10/19/18

Our first full day in Besisahar we explored a path heading out of town and higher into the foothills of the Himalayas. Down the hill from our guesthouse we came across a group of children with one of their mothers playing on a swing. This swing was unlike those you’ve seen before, erected by four of the thickest bamboo poles one can find. The poles become two triangles separated at the top by a wooden bar and all secured by yards of rope wound around every angle of the contraption. A rope swing hung from the middle launching a child high into the air. It was the main day of Dashain, a Hindu festival celebrated for 15 days. It celebrates the great conquest of the gods over evil demons. During Dashain, families gather together to eat, play games, and place Tika. Tika is wetted rice mixed with vermillion that is placed on the third eye by elders. If one is widowed, their Tika is colored yellow. Greens are tucked into braids or behind the ears. It is important to play on the swing at least once during Dashain. It is said that by riding the swing, one is able to leave this earth for just a little while, perhaps bringing you closer to the gods. After each taking our turns on the swings, egged on by the children who kept asking for just one more picture which we obliged, we carried on our way up a steep mica encrusted stair-stepped trail polished by years of use. Our turnaround was a tiny Hindu temple rested upon an open face of the ridge overlooking thousands of terraced rice fields and a sneak peak view into the towering cliff layered peaks we were headed towards tomorrow. When we returned to the guest house, our guide Usha had arrived! She suggested we take a short bike ride towards the villages above the town that afternoon. We wound up the rutted and rocky roads passing colorful homesteads and more fields of rice. We came to one outpost with a family playing on a bamboo swing. Again we were urged to take a ride, and again we acquiesced. The family also asked to place Tika on our foreheads. Excitedly we lined up on a bench to outstretch our necks and receive Tika. With anticipation and a feeling of being blessed, we were ready to begin our journey the next morning. 

10/20/18

I’ve been in a habit of waking up early and going to bed early here in Nepal. So at 6:00 am I was up, ready to eat a hearty breakfast, and start pedaling. The pedaling started out with many ascents and descents as we followed the river up the valley. Eventually we came to our first checkpoint on the trail. From there the road began ascending higher on the hillside making for some dramatic views of the water eroded valley below. I was very happy that our trail here was not single track because there was a wide berth needed between you and the drop off on the right side of the road. Side rails are rarely an addition on this roadway. Most of our views entailed jungle entangled cliffs. The exorbitant number of waterfalls made the mountains look as if they were weeping with delight in their own beauty. The layers and layers of peaks gave the impression of a pop up book. Rounding a curve in the road would all of a sudden expose a snow encrusted pinnacle popping into existence, accentuated by its gleaming whiteness among the deep green hues of humid forest. After many hill climbs, descents of glory where you literally basked in the coolness of your sweat evaporating, and river crossings that drenched your shoes only to be dry again in the next half hour, we came to our lunch spot. Here we enjoyed homemade momos with a view of the milky blue river below. Our entertainment was an animated ensemble of donkeys ambling across the suspension bridge and a very hesitant pair of cows that took an hour for their handlers to convince across the bridge. Below the bridge, the snaking river unfurled, spitting viciously at every rock it collided into. The ride after lunch was only a couple of miles further and brought us into Chyamche. This town was nestled snuggly between stoic stone walls giving the impression that one was passing through an ancient gateway to the Himalayas.

