Tales of Teahouse Trekking

It’s been almost two weeks since the last update, so be warned that this one is a bit long.

I started my trek at Baglung Buspark on the north side of Pokhara where I boarded a bus packed with people. Since few people in Nepal own cars and home delivery services are virtually non-existent, buses serve as the only means to move around people’s stuff. Buying a microwave? Bring it on the bus! Buying a new couch? Bring it on the bus! Added to that, people are squeezed into every nook and cranny inside and outside the bus — it is normal to see a handful of people sitting on the roof and a few hanging off the sides. As a result, buses look like a cross between the stock room at Costco and the inside of a crowded elevator.



I quickly made friends with my bus-mates, and got chatting with Manadutta, a squirrely, fast-talking teacher at an English-speaking school along the bus route. As his stop approached, he invited me to come stay with his family for the night and talk to his class in the morning so they could converse with a native English speaker. I hesitated for a minute, then decided just to go for it, trek schedule be damned. We walked from the bus stop in Khare village toward his modest one-bedroom apartment with an outdoor bathroom shared by a few other units. I was greeted by his family, who all make the tiny apartment home: his wife, mother-in-law, 7-year-old niece, and two young sons. They were a lot happier than this in real life:



I spent the night sitting with the family, helping the kids with their homework, and watching TV, which was interrupted every fifteen minutes by frequent power outages. I spent some time with Manadutta and his teacher friend Krishna talking about the Nepali caste system, and he proudly informed me that they are from the Brahmin caste, the highest and most respected of the four caste levels. I asked them if they associate with people of other castes — having them over for dinner, for example. “Of course we can,” they said, which relieved me a bit that the caste system isn’t as restrictive as I previously thought. They quickly added, “but they can’t eat our food or touch anything.” Oh, I see.

After speaking to the teachers for a bit, we all sat on the floor and were served a massive dinner of dal baht — essentially rice topped with lentil soup — on a platter the size of a hubcap. Trying my hardest not be rude I made it my goal to finish the absurd amount of rice, but after more than an hour of constant rice-eating my stomach felt like it was going to explode and I had to give up. The rest of the family finished their enormous portions without a problem and looked at me like I was an idiot.

The next morning, we headed with the kids to Manadutta’s school, and it was quickly clear that I was in way over my head. A school-wide assembly was called for my presence, and the few hundred uniformed students lined up in rows outside to wait for their special guest of honor: me. I’m normally fairly comfortable talking in front of people, but I was totally out of my element. I had about ten seconds to scrape together something to say before I was shuffled in front of the mass of kids between the ages of 4 and 16. My glorious self-introduction went something like this: “Hi... um... I’m Ryan... and um... I’m from... uh... America.” Cue the chirping crickets.



A few awkward moments aside, I managed to talk for about fifteen minutes about traveling, each member of my family, my hobbies, what I did back in school and at work, and most importantly how much I love Nepal. The kids seemed fairly interested and laughed a couple of times at my lame off-the-cuff jokes. After my speech, Manadutta took me to speak to his 10th grade class, which was much more my speed. The kids spoke great English, and it was really fun getting to talk to them for an hour or so. I left the school and boarded the bus again to finally start my trek at the nearby village of Naya Pul.



Over the course of ten days my planned trek would take me from Naya Pul to the holy city of Muktinath, which is the easier and more luxurious half of the famous 3-week Annapurna Circuit trek. Trekking here is a bit unusual compared to the normal camping/backpacking routine: the route is so popular that most of the 50-some villages along the way have guesthouses and restaurants for trekkers, eliminating the need for camping gear like sleeping bags, tents, and stoves. With a light pack on my back, I set off hiking through brilliant green rice paddies and villages before spending my first night in a cheap-but-cozy guesthouse in Tikedungha where I sipped tea and finished the excellent novel White Teeth by Zadie Smith before heading to bed.

The next day’s 5,000 foot vertical climb was rough, and my slothful days in Kathmandu finally caught up with me as I struggled for almost eight hours up to the village of Ghorepani. The trip was punctuated every thirty minutes or so by hundreds of goats streaming down the hill in huge herds kept in line by a handful of whistling, yelping and rock-throwing Nepalese men. After seeing several huge groups of goats, I asked around about why all of the goats were heading down the hill. Apparently, they’re all being brought to Pohkara and Kathmandu for an upcoming annual Hindu festival where each family ritually slaughters a goat for good luck. Yikes.

