Five Moneys

Short Version:
We're off!

Stats:
Total Walk Time = 2:45
Beer Time = 2:45

Long Version:
We walked a dirt road for a few hours that first afternoon.

Met some Nepali children. Refused to give them "five moneys." Or sweets. Or pens.

Learned our first Nepali words, for "Let's go" and "Slower!"

The first hour or so must have been a nightmare for Ganga, who got to watch the two of us scurry about the place, burning valuable energy unnecessarily, like excited puppies, only with less weeing on the carpet. At least we didn't fall into any of the rivers we crossed.

Uzir had tied our bags together and to his bag, and attached a webbing strap which he then hung off his forehead. We were wincing at the thought of using your head and neck to carry 30-odd kg, up until we heard about Uzir's record carrying effort: 105kg, for several days. Lovely Wife and I were carrying a daypack each, containing warm stuff and wet-weather stuff, camera and breakables, and water. Maybe 5kg each. Tops. Uzir and Ganga each had about that much stuff as well, although, to be fair, they didn't have to carry sleeping bags or water with them. And they were more hardcore than us.

As non-Catholics, we don't have to do guilt, so we didn't. Instead, we enjoyed being not in a van, not in a city, and not around thousands of people. Having said that, there WERE a LOT of people about; village folk going about their business, kids playing cricket and football and volleyball and other less-identifiable games, and trekkers. Many, many trekkers. A lot of them were in or on buses and jeeps, all of which were highly ornamented, and all of which were laden well beyond NZ standards of feasability, let alone sensibleness.

We were walking alongside a mid-sized river. The torrent of milky, limestone-sediment-laden water flew past at a good clip, and appeared to be moving even faster when viewed through the gaps in the decking of the well-deteriorated suspension bridge. The rain we'd encountered earlier in the day had left puddles on the ground, and was hanging around the ridges and mountain flanks that surrounded us on every side, and for as far as the eye could see in every direction, leaving everything looking slightly spooky and mysterious.

Dusk was starting to draw in as we made our way up a set of stone stairs and through Bhulbhule village to another suspension bridge - this time decked with metal gridwork - which we crossed to our first night's accommodation: the Arjun Hotel and Restaurant.

The Arjun was, we assumed, named after Arjuna, the hero of the Hindu epic tale "The Mahabharata." We never confirmed this, though, as we were too busy learning how the Nepali Himalayan lodge environment works, from how to get cups of tea or plates of delicious foods through to what gear do we need for evening, overnight, and morning. Oh, and there was some German management to do.

It would be unfair on everybody to refer to Germans as the Amerikans of the Himalayas. Yes, they're a bit louder than absolutely necessary, and they definitely exude an air of arrogant entitlement... but then so does pretty much every German out and about in the world*. And, to be fair to the Germans, we later met groups of French, Czech, and Israeli trekkers who were more irritating. Interestingly, the majority of the trekkers we encountered were from Europe, but pretty much everyone we spoke to for longer than the bare minimum required for politeness was from either Nepal or Canada. The Germans at the Arjun were big, ruddy-cheeked men who stood talking loudly in the middle of doorways and passages and didn't deign to notice the other people who were trying to get past them.

They were but a minor irritant, though, on a night full of newness and excitement. First time ordering food by writing one's order in the order book, first time eating dhal bhat (standard Nepali trekking fare: rice + lentils + potato curry + pickle + a papadam) on wobbly mismatched chairs at a communal table by candlelight during regular/irregular power outages, first night on hard single beds in a low-ceilinged room, first farts in the new sleeping bags...









* = Certainly the couple we met on the tiny island off the coast of the small island off the coast of the still-not-very-big island in Samoa were just as bad as, if not worse than, any of the Germans we met in Nepal