Extra special entry: 10/20/18

Well today ended with a scream! I was just about to settle into bed when a large dark movement above the head of my bed caught my eye, no sooner did I realize that the dark movement was a face sized tarantula making his or her way down the wall towards my bed. I jumped back, my pupils dilating, feeling the thump in my neck as my fight or flight response kicked in. I dramatically stated to my travel mates just a thin wood board wall away, “There is literally a face sized spider in my room!” Just then it scurried lightening speed down the wall, so innately I shrieked and ran for the door of my now seemingly claustrophobic sized room. The tarantula could clearly sense my anxiety and took a leap into the air catching itself with a web that seemed far too thin to hold its gargantuan weight. It dropped with a graceful thud right onto my sleeping bag, wiggled into the folds, and disappeared. Usha, hearing my high pitched exhalation of utter terror, came to investigate. She shuffled the blanket and picked up the pillows carefully in search of the hidden arachnid. She turned towards me stating, “I don’t see anything in here.” Jittering, I replied, “Oh no, it is definitely in there.” As she turned back towards the bed, the two pillows she was holding twisted and I could just make out a few hairy legs poking out from between them. Hoping from one padded foot to another I squawked, “There it is!” Again, it leaped into the air towards my bed, then scurried so fast it was almost impossible to see, towards the space between my bike bags and the bed. Oh god! Now where did it go?! Again we shuffled the bedding, and the bags, looked under the bed but to no avail. It had disappeared. I had a sneaking feeling though, that it’s vanishing act had not been quite as mysterious as we thought. The middle board on the wall closest to where the spider had fled was bending outwards near the top and bottom, creating a space  just big enough for a spider (even one of such magnitude) to slip behind and disappear from view. My only hope, it was scared enough of this room not to show itself again tonight. I’m not sure if that’s how spiders work, but here’s to hoping. 

10/21/18

To begin the day, a pot of ginger lemon honey tea and Tibetan bread with butter and honey for breakfast. The riding today started off with a long, strenuous huff up to the top of a roadway chiseled into the side of a rock face. At the top is a memorial for the workers that lost their lives building the road. Much of the roadways here seem an astonishing feat to create. We passed a number of road making machinery grinding their way up the roads, getting stuck, reversing, and getting pushed by the machine behind it. From our rock perch we soared down to meet the banks of the river, again following its meandering curvatures slowly up in elevation. At this point I began to feel some catching and skipping on my chain ring and cassette. After several small up sections the problem had gotten worse and eventually a rubbing sensation that slowed my back wheel occurred. Several innovative tries to realign my derailer failed and all at once it became apparent what the real problem was. As I was pedaling my rear wheel stopped responding and it was revealed that my rear hub had gone caput!  Now with a lame bike two days into the trip I suddenly felt emotional and tried fervently to hold back my tears. Luckily, we had a solution! The following day another bike group would be driving to Besisahar from Kathmandu. My bike would be strapped to a Jeep headed to Besisahar the following morning in time to meet the vehicle where an exchange would happen with a new bike sent up to me in Chame, our next destination. With any luck it would arrive in two days and we would still have a chance to ride to lower Pisang that afternoon. My bike and I were loaded onto a Jeep for the remaining 3.6 miles of our ride that day and we catapulted our way to Danaqyu. Our kind guest house manager said he would bring the bike safely to Besisahar and leave it at the hotel where the guide coming from Kathmandu could load it on the van and make the exchange. I was in awe of how Usha had been able to arrange everything so that I could continue the journey. With my mind at ease and excitement to push on the next day we settled in to a cozy night at the foothills of the Himalayas. Tonight we started a large game of Rumi and I was kindly assisted with my plays by the guesthouse manager (although I’m not sure if he was helping or just making me second guess my plays!). He and his wife had recently had a new baby (now four months old) named Basang. The family welcomed us into their kitchen to sit around the fire place and drink Tibetan tea while we played with Basang and tried our best to make her smile.

