The Place of Yaks

Short Version:
More Israeli asshattery, more walking. A purple velour birthday. A yak at Yak Kharka

Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 11 = 3:30
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 51:30
Beer Time = 35:30

Long Version:
Sheree Kharka Morning:
Israeli noise wakes us up.
Israeli girl jumps the queue for the toilet.
Amerikan guy jumps the queue for the toilet. Israeli girl is still in there. Israeli girl had not latched the door. Amerikan guy gets yelled at. Israeli girl storms off. Puppet amusement.
Asshat Israelis keep leaving the dining room door open. Cold air enters. Other groups take turns shutting the door and making rude comments. Each comment louder than the last. Eventually one Israeli guy clicks that everyone hates them and that they should not leave the door open. Round of applause.
Mountains spectacular in pre-dawn light. Sun touches high places first, then steadily encroaches into lower regions.

********

Somehow, we're walking uphill again. Buddhist holy places are abundant; seems like there's one on every high rock outcrop. We find a seasonal yakherd village. It's currently empty, and surprisingly large, sprawling out across a small plateau. We follow a wall up and then across the face of the hill. In winter, the villagers herd their animals into the field enclosed by this wall, where the long grass and their hay stores provide food for the beasts when there's not much else about. For now, the animals are outside the wall, roaming free-ish. We see a large flock of naur, or blue sheep. They look - and act - a lot like the mountain goats we saw in the Rockies a year ago, only with more fighting.

Over the northern ridge, we descend quickly into the next valley. There is snow, so we throw it at each other. The game of "sneak rocks into the Puppet backpack when he's not watching" continues.

At the bottom of the valley, we cross a bridge and start up the other side. The "No Complaining" agreement is stretched. We see more naur, and then rejoin the main Annapurna Circuit trail for the final few hundred yards past the small hydro power station and into Yak Kharka*, where we acquire a small free-standing chalet that is much like the one in Turangi in which we stayed while assaulting Mt Ruapehu in January, except this one is pink, inside and out.

The views from the dining room are stupendous. The wind is whipping loose snow off the mountain tops; it looks like it's cold up there! It's warm here, lower down, in the sun, inside, near the fire. An English man does magic tricks for a little old lady, people sing "Happy Birthday to You" to a Polish woman in a purple velour tracksuit (top and bottom). They are terrible singers**. The apple pie looks delicious. The apple pie IS delicious. There is a yak outside. It is large. We are excited.





* = The Place of Yaks, apparently. Which probably means that Sheree Kharka, where we stayed last night, is The Place of Sherees

** = To be fair, it's apparently a really difficult song to sing well. Which explains why we've never heard it sound anything other than horrendous