This post is to share some of the beautiful scenes we witnessed during our 7-day trek. Below is a map of the route. The river on the right is the Trisuli River.
Balche
(Night 1)
Gonga
(Nights 2, 3, and 4)
After the first night we decided to move our tents to a spot that was more sheltered, but the morning view was almost worth the cold, windy night! Photo by Rabindra Parajuli.
Porters staying warm around the fire as the chilly clouds breezed through the pass.
Sunset over the camp
Sunset through the trees
Phyukhri
(Peak of trek at ~ 12000 ft on day 5)
Me at the top! The above photo was taken by ??? (not me).
The whole group together by the prayer flags. The above photo was taken by Katie Walker using Rabindra Parajuli's awesome camera.
Here's a video from Phyukhri. There wasn't much of a view from the top since a big cloud decided to roll in just as we were summiting. It does, however, give you an idea of how out of breath we were up there! The altitude definitely made it noticeably harder to get enough oxygen (and colder!). Okay, feel free to make fun of me now.
Jhyawati
(Night 5)
The above photo was taken by Ryan Arams using a timer shot with her super sweet camera. We were enjoying the sunrise before the second-to-last day of the trek.
One of the porters heading into the kitchen tent before breakfast. Langtang Ri in the background.
Here's a short panning of the site at sunrise:
Tower
(Night 6)
I don't have any special pictures of our last campsite, but here's one from the walk:
Heading back to Mhanegang after night 6. This photo was taken by Rabindra Parajuli as we headed down into Satdobato.
A typical day on the trek... it's a long one, I apologize!
"Chiya! Chiiiyyyaa!"
After a few days on the trek I've become accustomed to waking up as quickly as possible when I hear those words. Ratna and Sarita, the Nepali students I am sharing my tent with, are rustling out of their fluffy down sleeping bags, which are about 2 feet too long for them. I hesitantly unzip the tent to see two blurry smiling porters handing me a metal cup filled with steaming Nepali chiya, a delicious black tea that Nepalis drink multiple times per day. "Namaste didi!" (hello older sister!) they say. I take it with my right hand and pass it to Sarita on the far side of the tent (which isn't very far since the three of us are squeezed into a 2-person tent for warmth). After handing another to Ratna, I take my cup and try to find a place to set it to cool as quickly as possible since the metal sides heat up ridiculously fast. Finally, a metal platter covered in biscuits comes into focus and I grab a bunch of those to share. We ate these Good Day cookies twice a day for the entire trek, and I'm starting to believe the name!
I reach into the tent pocket for my watch and glasses. It's about 7am (in Nepal, time doesn't really matter - all that matters is that we just had morning chiya). We start packing up our sleeping bags and getting ready for the day. We leave the tent two at a time so the third person can change inside -- it's not appropriate to change in front of anyone, regardless of whether they are male or female. I don't really mind though - the time passes quickly when the view from your tent looks something like this... This mountain is Langtang Ri.
Once we're dressed and have had time to use the latrine (see below), we head over to the dining tent to wash our hands for morning dhaal bhaat. See this post if you're curious about what we ate!
After breakfast we pack up our tent, which has hopefully dried in the strong high-altitude sun. We put the tent on the pile of tents for the porters to carry to our next campsite. They are responsible for carrying our shelter and food. We just carry our personal belongings and a few group-gear items in case of an emergency. I really can't complain about the set-up - my pack feels heavy enough already without adding a tent, a huge bag of rice, and a couple fuel bottles!
We meet in a central location with the rest of the group. By now most of the porters have packed up their baskets and left for the next campsite. The leaders of the day tell us the plan, and before we depart Alex (American student in charge of all things medical-related) facilitates a pulse check. We've been checking our pulses a couple times a day, at rest and during times of exertion, to gain an idea for what each person's normal pulse is. If Mike gets injured on the trek, for example, we will know that his resting pulse of 50 isn't abnormally low!
