Learning to Talk, Learning to Count

Short Version:
We walk from Bhagarchap to Chame, and explore Chame

Stats:
Total Walk time Day 5 = 4:15
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 21:00
Beer Time = 13:00

Long Version:
Bhagarchhap morning:
Nene eats all the honey at breakfast. Nasty Wife!

Today we walk uphill. We have plenty of time to learn how to say uphill in Nepali (okalo). Ganga tries to teach us to say downhill as well, but it's going to be a couple of weeks before we need to know how to say that, so it doesn't stick (it's oralo, for the record). The uphill here is steep switchbacks, mainly, with some steep not-switchbacks thrown in for variation.

We have awesome mountain views for much of the day: Manasalu, Annapurna II, Lamjung... very cool. Proper mountains, these, snow-capped and massive. The Nepali word for mountain is himal.

We've learned a bunch of Nepali already. Favorites are bhoklagyu (hungry), chhai nah (no/not), and bandar (monkey). Learning budha (husband) and budhi (wife) means we're on the way to being able to insult each other. Even doing it wrong is amusing, as an attempt at "My nasty wife has a monkey head*" is mispronounced and becomes "My nasty wife has a cabbage for a head**."

Puppet v donkey: Round 2! Donkey wins!

There are marijuana plants galore alongside the trail. Ganga refers to them as bhang plants. We also see tamarillo and apple trees, and crops of rice, buckwheat and millet. Prayer flags abound, especially on the bridges. We see a small boy pooping at the side of the road, and realise that we haven't actually seen anyone else doing anything of the sort. There are posters on walls in many of the villages that depict with language-agnostic imagery what not to do (ie poop near your water supply) and why (you'll get sick), and apparently there has been a significant health education initiative in recent years. We, of course, are doing our business in semi-plumbed toilets, mainly of the squatting kind***. These are, essentially, a hole in the ground, albeit porcelain-lined and with an area on either side with ridges, to help with foot grip and/or spillage drainage. In most places, there is a tap near the toilet, and a jug which one fills from the tap, pouring the contents down the hole after one's waste products. Where everything goes, we know not.

We arrive in Chame in the middle of the day, and spend half the afternoon sitting in the sun in the courtyard, chatting to some Quebecois, who are surprisingly nice. One, Stephen, helps the lodgeladies chop up some cucumberish things. They're knobbly, and the ripe ones are red inside. We also meet an Austrian woman, who we assume is a doctor because when we first see her she is helping to treat a wound on the foot of a small child. We later find out she's not medically-inclined at all, but that the wound was plainly infected, and she had some antiseptic stuff, which is a luxury item not possessed by most villagefolk.

Late afternoon we explore the village. There are a number of large prayer-wheels, as there have been throughout the day. Here they have hooked some up to the river, so they spin all the time, thereby sending a perpetual message to the divine. We don't say anything, but privately wonder if having that kind of incessant bombardment might be just a wee bit irritating for your average supernatural entity.

In the evening we have an Everest lager. And we learn to count to ten. Then we go to bed, in our double bed, and have a really crap sleep.

Beer Stats:
Beer Drunk = 2
Beer Time = 5:00
Time to Next Beer = 3:00****






* = Mi nahramro budhi bandar touko

** = Mi nahramro budhi bondar touko

*** = The few situpons we find - including at our first lodge, at Bhulbhule - are rendered squatters by virtue of dubious cleanliness and/or soaking-wetness

**** = No more beer until Muktinath, which is after we cross the high pass, by order of Ganga.