10/22/18

This morning we sat around the guesthouse owner’s fire once more to enjoy a hearty breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and Tibetan tea. The organization and display of different types of useful dish ware in a Nepalese kitchen puts our American kitchens to shame. One never needs to hunt for a specific bowl, everything has its place and its use or it is not worth keeping. The center piece of a Nepalese kitchen, a nurturing fire, gently stoked from time to time and fed offerings of sweet smelling kindling. Instead of biking today, I will be taking a walk through the woods with two German friends traveling in Asia for 6-8 months. The trekking trail started out in the woods, where the colors of fall had certainly begun to illuminate. Reds, oranges, and lusty browns sprinkled the path and accented the canopy. We crossed three suspension bridges before coming out onto a road that took us through tiny self sustaining villages. Here, everyone has a chicken coop, at least one garden beside their house, and a couple of goats or cows. Buckwheat and corn were laid out on grass woven platters to dry. Apple tree orchards also began to appear, and so did bags of dried apples being sold in every store front. We felt our bellies yearning for sustenance and found ourselves under apple trees in the backyard of a family’s quant tea house. As soon as our tea arrived, a very gregarious little girl around the age of 4, came out to use our extra chair as a structure for her house that she attempted to build over and over again with a large drying towel. Giggling along with her, I helped her construct the fort. She wanted to practice her English words as well and pointed in all directions declaring the names of different objects. This went on for over an hour, as food here is prepared when you order it, so it is always freshly made. After saying our goodbyes to our new friend, we continued up the road for another half hour until we reached Chame. Again, goodbyes were in order and I hoped to see my trail friends in Manang in the next couple of days as they planned to continue on to the next town. Chame is known for its hot springs and that is precisely where we headed off to once I was rejoined with my bike pals. The two pools were built next to the river with water hot enough to scald. One pool was untouchable, but the other pumped equally with hot springs water and river water was just right for a soak, equally soothing the soul and the joints. Four warm bodies and bellies full of Dal Bhat and Tibetan bread later we were back at it with Rumi and eventually Asshole (the card game). 

10/23/18

Last night I woke up to Usha talking in her sleep in Nepalese. As I drifted off again I heard a familiar scratching sound on the foam insulation that lined our little bunkhouse. Sitting up immediately, I flashed my head lamp against the wall and stopped a medium sized but rotund spider on its way up the wall just beside my pillow. I decided I would handle this one on my own, the spider seemed slow enough from the nose nipping cold. I grabbed the garbage bin and found a stiff piece of grass outside. I swiftly jammed the plastic garbage bin against the corner of the wall and flicked the spider into the container. The spider crawled into a ball now resembling the shape and size of a mouse and hid while I found a spot to place the bin outside and far away from our sleeping quarters. The next morning I woke up to clear crisp air, the mountains in full exposure. Looming from every direction were staggering hanging glaciers and the longest sheerest flanks I have ever seen on massive mountains. We had our breakfasts and then made our way up to a gompa (a Buddhist place of worship) on the adjacent side of the river. The gompa was perched precariously on a house sized tuft of grass on the ledge of a cliff. Swirling the gompa are hundreds of prayer flags looking as though they were ready to take flight with the snip of a thread. Here we looked down upon the village of Chame. One could see all the activities of daily living. From goats being herded in a globular undulating form across a bridge and down the dirt road to angular fields being tilled by a pair of glossy black cows with a simple yet sturdy wooden contraption. Later, back at our tea house Hotel Marshyangdi Mandala, we packed our bags ready for the new bike to arrive and sat down for another canteen of lemon ginger tea and a hearty lunch. Just before 2:00 the bike arrived! We quickly loaded up the bikes and headed out towards Lower Pisang. This would take us up to 10,000ft. Along the way, we biked along the scariest section of road I’ve ever seen. On the left side, the road drops off a sheer cliff a couple hundred feet down to the river. The tracks from the jeeps that travel this road are literally inches from the edge of this road. On the right is overhanging rock, just high enough to let a loaded Jeep pass under. The road is chiseled into the side of a flaking cliff. Soon after this terror of a roadway, the views opened up again to a ramp of rock sweeping towards the sky. This beautiful, glacially carved swooping rock is aptly named the stairway to heaven. On this day you could not see where the ramp ended, it looked as if it simply kept going through the low hanging clouds right into the heavens. We all took a breath here, remembering loved ones whose energetic souls we could imagine had already scaled this monolith. As we continued our ride, it was clear that we had now entered a different ecosystem. Jungle was now replaced with pine and was that snow? All at once the light drizzle we had left in had turned to snow dancing around us as we whizzed through the pine scented forest. Reaching lower Pisang about a half an hour before sunset we high-fived with triumph. Even a broken down bike had not kept us from continuing our journey. We snuggled in after a hearty meal and few rounds of cards. The night was the coldest we’d experienced so far, but the blankets and our sleeping bags were cozy beneath the pin pricked black rubber night sky.  

