One Giant Step…Is All It Takes

The massage platform is on the beach with soft sand leading up to it and, when the tide is high, the waves lap underneath in a calm, rhythmic pattern. Dappled sunlight filters through the palm trees and the scent of tiger balm is carried on the breeze as the Thai girls call out to all who pass ‘mass-age, would you like a mass-age’ in their lilting voices.

It’s hard not to give in to the call. At home, a massage costs upwards of $60 for an hour whereas here it’s a measly $9! We have seen massages offered throughout all of our travels but kept telling ourselves that we would wait for the infamous Thai massage so, as soon as we got to the beach, we made a beeline for the platform.

It all starts out nice enough, with a soft mattress and a pretty draped sarong, but before too long I am writhing in pain as the once-kind-and-gentle masseuse digs her elbows into my back and I realize that this is no spa experience. In fact Thai massage is not supposed to be like getting a massage at the spa. It is based on energy channels, pressure points and stretching…and it can be painful.

She starts by pressing gently but firmly all down my back and legs and then slowly increases the pressure and the pointed-ness of the pressure until she finds a knot. Then I know I am in for it. Next, she works on the knot with her extremely strong fingers until it’s released or I beg her to stop.

She is small, but deceptively strong, and can bring me to my knees with one hand tied behind her back…luckily she is also very kind and constantly asks if I am okay and offers to make it ‘less strong’…I  take her up on the offer.

J seems to be even more manipulated than I am. I open my eyes to see his masseuse standing on him pulling his arms and legs in various directions, or twisting him into various impossible positions and then ‘helping’ him to stretch. He communicates with her using grunts and groans as she giggles and seems to get some perverse pleasure in delivering the pain.

When it’s all over we both lie there, exhausted even though we haven’t done anything. She gives us some instructions for stretching later and we drag ourselves to our deckchairs to recover.

On the way to breakfast the next morning we pass by her platform. She calls out and asks if we are ‘kaput’…we respond that ‘oh yes, we are kaput’…and promptly make an appointment for the next morning…it’s addictive.

Normally we are the stay-at-home, make-a-nice-dinner, have-a-good-bottle-of-wine kind of New Years revelers. Pretty low key…nice and quiet…just the way we like it. But this year we were near one of the biggest New Years parties on the planet (OK, I just saw that Rio had 3 million partiers, so maybe I’m exaggerating)…how could we not go?

The Full Moon Party is legendary in Thailand and this year, with the full moon coinciding with New Years Eve, it promised to be bigger and better than ever with an estimated 40,000 people expected to come from all over Koh Pha-Ngan and the neighboring islands.

We opted to take the last hotel taxi heading to the beach in order to be there for midnight and to catch the height of the action so, at 10:30, we climbed into the back of the pickup truck with 10 other people to be ferried across the island.

The island is hilly, very hilly, and soon there was a line up of trucks and vans waiting by turns to make it up the steepest of the hills. This was hampered by the 100’s of scooters that honked and scooted their way around all the stalled vehicles only to, themselves, stall halfway up and have to push the rest of the way. The end of 2009 was ticking away and we all wondered if we would make it to the party in time for the big countdown.

Soon, people in neighboring taxis gave up, jumping out into the road and frantically running towards the beach intent on making it in time. As midnight drew closer I realized that I just might be ringing in the New Year with my 10 new ‘truck friends’. And then the line-up started moving, we made it to the drop off point and rushed to the beach with 4 minutes to spare.

The music was pumping, there were 1000’s and 1000’s of half-dressed, more than half-drunk, fluorescent-streaked bodies moving to the beat and the DJ was marking every passing minute closer to 2010. Soon enough we were all chanting the classic countdown and then, at the stroke of midnight, the fireworks started.

They fired skyward right from the edge of the crowd, bursting over our heads and illuminating the whole beach even more than the full moon already was. On and on they went, bigger and brighter…some coming closer and closer. Spent material starting raining down on us making it difficult to continue looking up. Some didn’t seem to go high enough and we watched to make sure that burning embers didn’t fall on us. A few didn’t make it up at all and exploded right on the ground…and then it seemed as though one landed on the fireworks platform…and that’s when we decided to run in the opposite direction in case the worst should happen and the whole kit-and-kaboodle blew up. That’s what comes with age…we ran away while others looked closer to see what would happen…it did explode right there on the platform, and sprayed those closest with burning embers, but the worst did not happen and the rest of the fireworks went off without a hitch.

