Slowly, slowly

“I’ve never worked so hard to get to the Poon.” Robby Staley quotation, after reaching the top of Poon Hill (10,000 feet).

Since I last updated yall, the trip has been a lot more fun, mainly because we went to Nepal and now don’t have to deal with the bs of Incredible India. Nepal still has all the horrible things about India, the annoying touts trying to convince you buy their wares, the child labor, and the numbingly annoying bureaucracy, but none of its as bad as India. On the other hand, Nepal takes all the cool aspects of India, beautiful scenery and some cool cultures, and it amps these aspects up.

Whereas India was rough for me as a traveler, Nepal is a chill place for even the most squeamish of American travelers. Instead of being 115 F, it’s just in the 90’s (at the hottest). The people still try and bother you about their ‘homemade’ statues that they want you to buy, but they give up after you tell them to go away. Child labor is omnipresent, but it doesn't seem to wreck kid’s lives as badly, and the poverty in Nepal is not so horrible, or at least not on the scale that it is in India. That said, here in Kathmandu, its pretty bad. 

In Nepal, we spent a couple of days relaxing in this tourist city called Pokhara. It’s a pretty cool place, it’s the second city of Nepal, a little town hugging the east of Lake Phewa. Hills shoot up around the flat plain surrounding the lake, but towering over these green hills are the white-caped Himalayas.

We did a couple of day hikes around Pokhara a couple of days, and then headed out to do a five-day trek. This might sound really tough, but it was actually something called tea-house trekking. Basically, this entails carrying a couple of pairs of clothes in a little pack and then hiking all day (or until the monsoons pour down on you later in the afternoon). Then, you stop at one of the myriad of teahouses that pepper the trail. These teahouses are more than just restaurants, they also have very basic rooms for wary trekkers. About every thirty minutes, you pass through a village with three or four of these teahouses, so it’s not really that hard to find.

Just as we left on the first day, we asked the hotelier how long it was to the place that we were going to try and get to that afternoon, and she said “Six hours, but slowly, slowly.” There was more truth to that than I realized. That day, we climbed a vertical mile over about seven or eight trekking miles. Slowly, slowly.

The next day, we woke up and, slowly, slowly, climbed Poon Hill (named after Captian Poon). Once we arrived at the top, we were supposed to be able to see about five peaks that are over 24,000 feet. Unfortunately, the view was clouded over, so we only got glimpses of one or two of the peaks, but that was enough. These mountains are taller than you imagined mountains could be. And slowly, slowly we made our way along the edge of the Himalayas. 

From there we hiked a few days, sleeping one night on a little cliff looking up to some of the Himalayan mountains. The every once and a while, when we rested on some rocks, we got more peeks of the peaks, clouds clearing up here and there. The next day, we went to a village with a hotspring. The hotsprings sit on the edge of a surging Himalayan river that drains from a glacier and a 25,000 foot mountain. After a long six hour hike, we slowly, slowly healed our sore joints and talked politics with some Argentinian psychologists.

The next day, we hiked along this Himalayan river out to the road and returned to Pokhara. The next day, we left Pokhara. The bus moved on, slowly, slowly, eventually having to stop at a bridge traffic jam (a bus tried to pass a car, and the bridge is only two ways; there is no rule of law, and no courtesy in South Asia). While we waited out the traffic jam, the clouds finally cleared up, allowing us to see most of this section of the Himalayan range. The mountains dominated the landscape. 

But the pictures really tell more that I can, so check them out.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to post them, because my site is down, but I will let yall know when the pictures are up.