The rain lasted most of the rest of the day and into the evening last night. There was a great group staying at the tea house though so the confinement was pleasant. I chatted with some ladies from Australia, a couple from England and another couple from Spain. We ended up playing Uno for a while but everyone went to bed by 8pm (me included).
Morning view. Always awesome to wake up and see what I can see.
We got started hiking around 7:00am and 6.5 hours later arrived at our destination- Durali. I’m exhausted. My legs are rubber and my brain is fried. The only positive thing about this is that everyone who is here with me at our tea house in Durali, including Prem, feels the same way. The hike today was a killer one. I knew Prem wasn’t quite telling the truth about the first day being the worse. I personally thing today was at least equal to it. The route was the usual up and down interspersed with level ground. More up, though, since we were gaining around 600 meters or so today. The initial path was exactly what I had become used to, well constructed, if challenging, steps leading up and down and so forth. But after a couple of hours I felt like I was back in the Langtang Valley. When is a path not a path? When it is a dried up riverbed, that’s when. Except for much of the day, it was our route, too. That meant roughly spaced, irregularly shaped, randomly sized stones all over the place- mainly up. The whole time I was thinking to myself how much fun it was going to be to come down….
Looking forward along the path.
I have to admit it was really draining, especially after about four hours. From the start though I set my brain and body into “turtle mode” and just kept going slowly and steadily. Like yesterday we would get passed by porters and trekkers, then they would stop, I would trudge by, passing them, then repeat. At the end of the day, though, I beat most people to Durali. Certainly, I was not racing! Remember that fable of the tortoise and the hare? Well, it tells the story correctly.
Today was another day that was really all about mind games more than anything else. Unfortunately we were passing signs that documented how long, in hours, it was until the next village. Quite frankly I would rather not have known. Knowing sets up expectations and then when or if those expectations are not met, then the disappointment is hard to manage. Ignorance would have served me much better as I trudged along. I could have been pleasantly surprised when, all of a sudden, I was at my destination.
Despite the difficulty of the trail it was quite beautiful to walk through the forest. It was sub-tropical and reminded my of a Caribbean island.
For those of you familiar with my definition of Type 2 fun, today was full of it. I remember thinking to myself at one point, after about five hours “What was I thinking? Am I nuts? I could be sitting on a beach somewhere…”. But then I would raise my head from the contemplation of my feet, glance around at the scenery, and decide I wasn’t nuts. Thus I had to accept that I was experiencing a “type 2” moment. (For those of you who don’t know what Type 2 fun is: It is the kind of fun that you realize after the fact. While you are living through the experience it is not fun at all, but looking back at it later, you find out it was, in fact, fun.)
The day was partly sunny; there were still quite a bit of clouds drifting around, up and down, the valleys (kind of like the path!) and amongst the peaks. I would look up from time to time and get a tantalizing glimpse of the surrounding monstrous mountains, then they would hide in the clouds once more. The only good thing about having the cloud cover that we did was that I never overheated. I was hiking in a short sleeve, thin shirt and pants. It was weird to be passing people who had on wind breakers with long sleeves, wool caps, scarves and in some cases gloves. I would have passed out from heat exertion if I was wearing half the clothes they were. I am guessing the ambient temperature was somewhere between 50-60 degrees F. So for me, the lizard woman, to be running around in short sleeves, you can imagine the heat I was emitting!
Waterfalls are everywhere. Nepal has not only lots of rocks but lots of water, too.
As we walked along today, and yesterday too, we kept running into big groups of Koreans. Seriously, I don’t think there is anyone at home minding the country. They are all here trekking around the trails in Nepal. In big groups. Their porters are carrying huge loads (I refer you to the picture of a porter passing us by posted on yesterday’s blog.) The other big group of people I have encountered are the French. They are moving in smaller groups, but they are here in force too. I have not encountered many Americans at all, maybe a handful. Prem tells me most of the Americans and British head over to Everest base camp. The next most populous groups are Thai and Australian. I do hear, occasionally, some Eastern European languages as well.
This was one of the more impressive sights- this guy was carrying a 20 foot wood beam up this difficult path!
Durali only has a few tea houses so it is kind of a constriction point for people heading to Annapurna base camp. Each tea house is packed and some of the tourists will be sleeping in the dining room. I am sharing my room with at least one other person (so far), a girl named Aneke. I have a hunch we will have another room mate as there are two other beds in there. Ought to be interesting!
Crossing this bridge has been the scariest thing I have done. it is skinny and made of logs that flex when you walk on them.
It’s cold up here and I am back in all of my layers. I suspect that I will be sleeping in all of them too….
Our evening stop