Not Necessarily in That Order

Short Version:
We walk from Bahundallah to Chyamche. Chillies, buffalo, waterfall, bees!

Stats:
Total Walk time Day 3 = 4:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 10:45
Beer Time = 10:45

Long Version:
Morning in Bahundallah:
We'd both slept well in our bags on our single beds, although there were some crazy dreams* close to morning.
Clouds that had threatened rain - and occasionally delivered, in small doses - had dissipated overnight, and we could see... mountains! Two of them, big buggers, looming at the head of the valley, capped with snow. Exciting!
Lodgekids were doing the washing of the clothes and other cloth things at the outdoor tap. We knew from noseyparker experience that that water was bloody cold even at the hottest part of the afternoon, so we were goosebumpy just watching those kids get stuck into the soaping and scrubbing and - especially - the rinsing. They seemed to be having fun though. The small boy, in particular, kept stopping work to sing little songs and dance little dances. He was, at various times, told off by various elders, and at one point was threatened with a hose-drenching by his older sister.

And then we were off, uptrail, downhill, upriver! The fat cow we saw turned out to be a small buffalo, and then the little old lady we saw walking with the aid of a stick used the stick to beat some full-sized buffalo, and then we hauled ourselves up a hill to Jagat, where we ate delicious foods with extra chillies (koshani!) and didn't visit the cybercafe.

Progress is afoot in this part of Nepal. The dirt road we were walking on on day one rejoined, left, and rejoined the trail repeatedly throughout the morning, and there was steady, if occasional, motorised traffic heading in both directions. Mule trains still outnumber the stinkboxes, but motorvehicles can do multiple journeys in the time it takes a mule train to do one, and can carry more stuff with less complaining. So the road exists, and is being extended. Much of the walking on the lower sections of the main Annapurna Circuit is on the road, which is a bit of a pain in the arse, to be honest. Still, side-trails exist in places, and will, we suspect, come to exist as alternatives to the road on more and more sections of the circuit as time goes by. We walked the road through to Chyamche from Jagat, which meant we got some great views of the large waterfall on the far side of the valley, and of some large black shapes hanging from a massive stone overhang that turned out to be wild beehives.

Chyamche was nice. We took a room with a balcony overlooking the main road, then switched to one at the rear of the building, with no balcony but with views out over a woodworker's yard and across to the waterfall. From this angle, the force of the falling water was very apparent; after its initial 50m drop inside a self-carved stone chute, the water struck a ledge and was propelled several metres horizontally out into thin air before resuming its fall to the river, another 40m below. We got a different view of the fall later in the afternoon, when we hiked back towards Jagat on the old foot trail. It was steep, and narrow, and hard work to walk on the uneven surface. We loved it. Once again, our wandering attracted local kids - this time a pair of rapscallion young boys, who ran up and down the trail with their stick-propelled hoop incessantly. The hoop looked like the most inappropriate toy possible for the environment - basically a skinny, rocky path across the face of a stupidly steep hillside - but on closer inspection the propulsion stick turned out to be attached to the hoop with a loop of wire. Not so stupid after all! Even so, one of the boys took a decent fall when he tripped on a rock, plunging face-first down a short flight of stone steps. Picked himself up, dusted himself off, turned his frown upside-down, and took off again.

Currently the end of the driveable road - there are more sections of road further up, but they're yet to be connected through to the outside world - Chyamche has become a commercial hub of sorts, and a waystation for travellers and traders alike. It's unlikely to last, though - as soon as the next section of road is linked, that role will shift uphill. We saw some sign of what happens when the road comes to town on our exploration walk; there were a number of abandoned lodges back along the foot trail while those at the roadhead were thriving.

We also encountered vast numbers of butterflies, a lot of marijuana, hydro power in miniature, and a madwoman. Not necessarily in that order.
The mad lady was stalking purposefully up and down a section of path, yelling what sounded like they were probably obscenities - notably bhakra, which means goat - and throwing stones at trees. We gave her a wide berth. Later, when we asked what the standard treatment for the mad was here in Nepal, we were informed that she wasn't especially nuts - she was moving her goats, whch were grazing in the trees downslope.
The pot plants were, essentially, weeds. There are some areas where vast quantities of the stuff grow - these are marked on maps as "Fields of marijuana" - but what we were seeing were the scruffiest, most bedraggled-looking plants imaginable. Not sure if that's due to random leaf-harvest at the hands of passersby or animals, or whether that's just what marijuana plants look like when they're not being tended by profit-minded gardeners.

The town, too, had sights to behold; most notably the stocky woman, wide as she was tall, who bestrode the street, censer in hand, chanting, as we were enjoying our first hard-earned trek beer**. She was clad in full traditional Tibetan garb, with a North Face down jacket as top layer. She was, apparently, driving out evil spirits, and blessing the town. Our group get some blessings, too, as Ganga stood in a fresh pile of dung. Apparently that's good luck.

Beer Stats:
Beer Drunk = 1
Cumulative Total Beer Time = 2:45
Time to Next Beer = 5:15






* = Asterix, Natalie Portman, busy drinking fountain, NZ's Next Top Model, pooping. Not necessarily in that order.

** = A Tuborg, which was the only beer they actually had. Most places had an assortment drawn from Tuborg, San Miguel, Everest and Gorkha. All lagers, more's the pity. Refreshing though, after a long walk. All locally-brewed, too; the Tuborg (Danish) and San Miguel (Spanish) are brewed in Kathmandu under licence.