The first half hour is always the hardest. Our packs feel so heavy, and the uphill is so steep! We walk slowly though. The leaders of the day are in charge of maintaining a good pace that keeps the group together. On the uphills, especially on the snowy and higher altitude days, we only go one or two steps per breath. Every half hour we stop for a pee/snack/water break. This continues for 3 to 6 hours, depending on the day. Along the way we pass locals carrying huge loads of fodder, packs of firewood, and freshly chopped logs for building houses.
Even though it's cold out, the sun is ridiculously strong at higher altitudes. I was initially skeptical when told that it's because there is less atmosphere for it to penetrate, but a couple migraines later I was convinced! Mid day attire included sunglasses, a baseball cap fitted with a bandanna to protect my neck and cheeks, and multiple thick layers of sunscreen (especially on the backs of my hands!). Somehow I managed to avoid getting burned, which I rarely achieve at low altitudes...
Some time in the afternoon we arrive at our new campsite, where we are welcomed with a steaming cup of chiya or hot chocolate and more Good Day biscuits! We search for a flat spot to set up our tents, which is not always easy - everything in Nepal seems to be on a slant.
After a couple hours of relaxing, taking pictures, playing cards, or exploring the campsite, the sun starts to set and the temperature drops significantly. Frost forms on everything that is exposed to the sky, so we learn quickly to put everything in the tent! Chilly clouds form and sweep through the pass:
We layer up - swapping sun hats for wool ones and adding a couple layers
of long underwear, top and bottom. It's time for evening dhaal bhaat. The porters did a great job of including some variety in our evening meals. Some examples include pasta with tomato sauce, spring rolls (hand made!!), other beautiful filled pastries, potatoes at almost every meal (sometimes as french fries), ginger soup, noodle soup, and sometimes veggies. It was all very carb-intensive, but we definitely burned it off during the day! Yum!
After dinner we gather around the campfire (well, more like blazing bonfire) that the porters have set-up. They are singing our favorite song - Resham Firiri - and we join in. It's fun because the chorus stays the same, but people make up the verses and usually say something funny or tease someone else in the group. It usually resulted in a lot of laughing with very little understanding!
Soon we hear a call for tato paani! It's time to take our BPA-filled nalgenes to the dining tent and fill up with boiling hot water. This serves two purposes: treated water without the nasty taste of iodine treatment and even more importantly, sleeping bag heaters! During the entire trek I consistently got the best sleep from bedtime until about 2am, right around the time my water bottle failed to be warm...
We dash from the warm fire into our warm sleeping bags. After a few minutes of reading or journal-writing, we are exhausted.
Did I mention it's about 7:30 or 8pm?
P.S. Post soon about the route we trekked and a brief description of each campsite!
P.S. (again) Thanks to major jet-lag I'm actually writing these posts at about the rate I'd hoped... Alright, time to go back to bed (it's 3:45am).
Tarkari - Vegetables
These were pretty much omnipresent in our daily dhaal bhats. The mixture of vegetables varied from day to day, but almost always had potatoes as the base, with guest appearances from cauliflower, green beans, green leafy veggies, and tomatoes.
Since I love cooking, I spent a lot of time with my family learning how to cook veggies, buffalo meat, chicken, and chiya (tea). Here's a video where I am prepping the veggies and talking a little bit about them! That's my host-mom and her son Susil in the background.
How to make tarkari:
(in our household -- others might have varied a bit):
Chop potatoes and other veggies with sickle (another post soon about how the blacksmith makes the sickle!).
Heat a good amount of sunflower oil in wok-shaped pan over fire.
Add methi (fenugreek seeds) to oil. They should pop if the oil is hot enough.
Add a handful of roughly chopped shallots. Stir well as they fry to golden brown.
Add a bunch of aloo (potatoes) to the hot oil, stir, and cover with lid to allow the potatoes to cook through without burning.
A bit later, add the green beans, a good tablespoon of turmeric, some paani (water) to keep from sticking, and stir well.
Add lots of salt! (Way more than I would ever use... but now I understand why this was so tasty!)
Add cauli (cauliflower) and stir.
Add approximately equal amounts of cumin and cayenne pepper (less than the turmeric). Stir together and cover.
A few minutes later add the tomatoes and chopped scallion leaves.
Add the very end add a handful of chopped cilantro.