Time to find a drink. The drink of choice at a Full Moon Party is ‘the bucket’…yup, a sand pail filled with your favorite drink…for Thai’s it’s cheap whiskey, Red Bull, and coke, but we opted for vodka and tonic. I could see how quickly one could plow through a few buckets as there was something fun about sipping our cocktail out of a child’s plaything…the bottom comes very quickly!

I have to say that the Full Moon Party was not as crazy as I had expected it to be. We wandered around for a couple of hours and, yes, I did see plenty of dancing, lots of people drunk and passed out and there was a fire limbo contest, but mostly I saw people like us….wandering around just trying to take it all in. I think I expected more ‘dancing’ (rather than the jumping up and down to the electronic beat), I surely expected to see some nudity (I saw not one single nude person) and I even thought there might be some public copulation going on (although we did see one close encounter). It was fun but, just like many a New Year celebrations, the hype outdid the actuality.

Before leaving we lit a lantern and, putting all of our 2010 wishes onto it, released it to float skyward towards the New Year full moon. Our 2010 looks bright as we complete our journey, reunite with our family and friends and look forward to what our next Giant Step might be.

Happy New Year!!

Our favorite foodie travelers, Forks And Jets, tagged us in a blog challenge to reveal our Three Travel Secrets. So, here are three things that I’ve learned about travel.

Touts Are Not All Bad. I used to think that touts were all about tricking me into spending more money than I needed to but I have learned that they can actually save me money and get me what I need.

We often land in a place and have not yet found a place to stay. It can be difficult to trek around, with our packs on, to place after place to find a bed. Touts solve this problem by surrounding me with pamphlets, pictures of their hotel, offers of discounted rooms and transport too. They answer all our questions and, if they can’t give us what we’re looking for, they usually know someone who can.

This approach has worked for us countless times and is how we currently find ourselves in a beautiful resort on a white sand beach on Koh Pha-Ngan, Thailand for a price we thought we’d have to pay for a hut ‘within walking distance to the beach’.

Use The Travel Network. There are plenty of ways to get travel information besides the trusty guidebooks.

I follow a number of bloggers who either have traveled, or are currently traveling where I am going. I read their stories and make notes of where they went, what they liked or didn’t like and how they got there – not to replicate their trip of course, but to use what they have learned to help me. Sometimes, if I’m nervous about a place or can’t find enough information, I will email a blogger ‘friend’ and ask them directly. Without fail, they are always willing to help and provide encouragement…as am I when I receive emails – it’s nice to help out.

Many travelers use Twitter, not only to stay in touch back home, but also to reach out to other travelers to get tips and information. Christine, from Almost Fearless, has put together an excellent ebook on Twitter For Travelers – she makes it easy and provides tons of contacts – there is always someone to help.

It turns out that many of my friends from home have done plenty of traveling and many of them have traveled to places we’re now visiting. They told us of their favorites, their ‘hits’ and ‘misses’ and their do’s and don’ts. Some of them have even taken the time to send us emails on the road as we near their travel niche – thanks guys!!

Don’t Be A Budget Slave. It’s no secret that I have had trouble with our budget but I have realized that letting it rule our travel would be a mistake. Certainly there is always a budget but there is usually a little flex room – we’re just using that flex room. Make sure when planning your budget that you leave this flex – it can make the difference between being a budget slave and being a happy traveler!

There are tons of travelers out there, all with secrets of their own. I’ll tag these five to see what secrets they can share:

• Pam of Go See Run Eat Drink
• Lisa from Project Runaway
• Where Are Liz And Adrian
• Keith from Green Around The Globe
• Daniel the BackPack Foodie

There wasn’t any one event that made us leave India early. There was no tragic event, no-one was unkind, we didn’t get robbed or ripped off, we didn’t even get really sick. Sure, in the end, we did both have bad colds that made it that much harder to deal with, but it wasn’t like we had classic ‘Delhi Belly’ or anything like that.

