Trekking Day 2

We had set up our tent the night before in the dark in front of the church. We woke up in the morning to a beautiful site. The village of Gatlang lay just below us with the low mountains (they call them hills!) all around with the Langtang Himalayan mountain just ahead. A breathtaking view!

I wondered where we were going to make a campfire when Shem started taking up the wooden floorboards to the church! Below was dirt, a firepit and metal grill. For breakfast we had chai and wai wai (an amazing sort of roman noodles with really good spices).

Shortly after breakfast the children came. There is a school next to the church and the kids seem to have a honing beacon for foreigners. Today, they were mostly circling and staring, but were particularly curious about the water bladder.

Shortly after 8 am, some adult villagers started coming by the church. They were looking for medical help from us. This happened very often and almost everywhere we went in the village people were telling us of their physical problems. They have no doctor living there and the next doctor expected to come won't be November. The first woman to come had serious breathing problems, head pains and eye problems. Again, this became a very common set of symptoms, almost entirely from women. Shem said it was from the cooking fires, which are in the middle of their house and most have no chimney so they are constantly getting smoke in their eyes and lungs. We also saw in a lot of the women, their eyes have started to permanently turn to the side (opposite of crossing). Tom and I are not doctors, so we prayed for her and gave her some ibuprofen for the pain. (Sigh).

In the later morning we started to go visiting some of the homes of the village. I'm amazed by the handcarved windows and doors. I had seen the work before in Durbar Square, but assumed it was historic art not current. I'm pleased because it is so beautiful and everywhere.

House #1 – had tea, prayed for woman with trouble breathing. While praying 6 woman joined us carrying huge loads of firewood strapped to their head.

House #2 – had tea and whole boiled potatoes.

In this area, potato is the major crop and so we were constantly being offered potatoes, whole boiled potatoes. I actually really love potatoes, so had no problem just sitting to a lunch of whole boiled potatoes dipped in chilli sauce. However, in the first 24 hours we counted that I ate 17 whole boiled potatoes. Tom had 24. See photo for a typical plate we were each given.

House #3 – had tea, visited, started to learn some key words in the local language of Tamang. Heard a weird humming and noticed a huge swarm of bees (thousands!) flying past the door. Tom asked if we should close the door. No one seemed nervous.

House #4 – had tea and boiled potatoes. When we first came into the house, it was very dark so the husband went and took apart some of the roof to let light in. It was effective.

House #5 – more smoke issues, but delicious boiled potatoes.

House #6 – went to Prem's house for dinner again. We are having daal bhaat and I'm not very hungry as I had eaten many potatoes. However, I take what I'm given and begin my first meal of sneaking rice to Tom when no one is looking.

Here is the dilemma. The guests are served first and the most and then constantly urged to take more. Only when the guest have finished eating can the family begin and only when the family has finished eating does the person who cooked the food (nearly always the woman) eat what is left. Further, I'm told that it is rude here to share food from your plate with another. It's also rude not to finish what is on your own plate. The women seem to assume that if you eat slowly or not everything that you don't like it and will tell you that you don't like it. I, unfortunately eat slowly and also fill up fast. This meal was to begin my dread of meals. The food was good and I liked it, but the amount of rice I was given was appropriate to someone who has worked hard labor all day, not someone who had only been eating potatoes and visiting all day! A huge dilemma for me. Tom, however, is a bottomless pit and the women loved how much and how fast he eats. Grrr. But, Tom is my hero as we devised a system of diversions so that when the host and hostess were distracted I could quickly dump food to his plate, which he promptly devoured. I should also mention that Tom continued to lose another 5 pounds on this trip.

Trekking Day 1

We left home with our packs at 5 am and walked to the church to meet our travel companions: Pastor Shem, his adopted daughter Yungchin (from Gatlang Village) and Pastor Prem (of Gatlang Village). We took a taxi to the bus park across town, took some Dramamine and were ready for our 11 hour bus ride to near the Tibet border. There had been a “Bandh” (a transportation strike organized by the Maoists) north of the city the day before and so the bus was full and crowded with every space taken and about 20 people on the roof. We had gotten our tickets a couple days before so we had a seat, but many people were standing in the aisles throughout this journey. About 1 hour into the bus ride passengers were being held out the open door so they could vomit. Thank the Lord for Dramamine and an ipod! As we continued on our journey more people joined us on the already crowded bus and sacks of rice, potatoes, and flour were also stacked in the aisle with children perching on top for seating. I think at one point there were some children even sitting on Tom. I asked Shem if this was normal and he just smiled. I don't think it was normal though because as we passed village after village I would see people come out of their houses staring openmouthed at us and at how many people were on the roof. This reaction made me a little nervous …

However many times I thought we were going to tip over and roll thousands of feet below, we never quite did and made it safely (though perhaps a few years of life shaved off) to our final bus stop. We retrieved our luggage, our headlamps and continued the last two hours of journey on foot, finally reaching the village of Gatlang and a welcome meal of daal bhaat at Pastor Prem's house.