I apologize if the quantities are very vague! They measured spices out using the lids of the spice jars, so any amounts I tell you would be very inaccurate. I think it's a pretty resilient recipe - adding or removing a step shouldn't affect it too much. These are so delicious! Tarkari and chiya (future post) are the two things I think I couldn't get sick of!
It's about time, I'd say. Over the three weeks the group changed, depending on the activity (trekking or not trekking), the state of our stomachs, and of course flight delays. In total we had:
8 Cornell students (Morgan, Ryan, Alex, Alberto, Mike, Jen, Karla, and me)
4 Cornell instructors (Dave, Jim, Katie, Zac)
1 Urja (awesome trek organizer and leader of the porters)
6 Nepali students that joined us for the home-stay and trek (Kusum (Karla and my homestay friend!), Ratna, Sarita, Ashwin, Ruby, and Shiba)
Lots of porters on the trek (whose names I sadly do not all remember, but Karla does!)
Our own homestay families
In mine, Karla, and Kusum's case our home-stay family in Mane Gaoun (Mane Village) consisted of our Shoba didi and Rajendra dai and their two kids (daughter Soni Bahini, 7 and son Susil Bai, 3), our dai's mother (we called her ama, grandmother). We also had two Bhutan refugees living with us named Sita and Januka, who were probably a few years older than us. Here's a picture of us with our home-stay family (missing Rajendra dai and Januka):
Below are the Nepali students that joined us. They all study (or studied) in Kathmandu and speak English very well (which was super helpful during our home-stay!). Most of them were doing their Master's in botany, sociology, or anthropology, and they all had some connection with the Cornell Nepal Study Program in Kathmandu. They were all really fun, interesting, and smart! We had a great time together. Thanks to Facebook we will keep in touch :)
From left to right: Ratna (we shared a tent on the trek), Kusum (home-stayed together), and Sarita (she squeezed in with me and Ratna when it was soooo cooollllddd on the trek)
From left to right: Ashwin (full name Obindra), Shiba (short for Shibaraj), and Ruby (short for Rabindra)
Here's a picture with almost all the Cornell students on a day hike from the village to Satdobate:
From left to right: Ruby, Me, Alex, Jen, Mike, Morgan, Karla, Kusum, Ratna, Jim, Ashwin, Sarita, Zac, and Ryan. The only one missing is Alberto, who decided to stay in the village for the trek and study architecture (he's an architect at Cornell).
Here's a group picture of everyone that went on the trek. It was taken by Katie Walker on Rabindra's camera.
What's incredible is that for typical treks there are WAY more porters that go along. Since we weren't expecting them to carry our clothes/personal items and since they weren't dragging along all kinds of luxuries like chairs and western food we could have a smaller group. All the porters were really nice and fun to hang out with!
How do you feel about the card game Spades? There's a game that's super popular in Nepal (even some of the villagers knew how to play) called Call Break. It's basically like Spades, but with a few modifications to make it a bit more luck-dependent. For one, players play individually rather than on teams. Second of all, if you can play higher on any given trick, you must (unless someone has trumped, or you have no higher trump). Basically, you have to try to win every trick rather than saving your good cards. Also, Nepalis deal and play in a counter clockwise fashion. This took a few turns of shuffling to get used to. They also allow you to play the trump before it has been broken, which I decided to veto because that's. just. not. cool!
(Look at that. Although my goal was to not make a list, I just ended up making one in the paragraph instead! It's hopeless. I will never be an eloquent writer.)
We played this almost every day during the home-stay and trek. It was great fun! Since it's only a 4 player game, we tended to partner up, making it even more fun! This first movie features Kusum & Mike, Ruby & Zac (the too-competitive ones), Ashwin (the one who always wins), and me & Karla.
This second one is from the time we played into the dark. I'm really just posting it because... well, it's amusing. That's all! We got a bit competitive at times...
These wise words were coined (I believe) by Zac (Ji-dac) Edwards to express that Daal Bhaat is what you eat and what powers you every day in Nepal!
Daal = Lentils (usually split black gram and spicy) Bhaat = Rice (always white)
Porters serving Dhaal Bhaat on the 5th morning of the trek. Zac looks excited.