No, it was just a slow build up to realizing that we just weren’t enjoying ourselves. The dirt, the garbage, the smells, the poverty, the noise, the staring, the inability to walk anywhere…all added up to us often not even wanting to leave the hotel room. We weren’t laughing and relaxing and chatting about what we were going to do next, but rather were often convincing ourselves that maybe, just maybe, the next place would be better.

It’s true, travel is not always fun and games, sunshine and white sand…but we felt that we had given it a shot and didn’t want to spend anymore of our precious time not having fun. We’re glad that we went as we would surely have regretted not going, but I’m proud of us for realizing that it wasn’t working and deciding to leave. That was always part of the plan…be flexible, stay somewhere longer if we want, leave a place early if we’re not liking it.

Although we left early, we certainly didn’t leave India without some observations and thoughts…and not all of them are bad.

The food in India is very good. We loved the curries and the breads and liked trying new meats such as goat.  Having the car and driver allowed us to stop at some very small, local places where we enjoyed chai and paranthas for breakfast.

India is both clean and dirty. The insides of buildings and hotels can be very clean but they just dump all the garbage right outside…sweep it right out the front door. Shopkeepers are constantly sweeping the storefront but, when the floor is dirt, and the stoop is dirt and the street is dirt, I often wondered to what end.

There really are cows everywhere. Unfortunately most of them do not look very well and can most often be seen rooting through garbage piles for food. They are often in the middle of the road and traffic just routes around them – they don’t even appear to notice.

People in India and helpful and not-so-helpful. A lot of them would come and point out an attraction of tourist office for us…and give us completely incorrect information. At first we thought that maybe they were trying to scam us except there never seemed to be anything in it for them to give us the wrong information. I came to the conclusion that maybe they just wanted to talk to us and so seeming helpful was a way to be able to do that. More than once I ignored a persons ‘advice’ only to find that actually they were being helpful – I went out of my way to apologize when this happened as I probably seemed quite rude.

Indians are very proud of their country and their towns. We were in the Jasailmer Fort, surrounded by cows and cow shit, people begging, broken down buildings and the unmistakable stench of human sewage running in the open grate beneath our feet and our guide says to us ‘”welcome to beautiful Jasailmer Fort”…seriously, it’s like they can’t see it (or smell it).

Indians like to stare. We’ve been stared at plenty on this trip but never like it was here. It was like dropping a monkey in the middle of a shopping mall at the height of the Christmas rush…everyone staring to see what it will do and unable to take look away. I was the monkey and the staring was incessant. Sometimes I just could not believe it.

We left India shaky and unsure what we wanted to do. We knew we didn’t want to go home but wondered if continuing on our planned itinerary was still going to work for us. Should we just stop and settle in somewhere for a long time? Were we done with being on the move? Should we head to Europe or New Zealand where the culture is familiar and easier?  We felt shell shocked and done with ‘hard travel’. We got on the plane and headed to Thailand planning on spending Christmas on the beach to try and figure out how to spend the next 5 months.

Within one day of being in Bangkok we realized that we had made the Best Decision Ever. We quickly relaxed, we were laughing again, and looking forward to going out to find a bite, or a drink, or to see a sight. We are ourselves again and realize that we can continue with our original itinerary but, now that we have some extra time, we’ll be able to slow it down a bit which will be nice.

And so we are currently headed to southern Thailand to work on our tans and spend the holidays on the island beaches. Best Decision Ever indeed.

We entered the ring with more bravado than we felt. India in one corner, looming large and wearing her well deserved big, shiny, heavyweight champions belt…us in the other corner wearing our six months of travel like it really mattered.

She took the first punch…Delhi…a hazy, smoggy, smelly, garbage-filled, poverty ridden soupy mess of a city that left us breathless, reeling and wondering what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. Dazed, we wandered into a tour agency and signed up for a 3 week itinerary that would see us through Rajasthan, on to Agra and Varanasi and leave us in Goa in the south.

First though, we would head to Amritsar, see the Golden Temple and recharge in our five star hotel birthday splurge. We came out swinging, sure that our new plan would throw some punches her way and give us some defense from any more of her heavy blows.