(goat stampede video coming soon)

Once in town I rested my aching legs and chatted with Howard and Adam, British and Aussie respectively, two cool guys who were at the tail end of their year-plus trips around the world. I awoke the next morning well before sunrise and joined virtually every trekker in town climbing Poon Hill, known for its unmatched Himalayan views. For most of the trekkers, the trip up the hill marked the final morning of the marathon Annapurna Circuit trek, leaving everyone in a great mood. Since I was going the other direction, I had to head back down to Ghorepani and keep on trucking.

(video at sunrise coming soon)



The next day took me over the crest of the hill and back down a knee-jarring (or if you prefer, Nee-jarring) four thousand feet of stairs on my way to Tatopani village, home to a relaxing hot spring plus great guesthouses and restaurants. Over the next few days, the weather turned sour and I marched for a few days in the fog and rain from village to village. Along the way I walked past people carrying massive loads strapped to their foreheads, the most impressive of which was a man carrying two dozen live chickens in an enormous cage with nothing more than his head. I also passed hundreds more soon-to-be-dead goats, which occasionally blocked the path and delayed my journey. On one occasion I had to wait by a bridge for over an hour waiting for a few hundred goats to make it across. I asked one of the herders if I could just cross anyway, even if it scared the goats a bit. “No no no, sir. Goats are dumb. If you scare one and it jumps into the river, they will all jump into the river.” I was disappointed that I even asked — being responsible for such a ridiculous event would have been priceless.



The bad weather spoiled some of the Himalayan views for the next few days as I hiked gradually uphill from Tatopani to Ghasa to Larjung, but the thick fog occasionally led to some cool scenes of its own, like this bridge to nowhere:



By the way, if looks like the bridge guardrails are only about two feet tall, that’s because they were. Those bridges really get shaking and swinging sometimes, and this one was like standing on a balance beam during an earthquake. It was a bit frightening.

By the seventh day of hiking and I had made it to Nepal’s “Apple Capital,” a village called Marpha which is responsible for growing the majority of the area’s apples. The town sits under mountains that look strikingly like the ones above my hometown Golden, but with a much different scene below: instead of a city there are crumbling stone houses perched along the side of the foothills with narrow streets and alleys that weave through town. It is one of several Thakali villages, which is an ethnic minority that is like a cross between Nepalese and Tibetans, and the village reminded me a lot of Tibet — but with way more apples. I went to a restaurant where I ordered the locally made Marpha Apple Brandy, which tasted a lot more like rubbing alcohol than it did like apples. I also tried the homemade apple pie, which was considerably more delicious, and didn’t make me want to puke like the brandy.

My next stop was the village of Kagbeni set in a desert landscape, which is as close as you can get to the famed Upper Mustang area, which is closed to tourists who don’t cough up the outrageous $700 permit fee. Just a few miles from Tibet, Kagbeni was much more Tibetan than any of the previous villages. I visited the tiny monastery, which turned out to be a highlight of the trek: I entered the one-room building and a monk invited me to sit down with him and listen to the handful of monks rhythmically chanting. I sat for almost an hour with the monks mesmerized by the mood in the room, and even managed to catch some of the sounds with my camera which I hid underneath my leg. After I made my way outside, two monks got on the roof and blew trumpets that echoed all over town.

(sounds of monks chanting coming soon)
(sounds of the trumpets coming soon)

Here’s a shot in the town looking out toward the forbidden Upper Mustang area:



Almost at the end of the trek, I headed up the hill toward the holy city of Muktinath at 12,150 feet which has a temple complex housing a miraculous eternal flame, powered thanks to a natural gas source below ground. The city is a must-visit for Hindus, and is a major pilgrimage center. Most of the devout made the trek for days by foot, but some of the Kathmandu elite opt for the much easier option and chartered a helicopter directly to the temple area. People splashed through the 108 fountains of holy water and donated money to the holy saddhus, who apparently come to Muktinath from as far away as southern India.