The meal schedule in Nepal looks something like this: wake up, morning chiya (tea with some cookies) around 7am, morning daal bhaat around 10am, afternoon caja (snack - something different and delicious every day) around 3pm, evening daal bhaat around 7pm, bed. All other parts of the day are planned relative to these meals.
Sometimes daal bhaat is fancied up with treats like tarkari (vegetables), chicken, dried buffalo, or achar (pickles - NOT of the cucumber type, thank god). For example, a rather complex/fancy Daal Bhaat with a rather low ratio of rice to everything else is pictured below:
More commonly you would receive a HEAPING (I mean heaping) plate of white rice with a small scoop of curried veggies and a bowl of spicy black lentils on the side. The ratios of carbs to veggies/protein were very different from what I'm used to in the US, so it definitely took my stomach some time to adjust... During the first couple days in the village it was a huge struggle to finish my plate (it's considered rude if you don't finish everything on your plate). We all agreed that by the end our stomachs had stretched to a deliciously dangerous size. We graduated from hopelessly trying to fight off that second/third/fourth helping of rice that so often came flying out of nowhere to watching it zoom in and land on our plate without the least bit of hand waving. It was quite magical.
A Short How-To: Daal Bhaat Eating!
Oh, another thing misleading about the above picture (taken in a restaurant), is the cutlery. Did I mention that we only ate with our hands in the village? And by 'hands' I mean our right hands exclusively. It's an art that we clumsily developed over the weeks. I recommend you try it - it's quite fun, and you get used to it rather quickly. A common novice would try to pinch the food from above, but this results in leaning back your head and trying to drop the rice in. This also results in serious embarrassment/soiling of clothes. A true hand-eater scoops in from the right with palm up. Then you spin your hand around so your fingers are facing your mouth. Once finger tips are close enough, use your thumb across your hand to push the rice into your mouth. Easy as that!
Stay tuned for posts with videos/explanations for how to make delicious Nepali foods like tarkari, roti (round fried bread), and chiya!
I'm sitting cozily here with my 7-year-old cousin/goddaughter Emilia. We're looking through all my pictures (I managed to get them onto my Aunt's computer to do a big presentation to the family tonight!). Emilia was most excited about the animal pictures, so she wanted to help me write a post about Nepal animals. Here we go!
First on the list: monkeys! These little (and sometimes big) guys are always around at the Hindu and Bhuddist temple sites stealing oranges from roadside stands and snacks from the tourists.
Here is a picture of the only cat I saw in all three weeks. When DDT was sprayed all over the country many years ago very few cats survived. This one was super cute though!
Doggies are EVERYwhere in Nepal. They don't usually belong to anyone in particular, but the villagers still feed them on occasion. Karla managed to take pictures of almost all of them, which likely consumed at least one entire day of our trip! :)
This little critter didn't move once in the entire time that we did our home-stay. I can't say I'm disappointed about that... It was almost the size of my hand! However, I was consoled that the spiders in Nepal are not dangerous. Emilia is yelling at me because she doesn't think spiders should be in this post.
Goats are the most common animal in Manegau (the village where we stayed). They act and play just like puppies - it's adorable! For the last night in the village a goat was slaughtered and eaten... yum!
Sometimes they even ride around on the roofs of taxis!
Almost every family in the village has a water buffalo or two (I think that is the name of this animal). They are quite ornery, but I suppose I would be too if I was tied up in a shed all day. Strangely this guy was no longer there once we returned from the trek... The village slaughters a few every month and the meat is shared all around the village and dried since there are no freezers or fridges to save it in.
Chickens run around everywhere. Our ama (grandmother) herded them by making noises. Sometimes the chicks accidentally came running into our bedroom in the morning... they just go whereever they please!
Finally, these guys were being sold on the street for 100 rupees each (~ $2). So cute! This is Emilia's favorite.
We saw lots of birds, but those are a bit tricky to take pictures of. Here are some pigeons, although those tend to be rather universal...
Supposedly we also camped close to a snow leopard...
