Coming Down (from masala tea addiction)
At the Ghorepani hotel, there were quite a few characters.
Everyone staying at the place sat around the wood burning stove for heat and spoke english to each other in different lovely accents… French, Chinese, Indian, Nepali, Belgian, Korean, Kentuckian+Texan… There were 3 Korean men who, although they didn’t know very much english, were hilarious.
They hired two porters and a guide for their trek because they brought so much stuff with them… They brought all of their own food from Korea, to be cooked and made for them… At first, I thought it was crazy and wasteful, but then they started sharing the weird stuff they brought with everyone, and it turned awesome😄 They had dried octopus (it still looked exactly like an octopus), snake skin/meat(?), snake skin dried in some kind of sweetness (korean beef jerky?; the sweet snake skin/meat was pretty good!)
And 9 BOTTLES OF SOJU. People tasted it and said it tasted like rubbing alcohol… The biggest one who knew a little english said, “National drink of Korea! Very special!“😂 Yes, sir!
Here they are at the top of Poon Hill the next morning… they brought fake oxygen masks, four or five different signs to take pictures with, and one of them had a sign proposing to his girlfriend!😍
3 crazy koreans + mexican in taiwan + indian + moi
Notice what’s in my hand… masala tea of course. I never thought I would hear myself say this, but I prefer masala tea over coffee. Addicted. Harry ordered it for me everytime we stopped… And now it’s gone😢
That night also included an Epic Blanket Battle between the hotel owner and me over whether or not two blankets was, indeed, warm enough for the night, instead of my requested three or four. In the end, Harry secretly helped me get a third blanket, and although I was still cold, I survived and was able to sleep a little bit with three😚.
random lederhosen guy👍🏼
Watching the new day’s sunlight reflect off the world’s 7th highest mountain, Dhaulagiri, was amazing. Using my not-fit-for-trekking boots to go back down to Ghorepani from Poon Hill was not. I fell twice on the snow/ice.
these boots do not like snow and ice
The boots are super warm, but they have literally no tread. So, Harry and I went back to the hotel to gameplan. The rest of the day, on the path we were supposed to take, it was going to be a few hours of downhill on ice, and he could tell that I really didn’t want to do that. A girl who had been on that trail already told me there was nothing extraordinary about it. So, Harry suggested a different route, with only a little snow and ice. I WAS SO GRATEFUL FOR HIS HELP. I would’ve been stressed for hours trying to go downhill on ice in my boots! So, off we went towards Tatopani, which ended up being totally amazing and beautiful.☺️
lovely
farm land
not a bad view from their yard
(masala tea time)
mountain fried rice:)
When we stopped for lunch, I don’t know what happened, but HARRY DECIDED TO TAKE A NAP!? Unacceptable. (this is also the only time that he DIDN’T eat dal bhat for lunch… I thought he might be sick, so I checked to see if he had a fever… I think the no dal bhat and napping are related, but I have no way to prove it.)
Sleeping will not be tolerated. Jamjam, Harry!
And the mules in the yard next to the restaurant patio were napping too!?
I SAID – SLEEPING WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!
No one listens.
beauty
Nepali traffic jam cam (aka silly western girl freak-out):
It doesn’t matter who or what you are, we all walk the same path. The sound of the bell and the hooves click-clacking on the rock is musical🎶.
orange trees below
sweetest oranges ever
still behind Harry😄
Soooo, walking up and down these mountains is hard enough with just my little pack. We constantly saw people transporting stuff like this:
these women are all ~60 yrs old
They have dried leaves in the baskets. It looks heavy, but is it?
this shit was HEAVY
Harry made me put it down really fast because he was afraid I was going to drop it… that’s how heavy it was, just to pick up! Let alone, walking up a mountain… let alone, being a 60-year-old woman!? I bet their neck muscles are really big.