It was immediately clear that she was not going to back down…nothing could have prepared me for driving on the roads. All manner of vehicles loaded (and I mean loaded) with cargo and people careening down the roads, passing whenever they like, wherever they like, missing each other within inches. Surprisingly, I got quite used to seeing a bus or lorry hurtling straight for us and pulling in at the very last moment. J and I took to sitting one behind the other on the passenger side thinking that if we did get smoked it would be the drivers side that would sustain the most damage…small comfort, I know.

We were brave though, kept our chins up, our elbows in and our faces covered…we weren’t going out that easily.

But India kept peppering us with small jabs to our middle. Promises of beautiful forts crowning great cities and towns in the desert proved to be great bastions of once-upon-a-time in more dirty cities and un-walkable towns. We defended, finding bright spots in the bleak outlook, trying to make the most of what we had to work with but India is a very, very experienced fighter and she found a way to break through and knock the wind out of us…we both came down with colds.

For a few days we managed to fight on, avoiding the worst of the jabs and sleeping as much as we could but the knock out punch came when we realized we could not go on the tiger safari in Ranthambore…we were both miserable, Jason slept every moment he wasn’t in the car and I had been crying for two days. We looked up from the mat to see the ref holding India’s hand high in the air…another win for India.

We’re leaving. We’re just not having any fun and putting another month in here seems like a high risk investment with a low possibility of return.

As you read this we are on a plane to Thailand. We have a line on a happy place there where we plan on spending a couple of weeks hanging out and figuring out our plan for the next five months. We’ll let you know what we come up with.

Hard to believe we’ve been on the road for six months…but here we are in India and the calendar is irrefutable proof that six months have indeed passed since we first left home.

I think we continue to learn and evolve, but I also think that we have caught our stride and are traveling much more assuredly now. Here are some thoughts:

Time passes very quickly. It is hard to believe that it is six months since we left. Time seems to have flown by and sometimes it seems that I can remember every moment as though it was yesterday. At times I wish for the clock to slow down so that the next six months would pass ever so slowly.

Time passes very slowly. At the same time it seems like forever since we left. We have visited so many places and so much has happened, it couldn’t possibly be only six months. The end seems so very far away…and there are so many places to visit before then.

Introverts can act extro-vertedly. We are both introverts but have been doing a much better job of acting extro-vertedly. We are meeting more and more people and are both more willing to start conversations and get involved than we were before. We recognized that we were insulating ourselves a bit and so have been putting ourselves in more situations to interact with others. This usually means tours etc but that also works well with our inherent laziness – we enjoy tours because someone will tell us all we need to know rather than us having to read about it!!

Budget be damned. We realized early on that our budget was not realistic for our travel style. We are by no means blowing it out now (okay, we might have for our birthdays) but we are traveling more comfortably and doing the things that will make our trip memorable. I certainly did not want to look back on this trip and wish that I had done things differently.

I now understand why travelers wear elastic-waisted pants. Some people say they lose weight while traveling…that has certainly not been my experience. My waistline has definitely expanded and I am softer than I have been in many, many years. I don’t like it but what to do…stop eating the fabulous food (and it’s only going to get better as we hit SE Asia!)…I don’t think so. I do dream about being in shape again though, but it will have to wait until I return…in the meantime I bought some elastic waisted pants today…they hide a multitude of sins and allow for expansion…I look quite fashionable as all the girls are wearing them!

Are we tired of wearing the same clothes over and over and over and over? Probably not as tired as you are of seeing them in the pictures over and over again! It’s surprising how a limited wardrobe is actually quite freeing. In fact, there are pieces that I don’t wear very often. We left some cold weather clothing behind  as we left the colder areas, I sent some shoes home (I never did wear the ‘cute shoes’), and will be ditching those not often worn pieces as I find replacements that I will wear. We are buying some new clothes too (some are necessary…see above) – we knew we would once we hit India and SE Asia – it’s a different esthetic here and lighter, freer clothes are more comfortable. You’ll have to see if you can spot the new pieces as the pictures are posted.