10/24/18

Today we headed to Manang! At just over 11,660ft we were truly headed into the high country. The ride had a section of consistent uphill before a gentle up and down along the flat valley. The river here runs much more gently and meanders snakily between fields of cows, yaks, and goats. I couldn’t go more than a hundred yards without being compelled to snap a couple photos. Completely snow encrusted mountains flung themselves into view in every direction. To the south we could see the jagged peak of Manaslu. To the east was Chulu Far East. On our left was first Annapurna 1 and 2, then Gangapurna, and finally Tilicho Peak. We settled into our guest house that was more like a hotel. Our room faced out to the west, with a spectacular view of the Gangapurna Glacier in the light of the full moon. We walked through the town of Manang, spinning prayer wheels as we went. Eventually we came to an end in one of the stone walkways that lead us to a Buddhist Temple full of Buddha’s scriptures, shrines, and lighted homemade candles. The caretaker proudly invited us into his community’s place of worship and showed us how to swing a handheld prayer wheel. On our way back, we stopped at a small movie theater to watch 7 Years in Tibet. Since most travelers spend a couple nights in Manang to acclimatize, there are several tiny movie theatres that play rotating films to pass the time. With dinner in our bellies we turned in for the night, ready for a hike to Ice Lake early tomorrow morning.

10/25/18

With frosty fingers we made our way to the trailhead of Ice Lake around 15,153ft. My fingers buzzed as they warmed up, a side effect of Diamox the altitude medication we started taking in lower Pisang. With a bit of a stomach bug, my gut was cramping and I was slow moving at first. After a while, I found a rhythmic stride, a breath with every two steps and then a breath with every step as we got above 14,000ft. Though this was the highest we had all ever been, we felt well and excited to be viewing the mountains and their scarves of tumbling glaciers from new heights. It felt strange to be up so high, yet barely see a wisp of snow on the ground. There was not one, but two lakes partly platted with squeaky ice. Gompas dotted the slopes in every direction, with streamers of tattered prayer flags flapping in the relentless wind. I could hardly look down at my feet as we made our way down a steeper yet more direct path to Manang, I was too distracted by the textures of rock and ice folds displayed by the Himalayan mountains towering above me. We meandered through desert like forms of conglomerate towers into a monastery perched high above Manang. I stared up in amazement at an ancient crumbling monastery perched along a solid rock pinnacle. Next to it were two old growth trees reminiscent of the tree in Totoro that the girls are flown to the top of on a windy night. Usha tells me that this tree starts out as two and as it grows bigger combines to make one. One of the trees is a woman and the other a man, symbolizing their union. Once back in Manang we rested and filled our bellies, reenergizing our bodies for the following day. That night before I slept, I stood out on an open rooftop next to our room and soaked in the oily dark sky mesmerized by the staff white mountains piercing it’s edges.