Yesterday, I made the final leg of the trek down the hill to Jomsom, where there is an extremely small airport with daily flights back to Pohkara. Flights get cancelled constantly because the planes have to fly through the Himalayas and as a result they’re not really wild about flying when its foggy. I met some delightful fellow Coloradoans along the trail down to Jomsom who also had plans to fly the next morning, so we all crossed our fingers for good weather. Our last night of the trek was spent drinking beer and brandy, singing songs and dancing with their wonderfully goofy Nepalese guide and porter. Here’s a couple videos of the action:

(video to come)
(video to come)

This morning we woke up early with skies clear and made the one-minute walk to the airport. Once we made it through airport security — about as strict as security at a Rockies game — we made our way out to the frighteningly tiny 16-person plane with the Himalayas in the background:



The flight was short and the plane flew unbelievably low to the ground, but it wasn’t as bad as you’d expect from such a little plane. The Coloradoans and I landed back in the warm air of Pohkara where I settled in at my old hotel, took a proper shower, watched a little CNN, and shaved for the first time in almost two months. Now I’m beard-free, preparing to head into hot n’ smoggy India where I’ll likely spend the next couple of months. The scale of my India plans keep getting bigger the more I read about it, so I’m planning on staying for a couple of months, assuming I like it enough to stay for that long. If not, I’ll get out of there and head over to Thailand.

Once I’m on a decent internet connection in India, I’ll upload all of the missing photos and videos from the last month in Nepal. Thanks for your patience!

And if your friend told you to jump off a bridge...

Every day in Kathmandu, I inevitably walked past the office where you sign up to do something that I had never really considered doing before: bungee jumping. The office just sits there tempting you to come in with a big poster outside of a guy hurling himself off of a bridge down into the valley below. As I was updating the website last time, my friend Rob was sitting behind me the entire time trying to talk me into jumping with him. It didn't take much convincing; I had seen the bridge on the way in from Tibet, and it looked unbelievable. A few posts ago, I talked about the gorgeous valley coming into Nepal — now I was planning to jump off a bridge into it.

We got up to the pun-tastically named Last Resort, the final stop before the border with Tibet. In our jumping group were about ten kids from London who were on a trip helping out a Nepalese orphanage. The bus pulled up right next to the bridge, and we had to walk across it in order to get to the actual resort. I went silent and turned eggshell white along with everybody else as I slowly made my way across. Walking on that bridge for the first time was so frightening I practically had to change my underwear afterward. We nervously got instruction from the very professional staff before we weighed ourselves and got in order from heaviest to lightest. As fourth-heaviest, I was the fourth person to jump, which suited me just fine; enough time to see how it works, but not enough time to dwell and freak myself out.

After twenty minutes it was my turn to jump. I put on a harness and the extremely tight feet shackles and they locked me into place. After saying my last words into the camera — "Sorry Mom and Dad!" — I stepped out onto the platform and tried not to look down.



I put my arms out and pushed off hard from the platform to the insanely intense freefall that awaited me, one of the longest bungee freefalls in the world at more than 500 feet. The freefall part was definitely one of the scariest things I've ever experienced — the only thing I remember thinking was oh shit! which I said quietly to myself out loud on the way down. Once the bungee cord pulled me back up toward the bridge, I was having a blast and I bellowed out the loudest scream of my life, which echoed throughout the valley. I have a video of the whole thing on my camera which I'll try to upload, and I bought the surprisingly well-produced DVD of my jump, which I'll show everyone when I get home. Here's a shot of one of the Brits jumping:



Rob and I stayed the night at the resort, which was wonderfully relaxing after an overwhelming morning. The place had really good food, nicely maintained grounds, and a hot tub sized swimming pool. We went on a hike as the sun went down and wandered into a nearby rural village, which was full of kids who loved to get their pictures taken and see the results on the back of our digital cameras. After I took this one, all the kids swarmed me and practically pried the camera out of my hands.



Back down in Kathmandu, I enjoyed another phenomenal meal at our favorite Muslim Halal restaurant, before saying goodbye to Rob and Lauren and parting ways with each other for the first time in almost a month. They are off to West Bengal in India, were I'll be in a couple of months.

