Day 12 - The Descent

The trail today was slippery and muddy from the rain that has been plaguing the area for the last few days. We stopped at the bamboo benches and debated at Sinuwa whether to continue or not, but Chhomrong lay within view below us and, at the time, it seemed silly to spend an extra night in this village when the next looked so obtainable. It was that last leg though that did in my knees. An hour and a half straight down to the river was followed by straight up the other side. All in the pouring rain. John claims that he doesn't ache at all. Maybe he's not into admitting defeat. But I ache enough for both of us, and then some. I have officially proclaimed tomorrow a rest day.

Tonight we are sitting in the dining area of the Moon View Lodge. It's the same lodge that we rested at for a day on the way up to Annapurna Base Camp. There is a great crew of trekkers staying here: two from New York, a girl from Portland who claims she attracts American's like a magnet (this may be true, we've never encountered so many in one place), a doctor from Scotland, a man from Britain who introduces himself as being from England but living in Israel, two Irish girls, three Americans working in the Peace Corp in Thailand, a Swiss and one traveller from Iran.

Meeting people in the lodges at the end of the day is perhaps the best part of trekking here aside from the great views. This particular lodge has a generator and electric lights so we are able to stay up talking well past the 6 pm sunset without fishing for our flashlights or breathing the intense kerosene fumes from the lanterns other lodges use.

Everyone at the table has recounted the countries they've visited and their upcoming travel plans. That seems to be the first topic of conversation everywhere. The Scottish woman has just spend two years in New Zealand and is on her way home; the Swiss man has been traveling for 15 months already and can't decide where to go next; The Peace Corp workers end their assignment in four months and head home; the girl from Portland is thinking about heading back to India for a month. Through all of this, Reza, the Iranian is trying to understand why more American travelers don't visit his country.

A lot of travelers come to Nepal from India, so we get a plethora of stories about India. The Brit told us about the bed-bug hotel and his short-lived career in Bollywood (Bombay's Hollywood) wearing a pair of pink pajamas in an Indian B-rated movie doing dance moves from "Saturday Night Fever". Then we heard about his attempt to get out of Kashmir when a tunnel there was assigned to traffic moving the wrong way (every other day the traffic direction in the tunnel switches).

It was a crazy story; they pretended one of the women with them was sick and had to get through to see a doctor. The Indian in charge of the road that day had a better solution, the army doctor, he was just up the hill. So they went along with the charade. The woman got out of the jeep with a limp and hobbled up the hill until one of her friends whispered to her that they'd told the doctor she had a stomach ache. So she switched instantly to doubling over, hoping the Indian wouldn't notice the sudden change in pain centers. The army doctor checked her over, concluding that indeed she was very ill and then produced the cure all in some sort of clear liquid. The girl drank the liquid, spitting it out while the doctor wasn't looking and continued to writhe in pain.

While all of this was happening on the hill, the tunnel below had been opened for a short time for some other reason. The Brit and his friends stood on the hill at the doctor's tent and watched their opportunity to get through the tunnel roll away.

Other stories like the invasion of the termites and a close encounter, eye-to-eye, with a cobra filled the evening. At 9 O'clock the lights flickered, our signal that the generator would be turned off in 15 minutes. Getting up from the table was painful. My muscles had seized from sitting so long. Before getting into bed, I strained my tired leg muscles to check the slate floor underneath for stray snake skins. Unlikely, but why risk a nightmare. "John, give me a hand getting back up will ya?"