THEN WE SAW MONKEYS.
nepal gray langur monkeys (I guess they like high altitude)
hello, friend
The scenery the rest of the way down to Tatopani was amazing…
temple on the edge
not ready, Harry
out of 5 pictures he took, this was the best one:/
amazing view from temple – worth the climb I’m sure
we’re going down there.
bridge walkers
kali gandaki gorge
crossing the gorge (harry, u should totally make this your facebook profile)
gandaki river
To this adorable little village in Tatopani just in time (my feet hurt and had blisters😆)! According to my iPhone app, we walked 8 miles and went up 104 flights of stairs. The day before, my iPhone was dead, so I couldn’t record how many flights of stairs we went up, but it was at least 400.😅
archery tournament!
We stayed at a place called Old Kamala Hotel, and there was still no heat, but it was sooo much warmer there than 4k feet higher; I was elated!
(masala tea time)
view from room
view from room
comfort
hotel, from the river
dhaulagiri mountain?
pano
hot springs too
omg, HUGE lemons!
please let me pick one…
always smile
Always smile… even after you accidentally kick a kid’s soccer ball over the cliff into a chicken coop😳.
harry always gave me this for dessert… so nice!
smoke in air, river in background, lone flower thrives
(masala tea time)
waiting for dinner
relaxing
night falls
End of trekking… bittersweet.
Next up: Rafting!
If you can imagine a hidden place, tucked safely away from the world… concealed by walls of high, snow-capped mountains… a place rich with all the strange beauty of your nighttime dreams… then you know where I am.
-the Himalayas, as described by Heinrich Harrer in Seven Years in Tibet.
This is from my favorite scene of Seven Years in Tibet, which is one of my favorite movies. I thought of the movie often in Nepal because I was amongst the Himalayas, but also because it’s obviously a very spiritual film, and the natural beauty of the place ignites my spirituality.
On the second day of my trek, I first saw the mountains of the Himalayas. We climbed up-up-up… up into the sky… gaining ~4,500 feet in elevation (Tikhedhunga is at ~5,000 feet, and Ghorepani is ~9,500 feet).
While I’m a more ‘spiritual’ person, I appreciate all religions AND the literature produced from them. I love the beautifully written poetry of the Bible, particularly Genesis, and I was thinking of it while trekking.
And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
feeling among the vault of clouds
Seven Years in Tibet illustrates the complicated (non-) relationship between Heinrich and his son, whom he’s never met. In a letter to his son, he writes:
In this place where time stands still, it seems like everything is moving. Including me. I can’t say I know where I’m going nor if my bad deeds can be purified. There are so many things I have done that I regret. But when I come to a full stop, I hope you understand that the distance between us is not as great as it seems.
His letter to his son illuminates angst, love, remorse, hope… and he’s internally unsettled.
We’re all searching for something, aren’t we?
I saw this sign on the wall in the dining room of the Chandra Guest House:
HHDL
At that moment, in the headspace I was in, reading those words was extremely impactful.
It’s strange how feelings reach us and escape us as time unyieldingly pushes forward – and suddenly, what was once a worrisome burden is only memory, moved out of the way and replaced.
It takes the right concoction of inspiration and experience… And then we’re no longer chasing ghosts – we’re chasing rhinos, and we’re not building walls but we’re surrounded by walls of snow-capped mountains, and there is a sort of alignment in everything we see, at every moment. Peace.
When we feel there’s nothing more to search for, we do come to a full stop. And in other ways, we’re free to journey onward, to climb other mountains and focus on the true meaning of life.
“Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.”
Chandra Guest House, bottom middle
blues and greens
first hello to annapurna south mountain
splash of red
lunch stop
steps up
waterfall and pool (not quite warm enough to swim)
across the way
waterfall stare
“Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.”
rest break
action shot
under the arch
view from our hotel
ghorepani arrival!
cold selfie in front of hotel
pano
double selfie
view out my window
valley filled with milky fog
“Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.”
you did it, Harry😏
obligatory sign marker photo
annapurnas
annapurnas
annapurnas
I AM IN NEPAL NOW
sunrise
dhaulagiri – good morning, 7th highest mountain on earth
sunrise
annapurnas
sunrise
pano
sunrise
❤️ nepal
God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness.
“Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.”
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Next up: Cool Koreans and Climbing Down
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