I woke up at sunrise the next morning and grabbed a rickshaw to the bus station where I boarded a bus to Pokhara, a town about seven hours northwest of Kathmandu. The bus ride was pretty brutal: we got stuck in accident-related traffic for almost two hours where we crawled along, barely moving. Without air moving past the open windows, the bus became excruciatingly hot and I was drenched with my own sweat. To make matters worse, Nepalese people haven't joined the deodorant revolution so it stunk like hell in there. After a fairly awful ride I made it to Pokhara, bartered with a sea of hotel operators and jumped on the back of a guy's motorcycle where I was taken to my Lakeside area hotel. Pokhara is awesome — it actually reminds me a lot of Grand Lake in Colorado.



So far I've done some city exploring, taken a boat out onto the lake, and eaten some delicious meals including some fresh fish from the lake (yes Dad, I ate fish voluntarily). The power goes out all the time here, so I've eaten a lot of meals and read by candlelight, which has been really fun. It also rains unbelievably hard from about 4-9 every day because it is currently monsoon season in South Asia, which has claimed the lives of a boatload of people in the last few weeks (Actually... I guess it was probably the people who weren't in boats).

In a few hours, I'm going to get on a bus to the Annapurna mountain range and start an eight-day trek toward the city of Jomsom. The trek sounds pretty cool: there are about fifty villages and towns along the way, most of which have places to stay for trekkers. Hopefully I'll meet up with some trekking partners along the way. I've been gone for 75 days so far, and I've only spent about five days travelling by myself because I’ve been lucky enough to meet cool people along the way. Hopefully the streak continues!

Thanks for reading, and I'll update again after my trek. — Ryan!

Sorry... only a few photo updates for today. I'm trying to keep up with it, but the Internet speed in Nepal is straight out of 1996, so it's almost impossible.

Voluntarily stuck in Kathmandu

I’ve been in Nepal's capital for almost two weeks, which has flown by at an incredible rate. A lot of long-term travelers talk about the importance of taking a vacation from your vacation, and Kathmandu has definitely served as mine.

Due to the ongoing political situation with the Maoist Rebels, few people come to Nepal for safety reasons, and the tourist industry in the Thamel district (the regional tourist Mecca) has been hit really hard over the last ten years as a result. Fortunately, in the last six months the situation has calmed down quite a bit because the Maoists have been recognized as a legitimate political party in the country. The Maoists still cause some serious trouble in villages on the far east and west sides of Nepal, but aren’t a threat in major cities and tourist areas. Walking around the city, I've accidentally stumbled upon some non-violent Maoist demonstrations a couple of times, from which I've stayed well away. Although all reports I've read say that the Maoists — especially those in big cities — aren't using violence as a part of their demonstrations, it's best to just steer clear whenever possible.

Despite the situation being the most stable it has been in ten years, the Maoist revolt is still labeled as a civil war, and has kept many travelers from coming to Nepal. This has been great for everyone that is here: the place is basically paradise, and is super-cheap because they're desperate for business. The city has a remarkably established tourist infrastructure, mostly brought about in the 60s, which has been a fantastic change of pace from Tibet. Where Lhasa had a handful of tourist hotels and a few restaurants catering to the tastes of Westerners, Kathmandu has hundreds upon hundreds within a ten block area.

I'm living like a king here. I sleep as late as I want each morning then watch a little bit of CNN on my room's satellite TV before heading downstairs to grab a glass of fresh squeezed juice at a stand ten feet from my hotel. After some city exploring and a hearty lunch, I come back to the Thamel for some time on the Internet. Then I meet up with my friends Rob and Lauren (from the Mt. Everest trip) every night for a great dinner and beers. The service standards are really high here as well — waiters are often as good as they are in the US, and the guys at my hotel treat me like I'm staying at the Ritz (okay, maybe more like the Holiday Inn). The best part is that I'm only spending around $15 per day for all of this — a seriously pleasant way to spend a couple of weeks.