How is the equipment holding up? We are pleased with everything that we brought. The bags are still working very well and apart from being a bit dusty are not damaged at all despite all the abuse we put them through. All the electronics and associated gadgets have been great – we love having the laptop to surf the net, play games, write posts etc – it has definitely made life easier. The first aid kit is not often used but still necessary. The water purifier has come in handy – we are not using it as much in India…I  think I have some built in biases that cannot be sanitized and so we buy water here. The sink stopper and laundry line are absolutely necessary – we most often send our laundry out but occasionally it comes back still damp or we have to hand wash – we always have a place to hang it to dry. We did purchase one messenger bag – it hangs over one shoulder so causes less sweating than a day backpack does – besides it looks cooler too!

Are we still enjoying ourselves? Absolutely!! Maybe even more so now…we seem to have synced up and are enjoying the whole experience. That doesn’t mean there aren’t sucky days or locations but we are better able to manage them than we were in the beginning. I will admit to a tinge of homesickness lately but I actually think it’s because we have been moving non-stop for a while now. We have a stationary week planned in the south of India and I think that will make things better for me.

I can’t believe that we are only half way through this amazing journey…I can’t wait to see what the second half has in store for us. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

The rest of India faded into the background as we entered through the doors. The flowery scent of incense greeted us, pulling us into the calm wood interior.

Checking in was made extra special as the manager was summoned to greet us personally…you see, we had emailed ahead to let the manager know that we were staying at his luxury, five-star hotel to celebrate both of our birthdays (end of November/beginning of December) and to mark the six month point of our trip (already?). He greeted us warmly, told us how pleased he was that we would share this celebration with them and had two attendants usher us to our room.

The room was beautiful!! Wood floors, real furniture, a soft (!) bed with real linens (no holes or stains), soft music playing, windows that looked out onto the pool below and a pillow menu…yes, a menu of pillows to suit every sleep style! And the bathroom!! Sheer heaven! All tiled and spotless with a huge, wonderful shower sporting endless hot water, pretty smelling soaps and lotions, and big fluffy towels to dry off with.

But the crowning glory was the young man they sent with a chilled bottle of champagne to accompany the chocolate birthday cake set on the table….oh my god, it was sooooo good!!

We didn’t leave the room all afternoon, spending all our time cleaning and preening and lounging and enjoying every amenity the room had to offer. We finally emerged, scrubbed clean and smelling like I don’t think we have since we left home, to make our way to the lounge where another kind young man made me a tasty, long awaited gin and tonic.

Dinner was excellent (goat curry with rice and chapati) and, just as we were finishing up, the manager appeared again to ask if we would like a special meal prepared for the following evening. Seriously, a special menu…just for us? How could we say no?

We slept like angels that night. In the morning we had tea in bed, ordered breakfast to our room and lounged some more until we left to visit the Golden Temple. We returned to lounge around the pool for the afternoon. The pool boy took time to show us all around the pool area and then left us to lounge on the way-too-comfy lounge bed poolside. Seriously….a pool boy!

Dinner was amazing. All the staff greeted us as we arrived at the restaurant and were ushered to our own special dining room where our private waiter introduced himself  and the manager and chef stopped by to say hello…seriously, private waiter!! There was a printed menu for us - fish tikka, basil grilled paneer, mutton curry, chole masala, gulab jamun with ice cream…just to name a few. The meal was amazing - we left absolutely stuffed and more than thankful – when the bill came all that was listed was the bottle of wine we had enjoyed…the chef had prepared the meal as a gift to us!

We finished off the chocolate cake for breakfast the next morning and lounged around the room for as long as possible…checking out at the last possible moment, not wanting to leave our temporary slice of heaven.

As a parting gift, the hotel had a car and driver drop us off at our next destination…a ‘normal’ backpacker hotel in the city center. The driver must have gotten quite a chuckle when he saw the hotel that he was dropping us at…but it was back to reality for us.

Well…we’re here. And it’s actually not as smelly as I had expected. Don’t get me wrong…it smells, but not everywhere, not all the time. Certainly the burning garbage in the street smells, and the ‘public toilets’ smell (no, I haven’t actually been in one…mostly they look like walls along which everyone urinates…unavoidable and gross), and the ever-present pollution smells but it doesn’t smell in our hotel (thanks to copious amounts of incense burned in the lobby) and that I am thankful for.