I promise the next post will not be another list. It's just that I won't have photos/videos until the weekend so I don't want to start telling stories yet!
Anyways, there are a number of things that you notice quite soon after arrival in Nepal. These are the ones that were most apparent to me:
Sometimes there is power, sometimes there is not, and no one seems to notice.
This is mainly true in Kathmandu where the amount of power available at any given time is not nearly enough to supply the entire city. In the village there were also power outages, but these were less frequent and less important since very few things rely on power. There are scheduled outages in Kathmandu which are published in the newspaper. It's different every day, but in general there is power for about 12 hours per day. Half the city gets power at a time. The majority of the power comes from hydroelectricity, which is much less available in the dry season (now) than in the monsoon season (June/July). In all the time we were there it only rained once. Additionally, the city has seen a huge increase in population over the past 20 years. An American who has been living there said that the population grew from 1.5 to 4 million, and the infrastructure has not grown anywhere near that same rate.
Most businesses have generators that turn on when the power turns off, but these are usually only used to power a minimal number of light bulbs. For example, you can't buy any steamed beverages during outages, but you can certainly still get tea! There was something comforting in the fact that no one seemed to mind the power going out, even at night. Just strike a match, light the nearest candle, and carry on.
There are few chairs, but it is not acceptable to sit on the ground.
This was mostly true in the village (there were chairs in the guest house in Kathmandu and we generally stood during the trek). What is the solution for this contradiction? Pull up a mat! There were countless times when I would sit down on the floor in my host family's living room and my Ama (grandmother) would come out of nowhere with a little round woven mat saying basnuus, basnuus! (sit down!). In general people sit on woven mats, little wooden boards, cushions, and these fun, rungi-chungi (colorful) chairs made of bamboo and old bike tires:
I really wanted to bring one home with me, but it wouldn't really have fit in my little suitcase...
Don't even think about wearing those shoes inside!
This one was the most difficult to remember. Both the guest house in Kathmandu and the houses in the villages had certain rooms where shoes were allowed and others where they were unacceptable. In our village house, for example, it was okay to wear shoes in the kitchen/cooking area but not in the room where we slept. It was okay, however, to run around outside in barefeet and then just walk inside... this was somewhat perplexing!
Another thing to consider is what you do with your feet. In general, feet are considered juto (roughly, dirty). It's a good idea to avoid pointing with your feet and stepping over people/things. Also, your feet should never be higher than your head (or anyone else's). For example, when people meet the Dalai Lama they bow down until their heads are touching the ground to demonstrate that they consider their head to be dirtier than his feet.
When in doubt, use the right one.
This refers to using your hands. Toilets in Nepal (and India and many other countries in the east) are often a ceramic hole in the ground flushed by pouring in a bucket of water from a nearby spout. The left hand is usually used in the place of toilet paper, ideally followed by a good washing with soap and water. For this reason, people generally avoid using their left hand for anything else if possible. My friend Alberto and I counted the number of people we saw with their arms around each other during the trip and we found that the number of right-arms greatly outnumbered left-arms over someone else's shoulder. Over all, if you are giving/recieving something or eating you should use your right hand.
What if you are left handed? Karla and I asked Kusum (Nepali student that stayed in our home-stay with us) that question after we noticed that our 7-year-old host-sister was writing with her left hand. She said it's okay to be left-handed in Nepal - you just use your left hand for everything instead of the right one.
... and phrases I suppose. Why 22? A few reasons... That's how many days I spent in Nepal, and I'm pretty sure my brain was only capable of learning approximately 1 word per day. Also, the objective is not to write a Nepali dictionary - only to give you a glimpse of the words and phrases I used most often in Kathmandu, the village, and the trek.
First, a few notes:
Tamang is the language of the village that we home-stayed in (most people also spoke Nepali), so I also added the Tamang version of many words. There are 100+ languages spoken in Nepal, and each region usually speaks its own, in addition to some Nepali. Tamang is spoken by about 5% of the population of Nepal.
Nepali is a script language, so when you write the words in Roman letters the main objective is to spell it phonetically. My general impression is that as long as you can pronounce the word properly from looking at the spelled version it isn't super important how you spelled it. However, I could be making this up so correct me if I'm wrong!