The Thamel area may be a delight for tourists, but it does have a dark side. When we arrived we met Sushil, a 16-year-old kid who moved to Kathmandu six months ago from a small rural town in order to attend acting school. When he's not in class, he works in the Thamel trying to earn commissions by bringing tourists into trekking shops and tour operators. He's a remarkably smart kid (he's picked up English in less than six months without a teacher), and Lauren has taken it upon herself to take him under her wing. By getting to know Sushil, we've quickly realized that life in the Thamel for locals is a whole different world than it is for tourists. I was walking with him the other day and he got dragged into an alley by an older guy and was threatened for money. Last night at dinner, Lauren forced him to come clean about the bruises which recently appeared around his neck. Apparently, the man who had allowed him to temporarily sleep on the floor until he found a place came home drunk and on drugs and strangled Sushil with his own necklace. The guy wanted money because he saw Sushil walking around with us foreigners so much during the day, and the man knew we had to have given him some money. Luckily, Sushil got out of there alive and was able to move into a new apartment yesterday in a different area. Despite all he's been through, Sushil is remarkably positive about his life and talks about how the drugged-out guys have no future and no hope, and as long as he keeps learning and shooting for his acting goals, he'll be successful. Here he is with Lauren eating the traditional Nepali spread, which you eat with your hands:



Although I've done a ton of hanging out and relaxing, I've also done my fair share of cultural stuff too. First off, you can't walk two minutes in the city without tripping over a 500-year-old temple — it's really incredible. I did seek out some culture as well: one of my favorites was a visit to the Buddhist temple which everybody calls the "Monkey Temple" because of its large number of primate inhabitants. These aren't the cute monkeys that swing around at the zoo either — they're the creepy monkeys that freak everybody out.



Lack of cuteness aside, it was fun to see a bunch of crazy monkeys jumping and running around, often scurrying from the locals who get great joy out of throwing stuff at them. The temple itself was really cool and felt much different than the Tibetan monasteries that I visited previously on the trip.



A few days ago the city celebrated Indra Jatra, one of Nepal's many festivals. The several-day event revolves around the Kumari, a young girl considered to be a living goddess. In reality, she is selected in a process similar to that of the Dalai Lama — based largely on physical similarities to the previous Kumari and whether or not the little girl recognizes her predecessor's personal possessions. The final candidates get placed inside a dark room full of men in frightening masks and see which girl gets scared the least, who becomes honored as the Kumari, a living goddess.

The festival itself kicks off in Kathmandu's Durbar Square, the cultural center of the city. Thousands of people turned up and waited for the Kumari to come out of her house, where she climbs into a big chariot and gets carried toward the parliament building, where the king greets her before she goes on a whirlwind tour through the city. The initial ceremony was a little bit dry — standing and waiting for three hours to see a little girl get carried around is not terribly exciting. I did have fun seeing huge masses of women dressed in colorful saris all over the square along with a couple of super-stoned dreadlocked dudes (I forgot their proper name, so I’m going with "dudes"):



For me, the best part was seeing the procession weave through the city streets, which I stumbled upon by accident the night after the opening ceremony. The drumming, chanting, and festivities were exponentially more intense than the formal ceremony the day prior. Here's a video of the elephant Ganesh on his way through the street a few minutes before the Kumari came by in her chariot.

(video coming eventually...)

Other than hanging out and going to the festival, I've spent a fair amount of time at the Indian Embassy trying to get a visa to get into the country. The process is remarkably difficult and has taken me a total of five trips to the embassy, which luckily is only a 20 minute walk from the Thamel. The waiting area at the visa office is a bit like cantina from Star Wars (photo here in case you’re not a nerd). One guy was talking to himself and occasionally yelled at everybody else in line about "how much they love to see everyone suffer." There is also some unspoken rule that if you're planning to go to India, you must have given up on bathing sometime back in the last century. I'm not known for my hygiene, but I looked pristinely clean compared to everyone else. I finally got my visa a few minutes ago, which set me back a whopping $70, seven days of trying, and about 15 hours of waiting in an elaborate series of poorly-organized lines.

Considering how difficult it is to get into either of the two countries that border Nepal — China-occupied Tibet to the north and India to the south — I'm amazed anybody actually leaves the country. In that regard, Nepal is kind of like a room that has doors that only open to the inside; easy to get in, hard to leave. Considering the current tourist industry struggles, I doubt that'll change any time soon.

I'm planning to convince myself to leave the easy-going luxury of Kathmandu soon and keep on trucking. I have all the necessary trekking permits for the Annapurna Conservation Area where I'll spend a week trekking and a few days whitewater rafting before I head off to India through Nepal's Chitwan National Park on the border.