So far I have already seen almost every horrible thing I had imagined I would see in India…and it’s only been three days. Almost all the images from the books I’ve read, the movies I’ve seen (except the Bollywood movies) and the stories I’ve heard have shown themselves to be true.

Garbage is absolutely everywhere…cows roam the streets but miraculously do not get hit by the trucks, cars, taxis, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles, scooters, pedal-rickshaws, bicycles or hand-carts…men scatter among garbage ‘fields’ to poop in the morning…a man with no legs (walking on his hands) solicits alms on the train platform…there are beggars everywhere – young children in the streets and intersections, mothers with babies on the ‘sidewalks’, religious zealots roaming…people live in squats that I could not have imagined…I can taste the pollution.

I can’t take pictures. It seems wrong to whip out a camera to capture anything that I have seen…and besides who really wants to see pictures like that?  Well, I took this one – showing the metal detector on the street at the start of the ‘bazaar’ area near where we are staying. We are made to walk through detectors like these at some of the monuments we have visited. They almost invariably beep…but no-one does anything about it.  Makes me chuckle.

I feel hemmed in…straight-jacketed. Normally we would walk everywhere in a city, but here that is not possible. We tried but the traffic, pollution, poverty and odor made it a very uncomfortable walk.

We did visit some of the sights of the city. One day we took an auto-rickshaw to the Red Fort and another we took a day tour of the city to see some of the other sights. The temples are beautiful, calm and clean…the Ghandi sites are well maintained and very interesting and taking the bus through the city showed us what the rest of the city looked like (remarkably similar, although somewhat better than where we are staying).

This is certainly no romanticized India…so far, I don’t like it…we’ll see what happens outside of the city.

I have to be honest. My account of this trek is rather lackluster because, well…my experience was rather lackluster. I think it suffered from expectations – my expectations were very high and I was unable to get over it when the experience did not live up to what I thought it would be.  Sometimes I am able to overcome these feelings…but this time I was not.

My goal here is to give an honest account of our travels and so I have decided not to sugarcoat the experience…it is what it is. I realize how lucky we are to be in this part of the world…the mountains truly are stunning and we already talk about coming back and doing a longer trek…it just didn’t work out for us this time.

Although the Poon Hill Trek is easily done without one, we had decided to hire a guide. With my complete lack of navigation skills, and Jason having to always pay attention to get us everywhere, we thought it would be nice if, for once, J could just follow along too.

I had done some research and found that a guide/porter would cost between $12 - $15 per day and that the cost of food and accommodation on the trail should be about $25 per person per day. Seemed a little high but this was from recent forums from people who had recently been trekking on this circuit. I had also read that one should try to stay away from ‘packages’ where the guide and food and accommodation are all together…and that’s the piece of advice we didn’t heed.

We met Raj in his trekking shop where we were renting sleeping bags and a better trekking pack for me. He was very nice, spoke very good English and said he was available to guide us if we like. He answered all our questions and our only hesitation was that his was a package deal…$60 per day for both of us. Although the numbers all added up to this being an okay deal my gut told me maybe we shouldn’t agree…but in the end we did…and it’s one of the reasons I didn’t enjoy myself totally. Once we were on the trail we quickly realized that the costs were much less than we had anticipated and that Raj was making a killing. I was not mad at Raj…he’s just trying to make a living and we had agreed to the price…I was mad at myself for not listening to my gut and to the advice I had read. It’s much harder to get over being mad at myself!!

The weather was also not cooperating. It had been glorious and hot in Kathmandu, Manakamana and Pokhara in the the days leading up to the trek but, on the day we left, it was cloudy and a little cool. Good for trekking, but bad for seeing mountain peaks.

We set off from Naya Pul in  the mid morning and after hiking through the village we crossed the river and started on the trail. We had 1000M to climb over the course of the day but the first 3 or 4 hours weren’t too bad at all. We hiked easily up and down, chatting to Raj and enjoying the easy pace. Every once in a while the clouds would break a little and we could get a sense that the mountains were right there, teasing us. The last hour was hard. A straight climb up 3381 steps to Ulleri, and our first guesthouse of the trek.