THE LIST (adopted from the language list provided to us by Katie Walker)!
Namaste - Hello! Typically accompanied by a slight bow with palms together at your heart.
Mero naam Nena ho - My name is Nena.
Saathi - Friend.
Rungi-chungi - Colorful. This became an instant favorite because it's incredibly fun to say!
Baph-re-baph! - Wow! See above for explanation. This expression was typically returned with giggles by the Nepalis...
Tulo - Big. Tulo paisa (big money) became a common expression among the Americans...
Dhanyebhad - Thank you. Nepalis don't say thank you very often. It is just assumed/expected that people do things for each other (like serving food, helping with little things). They usually only use dhanyebhad for situations where they are truly giving appreciation/thanks for something.
Maph garnus - I'm sorry.
Ramro - Good. This was definitely my most commonly used word - any time I didn't understand something and the person was looking at me expectantly I gave them ramro or even dae-raii ramro (very good), and it was usually received well...
Dude - Milk. Love this one.
Volie (pronounced Bolie) - Tomorrow.
Chini - Sugar.
Tapaii lai kasto chha? - How are you?
Malaii ___ lagyo. - I feel ____. Blank can be filled in by voke (hungry), thakaii (tired), khusi (happy), or many other words that I do not know!
Bistare - Slowly. Almost every other word the Nepalis said to us as we were walking down the mountain.
Basnuus - Sit down.
Aunuus/Januus - Come/Go Away!
Pani/Khana - Water/Food.
Subaratri - Goodnight. This one is just fun to say!
Mitho (Tamang: Rungba) - Delicious. If you turned down that extra heaping plate of food they wanted you to eat, you pretty much had to repeat these words 10 times to prevent them from thinking you thought it was not good.
Chick chick - A little bit. I'm pretty sure this is a Tamang word, but it was used very often in the village during meal times! More on that in the meal post.
Pugyo (Tamang: Yoji) - Enough. Follow this with word #20 multiple times.
Well, that's 22. I guess I could have kept going until 30 or maybe even 40, but I'd say that's enough for now.
One more thing: Counting to ten!
Ek (pronounced ihk)
Dui
Tin (pronounced teen)
Char
Pach
Chha
Sat (pronounced saaht)
Ath (don't pronounce the H)
Nau (pronounced now)
Das
And, last but not least, I learned how to write my name in Nepali!
Where should I start? Over the past three-week adventure I've been saturated with facts, stories, anecdotes, and Nepal-specific peculiarities. My goal is to regurgitate them in some type of interesting and useful form that helps me remember as much as possible.
As I sit at this computer (in Belgium, with fast internet connection, at a desk, on a chair, showered, with a toasty basket of machine-washed laundry waiting, belly full of non-rice food items, slightly buzzed after sharing a Stella with my grandmother), I've created the following list of topics that I plan to cover in future blog posts. This should make me feel obligated to write, right?
Nepal in General
Top 20? most useful Nepali words!
5 Immediately apparent Nepali quirks
Call Break
Types of roti
Three geographic regions
Water management in Nepal
Brief history
The group journal!
Kathmandu
How to cross the street in Kathmandu (and other scary things)
Bhuddist and Hindu sites (monkeys!)
Salwar kurta shopping
A visit to the Patan Hospital
Village Home-Stay (my favorite part of the trip)
Introduction to my host family
Dal Bhat (Lentils and Rice). How could this be so interesting? Just wait!
Recipe: How to make chiya (delicious Nepali tea)
Recipe: How to make tarkari
Hmm... I'm a woman and I need to 'shower'...
A visit to the blacksmith
Husking rice the human-powered way
Making leaf plates
Working in the village store
Bhutan refugee info
Shamanic ceremony
Trekking
Route map
A typical day on the trail
Incredible views along the way
Please let me know if you have any suggestions, preferences as to the order I post these, or if there's something I shouldn't bother writing about (whether or not you were on the trip!).
Virtually all of these posts will have pictures and/or videos (yay!). Unfortunately these must wait until I return to Boston in a few days...
