don’t know where Tamara is. Looking out the door of our ransack teahouse I see Tamara, in the front yard, sketching the mountains. I wobble my way over to her on numb feet. The table and chairs that we are sitting on is right on the literal edge of a 1000 ft cliff overlooking a deep valley and in the distance the Annapurna Mountains. The time is 7 PM and the sun is just setting. Kauncha brings me a bowl of potato soup and some burnt bread with rancid yak cheese spread on it. He says, “Just before the sun leaves, it will make the mountains turn red.” I don’t know if it is how tired I am but I don’t understand what he means. Just then, the 25,000-ft chunk of Eurasian tectonic plate (mountains) in front of us turns from white and brown to pink. Then the pink turns red. The entire chain of the Annapurna mountain range begins to literally glow with a warm red color. Sixty seconds later, it is over and the sun is gone, leaving us scrambling for a camera. I can’t believe what we just saw! We tried to get a picture of the scene, but it was too fast. Kauncha smiles and says, “I told you it would turn red.”

Within minutes of the sunset, the temperature drops to around freezing. I finish my soup and we move to the communal room inside the dirty teahouse or hotel. Inside the “Snowland Hotel”, the communal room is just what I have always seen in adventure movies. Heavy wood planks make up the walls, ceiling and floor. Benches and tables line the walls and in the middle of the room is a steel barrel wood stove, glowing red-hot, surrounded by four long hair hikers. They are speaking French and nurse their damaged feet. In the back of the smoky room is a kitchen where two young women are burning potatoes and plucking chickens. We order some popcorn and beer and find a bench and table.

I strike up a conversation with a thin old man. He is from Belgium and has been hiking in the Himalayas for thirteen months. A few days ago he traveled over the Turlong Pass. The Turlong Pass is the roughest part of the Annapurna circuit. It is at an altitude of over 16,000 feet and is very stormy and dangerous. Every year, one or two people fall over dead from cerebral altitude sickness. Once every few years a party gets stranded at the pass and will lose a few party members to the elements. I ask him how the pass was and he says that it is as bad as it could be. He says, “My guide started to get the fatal brain swelling so we had to double time it down. Good thing too, cause we barely made it off before a bad storm came and closed the pass. A group of unguided Australians were following us and I think that they are still up there. We barely made it off in time, we couldn’t help them.” He kept stressing that they were unable to help the Australian, all the time looking into his teacup. “I hope they don’t die.” He says.

The old man and I chatted about hiking and played chess as Tamara wrote in her journal and ate popcorn. The Nepali porters and guides sit in a corner, drinking water and eating large trays full of Dal Bhat. They talk in hushed tones about their charges. The day’s walk catches up to me about 9 PM and Tamara and I climbed up a ladder and walked down a six foot high hallway to our padlocked door. The room is well sealed and so the subfreezing temperatures should stay outside tonight.

Tomorrow we want to climb the mountain, Pune Hill, behind us and watch the sunrise. It is a major destination for hikers visiting Nepal. I am so tired that I am not sure I can do it. But maybe some sleep will help.

At 4 AM we dragged ourselves out of bed. Kauncha is waiting for us as we emerge and tells us we needed to hurry. The path up the hill is very dark and partially covered with ice and snow. Slowly our eyes adjust and the moon helps us up the path. After an hour and a half, we reached the top of Pune Hill.

At the top we find 10-12 people that have come to watch the sunrise also. This is the destination of 80% of all hikers to Nepal. Of the people up here, 90% came strait here and will return to Katmandu with their trek in the Himalayas behind them. This sunrise, in this location is the reason that most have come, so they are euphoric to be at their destination. Slowly the sun lights up the sky behind the hills to the right and we all pull our cameras out. Even though Tamara and I have on every piece of clothing we brought with us, we are shivering. The wind makes the 15-degree morning feel like a 0-degree morning.

The sun procrastinates, but finally comes over the edge of the earth. The light strikes the tops of the mountains and they suddenly turn pink then red. We are at an altitude of about 12,500 and the sky is bright blue. The deep valleys on every side are a heavy green. I don’t think that I have ever seen something so beautiful in my life. We take about 45 pictures of the mountains. After an hour of watching the sun invade the terraced farmland, thousands of feet below us, we start the walk down. I look back at the hill and watch the wind blow hundreds of brightly colored Buddhists prayer flags.

When we get back to the teahouse, Tamara and I are both feeling very ill. Tamara has a slight breathing problem and I have a pressure headache that immobilizes me. Tamara is really worried that I may have the cerebral altitude sickness, but Kauncha says that it is not serious. “We will walk tomorrow, rest today.” He says to her. She sits out in the sun and reads a book and I try to sleep. I spend the whole day with an intense headache and nausea. I pushed myself way too hard the day before and am paying for it today. I just hate to let my body tell me what I can and can’t do. I need to become more balanced, but I wouldn’t be my fathers son if pride didn’t overrule my body once and a while.

Kauncha sneaks in every hour and checks on me. About 12 hours later, the pressure in my head is gone and I feel better. When I get to the common room, a bowl of hot Garlic soup is waiting for me. Kauncha is a nice guide. He is 39 years old, doesn’t smoke or drink and has never been married. His caste is Chherri and even though he is a non-practicing Hindu, he believes in all 3 million gods. Although, in a hushed tone he once he told me that there are a couple gods that he doesn’t believe in. I have looked at few other guides, some are drunk most of the time and others treat their charges harshly. However, Kauncha has treated us like little brother and sister. In fact he even calls us “Bey” and “Beyhine”, the Nepali words for little brother and sister.