The guesthouse was basic, but there was electricity and a hot shower to be had so we were happy. The food was good and we spent the evening chatting to trekkers that we had seen on the trail throughout the day. I didn’t sleep well though – maybe it was the cold, or the altitude, but although I must have been exhausted sleep eluded me and I spent half the night reading.

Lack of sleep did not make the next days hike any easier. It was a relatively easy 3 hour hike to Ghorepani, but it felt like forever. The clouds hung as low as my mood and we did not see any mountains.

After some tea and a nap we attempted to climb the Poon Hill for which the trek is named. From the top of Poon Hill are supposed to be some of the best views of the Annapurna Range of the Himalayas. We only climbed half way and decided that it was too cloudy so we would try again in the morning for the famed sunrise climb.

As we returned to the guesthouse it started to rain…and it rained all afternoon and night. I took solace in the fact that I was inside next to the fire while others were still out on the trail, and still others were deeper in the mountains where, I learned later, it was snowing.

We got up at 6 the next morning to trek up Poon Hill for sunrise…it was not to be…a quick check outside confirmed that it was still raining and that summiting the hill would not be worth it…so back to bed we went.

It was still raining when we got up and ready the second time. We waited an extra hour for the heavy rain to subside and then we headed out. It continued to rain for most of the morning but not too badly. In fact, it made most of the day remind me of riding at home on a wet fall day. The forest here is of rhododendrons and bamboo rather than fir, arbutus and salal but, with the leaves on the trail, the clouds low and cool temperature, I could imagine myself riding down the long singletrack at home (just like Tzou-vember in Nepal!).

Part way through the day we decided to cut the trek short by a day. The plan had been to stay out 6 days but, with the weather not cooperating, we thought that 5 days would be enough. Unfortunately that meant that this days trek would have to be longer and so, after lunch, we proceeded to hike 3 more hours almost entirely downhill to reach Ghandruk. Now downhill might sound easier but, in reality, it is killer on the knees and thighs and at the end our legs were a quivering mess – 4 hours of uphill climbing and 3 hours of down – ouch! The clouds did break a little though and we got a real sense of how big and close the mountains are…how could they hide so easily when they are right there?

Ghandruk sits on the lip of a deep valley. We set out the next morning to descend into the valley (you can’t imagine how much my legs wanted to do this) and then climb up the other side – a tough morning. We crossed over the ridge and through one more smaller valley to end up in Dhampus, our final stop.

The views here were stunning – just what we had been waiting for. The clouds lifted just enough and, at sunset, we were treated to a fabulous show of nature. It was absolutely amazing and set us to talking about how we could possibly return one day to do a longer trek…the mountains have that effect.

Lonely Planet says that it would be a shame to travel directly to Pokhara from Kathmandu without making a stop along the way to enjoy the mountain views, and so we decided to break our journey and spend a night at Manakamana expecting  to enjoy a serene  mountain top retreat. Ummmm…..not so much.

Unlike years ago, when the only way up was a grueling 18KM hike, there is now a modern cable car system that whisked us up the almost 1000M vertical in an easy 15 minutes. The views were amazing. We were not yet in the towering, snow covered Himalayas, but the views of the Himalayan foothills were spectacular and seemed to go on forever.

The village at the top exists entirely because of the Manakamana Mandir, one of the most important Hindu temples in Nepal and, as we saw in Kathmandu, the Hindu religion is not one of quiet contemplation.

We followed the crowd up toward the temple and could hear the usual bells, shouting and general noise of the temple, but also ‘boom box’ music…strange. The square around the temple was filled with teenage kids – there were a good number of adults too, but a disproportionate number of teenagers were there…weird. The ‘boom box’ music was coming from one corner where a ‘hip’ group of kids were running a small gaming operation – a ring toss table and what looked like a raffle of sorts. It was the prizes that stood out though – juice boxes, cookies, beer, bottles of whiskey, cigarettes – and it was the  kids playing these games, not the adults. It was a carnival like atmosphere with the boys wandering around trying to look macho and girls hanging about laughing and twittering behind the scarves they held to their faces.

