Nepali Flat

Short Version:
We walk from Ghorepani to Tadapani. Butt-slapping, tooting, hooting and hollering. And complaining. Not necessarily in that order.

Stats:
Total Walk Time Day 20 = 3:00
Cumulative Total Walk Time = 98:00
Beer Time = 25:00

Long Version:
Ghorepani Morning:
The sunrise is, apparently, spectacular from from Poon Hill. So we...

...stay in bed, and watch the first rays of yet another gorgeous cloudless day paint the mountains rosy orange/peach colors while we stay snug and warm and lazy in our fat sleeping bags* while drinking passable coffee.



********

Our walk pace has been increasing steadily since Thorong La, to the point where we're blasting past all and sundry on the trails. Not so fast, though, that Ganga couldn't sneak on ahead, hide in the bushes, and scare the bejeebers out of Nene as she approached by making mutant cat noises.

The forest east of Poon Hill is mainly huge rhododenrons, which look like elderly puriri once they're enormous and sufficiently gnarled. Apparently they're really spectacular when in bloom.
The terrain was much more like NZ than it was higher in the Himalayas, with steep, wooded slopes and some big trees. Throughout the day we were largely enclosed by forest, but we did get some sneaky peeks out between the trees; mountains to the left of us, and, for the first time in a long time, to the right we started to see vistas that stretched away into a distance that was actually distant, rather than terminating abruptly at one or several bloody great big mountains.

We started the day walking up, just for a change. After several false summits, though, we actually hit some down. Down! And then up. Down. Up. Apparently this is what they call "flat" here; it's when the up and the down are approximately equal, and cancel each other out. We spent some time in river valleys, which made the hike even more NZ-like, although the slippery foot-polished marble steps were somewhat different.

The five hour trek from Ghorepani to Tadapani took us three hours. We were first in, so got the best room (end of the row, extra window in the end wall, facing downvalley) and the best part of the solar hot water in the showers. We also got the best spot in the sun outside, where we sat to enjoy our ginger and honey tea.

Unfortunately, it was the most disgusting tea in the cosmos.
Holy heck, it was vile!
Turns out that one really can't underestimate the importance of thoroughly cleansing one's grater between grating garlic and grating ginger.

Luckily, the lentil/mushroom burgers were phenomenally good, to the point that not only did we have one for lunch alongside a cheese/bean burrito, we also had one each for dinner, which we ate in the dining room, where the warmth of the under-table brazier was greatly appreciated by all the various happy trekkers.
Except the large group of elderly British people, who complained incessantly.
About everything.
For ages.
What a pack of arsebiscuits!

The whiny Englischers were so painful to listen to - and such a big group that not listening was more difficult than it ought to have been - that we left early, wandering up the scarily steep and narrow and wobbly stairs to the upstairs balcony and in to our room, where we put ourselves to bed with books. Later, when the age-mismatched Spanish couple who were our next-door neighbours for he night arrived in their room, we weren't making any noise - with e-books there's not even the sound of pages turning.
So it may be that they didn't realise that noise would be clearly audible in adjoining rooms.
Or it may be that they just didn't care.
Whatever the reason, we were treated to a veritable symphony of butt-slapping, burping, naughty-sounding laughing, and farting before they settled down and shut up for the night. We had great difficulty containing our merriment.







* = Fartsacks.