The next day we leave at 8 AM and start a downhill walk that takes us down 1600 meters into a rhododendron forest. The trees here are even bigger than the last trees we saw. I never knew Rhododendron trees could grow this big. The forest is very quiet and I notice that Kauncha is being extra observant of the surroundings. I ask him what is he looking for but he won’t tell me. Later he says to me, “Don’t tell Beyhine, but sometimes young boys throw rocks and steal things in that forest.” I am glad that he didn’t tell me while we were walking in it.

Eventually we climb our way down to a river. The river is filled with white water, so much that it looks like a milk shake. Huge boulders, as large as houses, sit in the middle of the river. At times the river surges with extra water causing it to quickly climb the rocky banks. After a few hours of following the river up the steep incline we notice the mountains around us. Our trail has been climbing at a steep rate but the mountains around us have climbed at a dizzying rate. In fact, the hill on one side is the 6441-meter mountain of Hiunchuli and the other side is the 8,091-meter mountain of Annapurna 1. According to my guidebook, this is the deepest canyon in the world. The walls of the canyon move often with earthquakes and landslides. Because of this, the trails are often detoured around landslides. Every one that lives from here to Tibet, relies on this road to bring their apples, sheep or yak cheese to market. During a rest stop I talk to a young father taking his child to Kathmandu to see a doctor. The child has a wooden foot strapped to his stumped leg.

Even though it is only 3 PM, the mountains blocks out the sun. It makes the climb even trickier. Just when I think that the trail can’t get any worse, we come to the biggest landslide I have ever seen. Part of the mountain has come down blocking the trail and the river. Kauncha asks an old man, who is picking wild oranges, about the landslide. He tells Kauncha that the landslide came just a few weeks ago. It came down in the middle of the night and just missed the town of Tatopani by a 100 meters on the down stream side. Unfortunately, it blocked the river. When the people came out of their homes to see what happened they were met with a rapidly rising river. Most people were able to take the few things that they owned from their homes and no one was killed but the town was flooded for two days. The army came in and blew up the landslide with dynamite and the water lowered. Just as he was telling us this, a loud powerful “Boom” sounds down the narrow valley. They are still using dynamite, I guess.

We can see our destination, the small town of Tatopani, only ten minutes walk away. But the landslide has blocked our path completely. When we are sure that the blasting has stopped for the day we follow the trail of locals up 800 feet on the most dangerous switch back I could have ever imagined. The week old trail, which was carved out of soft dirt, took an hour to climb. Not an hour of walking, we had to use our hands to climb the steep and shifting trail. At one point we stopped because the next section looked too dangerous. While we were deciding if we should turn around and go back, a huffing Nepali man says “Namistai” and walks past us. On his back are three large sacks of potatoes and a bicycle. He stumbles his way down the 16-inch wide trail, only inches away from a 750-foot drop. Tamara says that she wants to go on and Kauncha says that he will follow us whichever way we decide to go. I decide that we should go on but not strap the packs to us. That way we can drop them if we need to. We nervously make our way across with out incident. Once we pass that part we stumble and slide our way down into the town of Tatopani.

Tatopani means “hot water”. There is a Hot Springs here that the locals come to for mystical healing. The town is very small, maybe fifty feet wide and a thousand feet long. A 6-foot wide, hand paved, rock path divides the two strips of stores, homes and repair shops.

Half way thought the town, we follow Kauncha as he turns into a large arched door. It is a small hotel with an even smaller walled courtyard. Inside the courtyard grow a dozen orange trees next to a giant poinsettia tree. Kauncha says goodbye to us for the night and I give him some money to eat and find a place to sleep. Nepali guides and porters don’t sleep alone in private rooms. They prefer to all sleep in a single large room on the floor.

Tamara and I ask for the nicest room they have. It only cost $.78 for our cement box with two cots and a dim light bulb. After we dump our packs we padlock the door and go to the café. It is an open-air five-table restaurant, built on top of the wall, over the six-foot road. We eat roasted chicken and Dal Bhat.

I strike up a conversation with some young people next to us. The one guy and two girls are from Tasmania. They just finished college and are spending a few months in Nepal. They tell us about their drunken guide. He is such a horrible guide, that they have tried many times to lose him. We really like visiting with them but I need a shower. As we were leaving, Pip (one of the girls) tells us to becareful in the shower.

The shower like all showers in Nepal, is solar heated. Being as the sun has left for the day, I am sure that the water will be very cold. I draw the short straw and so must go first. The wooden structure, that is the shower stall, is very old. When I open the door, the resident rat decides that he doesn’t want a shower today. I should have taken the rats advice. The brown water left me dirtier than when I went in and the thick moss on the floor left small insect bits on my feet. Tamara chose to abstain from that shower. Come to find out, the shower on the other side is the nice one, no one uses the one I used. I mistakenly thought that there was only one shower. Rookie mistake.

That night we slept great in our thick sleeping bags. In the morning, we get up early and walk by the river. Actually we can’t walk very well today and so we hobble over to the Hot Springs. We watch one hundred-year old women bath in the steaming brown soup that is called the Hot Springs. I finally get up enough nerve to take a dip in the hot water. Tamara joined me and it really helps relive our stiff ankles and aching feet.

We explore the strange small town. It consists of 40 buildings lined along the road. The six-foot road is the center of the town in more ways than one. It is used for selling blankets, trading salt, butchering chickens, playing soccer, men to carry rice, donkeys to carry potatoes and for old men to spit on. People are used to move most everything in the mountains, but donkey caravans do pass threw the town once and a while. They are usually loaded with apples or potatoes. Each donkey has a large bell that rings as they walk. Tamara and I really like to listen to the music the donkey trains make as they pass.

We spent our first restful morning in the Himalayas, drinking fresh squeezed orange juice on the roof top café. Listening to the river flow by, smelling the sulfur from the Hot Springs and watching a man below us on the stone road, take fresh sheep intensities and fill them with some yellow soupy stuff.

Nepal is Wonderful.