One of the more interesting, and macabre, things about the temple is that the goddess of the temple is said to grant wishes. Many of the families that flock here come to ask for a wish to be filled…and many of them bring a goat along for the ride to sacrifice and ‘seal the deal’. There are a few special karts on the cable car for the sacrificial goats to ride up…a one way ticket. We saw many goats being led up the path but, thankfully, we only saw one that had met its’ fate and we did not see where the sacrifices were happening.

We were the only tourists there for our whole stay and we certainly got a lot of attention. There were plenty of stares and giggles but most would smile and wave back when we smiled and waved. Eating meals was interesting as we almost invariably had an audience…I guess they were wondering how and why we were eating with utensils (most of them were eating with their hands but I don’t know how to eat rice and curry with my hands!).

The village seemed to shut down after dark but we did manage to find a place to have a beer and play some cards…with an audience of course. The five Nepali boys were fascinated by our cribbage game and watched intently as they discussed it amongst themselves. We pantomimed back and forth a little bit but it was hard to communicate when we speak no Nepali and they spoke no English. I did remember a super simple card trick from long ago and so I tried it on them…the look on their faces when I picked out their ‘secret’ card was hilarious. I think I’ll learn some more tricks as it was a great way to engage with them.

With the village seemingly all rolled up for the night we headed to bed fairly early only to be woken multiple times by groups of kids finishing their night at the temple and hooting and hollering their way down the hill. Where they were going I have no idea as the cable car must have surely stopped by that time. Eventually they all seemed to have made their way down and so we settle in to sleep.

Bang, bang, bang, bang…..bang, bang, bang, bang….’Excuse me….excuse me…excuse me’…bang, bang, bang, bang. I slowly realize that someone is knocking on the door and reach for my watch…6AM. I answer the door….’Excuse me…hot water…shower!!’. What? ‘Hot water…shower’ he repeats, this time pantomiming showering. ‘Oh…Ok….thank you’ I say and close the door to return to my nice warm bed. I have no idea why it was so important for him to come and tell me about the hot water at 6AM but he seemed to think it was urgent. So much for sleeping in.

We didn’t have a bus ticket for our onward journey so we made our way down the mountain to wait on the highway to flag a bus down. Almost before we got to the highway a man was shepherding us to a small bus indicating that it would go to Pokhara. Perfect, we thought, that wasn’t hard at all.

The bus stopped in a small town about 20 minutes later and, after a few minutes the ‘conductor’ indicated that we needed to transfer to another bus to continue on. We grabbed our bags and proceeded to the second bus. As I boarded and saw the interior of the bus I knew that I was not going to like it…I should have turned around right then, but  for some reason I didn’t. We headed towards the back to find some free seats for us and our bags and soon realized that almost all of the seats were dirty, torn and broken…not a good sign but, by now, the bus was moving so we just looked at each other shrugging our shoulders.

Within 5 minutes I knew I wasn’t going to stay on the bus - it was the dodgiest bus I have seen. I could just picture something  terrible happening and my mother saying ‘what was she thinking, being on a bus like that?’, so we decided that we would get off at the first chance – we didn’t owe anybody any explanations and, for the money, we could more than afford to pay full fare again on a better bus.

About 30 minutes later the bus pulled into a small stop and we grabbed our bags to wait on the roadside for another bus. Our decision was confirmed when the driver proceeded to get under the bus and hammer away at something under there for a while…obviously not in tip top condition! When he had finished the ‘repairs’ everyone boarded again to continue on…I don’t think a single soul on that bus was surprised that we did not get back on.

We sat on the roadside for almost two hours waiting for another bus. It was hot and dusty but we didn’t care, we weren’t on the dodgy bus anymore. Eventually another bus came along and suited us quite nicely. It wasn’t any South American or Turkey bus with meals and drinks served aboard…but it wasn’t dodgy and that’s all we needed.

Serene mountain top retreat indeed. Manakanama was definitely an experience, and it was on a mountain top…but it was definitely not serene. We won’t be stopping in on our way back to Kathmandu!