Take to the hills!

So we are getting out of Kathmandu Valley this week with all of it's pollution and heading up to Langtang National Park in the Himalayan Mountains (the mountain range of Mount Everest). The pictures I'm putting here give a glimpse into the amount of air pollution in the Kathmandu Valley. The two pictures are roughly the same except one was taken during a normal day in Kathmandu and one was taken the day after a rare rainfall that temporarily swept the air pollution out. Pretty incredible.

Anyway, we are heading up to a very remote part of Nepal for 8 days where we will visit two villages that are a few hours hike to the nearest road. The trip there includes: a 30 minute hike, followed by a 20 minute landrover ride, followed by a very curvy 11 hour bus ride (if we don't hit any areas where strikes are going on), followed by a hike up to the village which apparently takes a nepali 2 hours, and a really fit Hawaiin guy 4 hours so anybody's guess on how long it will take us. I'm really looking forward to the trip and seeing what village life is like here in Nepal. We plan on taking lots of pictures and have actually phoned ahead to the two villages to let them know of our plans to take a ton of family portraits. It is very rare to have any photos at all of your family in this area and people absolutely love them so we decided to set up a number of shooting days to take photos and get them printed and sent back to the villages from Kathmandu. We are also taking a couple of medications with us to hand out. It is amazing the number of people who die from diarrhea so we are taking a number of Imodium pills and rehydration powders, as well as a Katadyn water pump and iodine for our own water.

Oh and I thought this was pretty funny. One of the doctors who has been working here in Nepal for many years told us that we should really be hoping to be sleeping in a hut that has cow dung for a floor. The other possibilities are concrete and wood which he said will either be filled with bed bugs or extremely hard to sleep on. I've never hoped to sleep on cow dung before but life's full of surprises!

So we will be back on the 30th and appreciate your prayers for the villages of Gatlang and Nesing as well as our own health and travel.

Nepali Style

Spring has come and the days are hovering in the late 70s, early 80s. It's wonderful! The spiders have come out as well. I told Tom about a week ago that it was getting warmer and the spiders would be coming. I have sort of an issue with spiders so I have to keep my eyes open or I will be dreadfully surprised. So far, we've only had one major spider come in. I told Tom to get him in such a way as to send a message to all the other spiders out there looking to come get me. I don't know that Tom really got what I wanted, but he did kill the spider for me. :) We also bought some pretty heavy duty bug killer as well.

Another recent purchase was a really ugly used bicycle. It's yellow, pretty beat up looking, the pedal and chain keep falling off and best of all the brand seems to be called a "lemon." Yes, "lemon" is printed right on the bike seat. Tom uses the bicycle mostly as he is forever wandering around and getting restless, making friends, etc. However, sometimes we ride the bicycle together "Nepali-style." I don't enjoy this very much as it means that I sit sideways on a metal grate over the back tire and trust Tom not to turn us over or a car to hit us. We get A LOT of double-takes from locals when we ride this way. I try to smile back, but I'm usually a little bit too stressed to be friendly. I will admit that we make faster progress when we both ride the bicycle, but I think soon it will be time for a 2nd one.

When not riding the bicycle, the most common way we get around is by Tuk Tuk (also called a Tempo). This a three-wheeled sort of van that runs along routes. We have yet to find a route map of any sort, but are starting to make our own. A Tuk Tuk holds about 8 people comfortably, but will often pack as many people as possible. I've been in one that has had 14 adults and 3 children. That time we were coming back from visiting a new friend up in Kathmandu proper near Durbar Square. There were a numbers of friends with us (all women with children). As more women were getting on, Tom would be the gentleman and offer his seat to them. Finally there were truly no seats left to offer and Tom ended up riding outside the Tuk Tuk hanging onto the roof. There was a collective gasp from all the riders when this big white man started riding the Tuk Tuk "Nepali-style." He was able to hang on just fine as we were only going about 20 miles an hour anyway, but it sure was funny looking.