10/26/18

Today we climbed, ever so slowly, to Letdar at roughly 13,700ft. I walked a lot of the trail today, feeling the drain in my legs from the hike the day before. Still, I am starting to understand that if I quickly scan my body with every step, analyzing how I feel I can keep myself at a fairly homeostatic state. I’m hoping this level of meditative movement will keep me healthy on my way to our summit. Highlights of our short, but arduous ride included 2 suspension bridges that we all rode our bikes across until meeting the steep end of the curve. The mountain views continued to change as we rounded each bend on the hills, still magnificent but showing us another angle of their glory. Spines as sharp as knives sliced down the steep slopes, the sun casting shadows to accentuate the sharpness. However, my favorite part of the ride was coming across a great rocky peak to our left that a local told us was home to a snow leopard. We looked everywhere, but did not catch a glimpse of the camouflaged creature. Instead, we were treated with its growling hiss of a call. Several times we listened to the big mountain cat’s vocalizations reverberate off the walls of the mountain. Further down the trail, the welcome jingling of bells around horse’s necks as they passed by in succession was a cheerful sound and reminded me of Christmas. Even the man in the back of the line calling directions to the horses in Nepali had an air of Santa clause about him. Clearly I’m yearning for the impending holiday season of the western world which we will dive head long into when we step off the plane. We stopped for a quick lunch in Yak Kharka, then steadily pushed our bikes the rest of the way to Letdar, which ended up being quite close. The sun was cozy in the afternoon and I spent most of that time sitting in a sun room, playing cards with three warm older friends from Germany and an enthusiastic man form Holland. Later, the Germans headed back to their lodging and I joined a game with Usha, Alin a quiet and kind Nepali bike guide that works for a Dutch biking company, the same Dutch man from the first game, and the hilarious and unabashed Dutch couple that owned the mountain bike company Alin worked for. The game I learned was not unlike our version of crazy eights, but with a few confusing changes. Dinner was Dahl bat as usual and loads of ginger and hot water. We ended the night sitting around a fire in a hut next door and trying the tiniest hint of warmed whiskey and water. 

10/27/18

Today we made our way to Thorung Phedi at roughly 14,600. The ride was only 6km so we were able to yet again slowly huff our bikes up the hills and over bridges to our destination and still make good time. Along the way we passed sections of trail cutting precariously across steep talus fields with terrifying warning signs of land slide potential. Here, we kept our breathing steady and crossed quickly, scanning for movement in the rocky hillside. The land stayed put, and I breathed sighs of relief as the slope angles lessened and more plants began to appear, anchoring the hillsides. As we came closer to Thorung Phedi, small and shaggy Himalayan cow appeared along the trail, eyeing us with curiosity, but not caring enough to move out of the way. We stopped to eat lunch at Thorung Phedi briefly, then unloaded our bikes and pushed our bikes up to high camp. This is a steep and grueling hike over 2,500ft up that would have been horrible to do the next morning with our bags attached. High camp sits at roughly 16,000 feet. On our way up, a fervent call and response began between two perfectly camouflaged grey and white speckled grouse sending the still and moonlike environment into a frenzy of noise that made me laugh. I love the absurdity of grouse. Once spotted, one would think that grouse would be an easy catch by any predator, but their resolve to live in areas of such scarcity keeps them far away from most predators especially here at 16,000ft! Back down at camp we enjoyed a hearty meal of, you guessed it, Dal Bhat and played rounds and rounds of the Dutch crazy eights game. We made our way to bed early, knowing that we would be pushing to the summit of Thorung La pass early tomorrow. Not even a pika in our bathroom, which then escaped through a hole under my bed, could stop us now.

10/28/18

We awoke at 4:12am to the pika I had found in the bathroom yesterday munching away at Mere’s backpack. The little mountain rodent lived in a hole under my bed, likely connected to tunnels that made their way into other rooms. We awoke the second time at 4:45am when the alarm went off. We packed up our bike bags as tightly as we could to our day packs and I downed as much ginger hot water I could along with a vegetable soup. The hike felt harder than the day before, weighted down with all our gear on our backs. Once at high camp we warmed our toes and drank hot ginger tea until the sun came up. Then we loaded our bags on our bikes and one step at a time made our way to Thorung La. The landscape was unworldly. With waves of moraines ahead of you and glistening snowy peaks on each side the whole experience starts to become surreal, let alone the fact that your whole body is trying to function under stress between 16,000 and 17,800ft. Somehow I began to feel a sense of elation and stamina near the end of our march and made it to the top with pure joy and excitement! The accessory muscles surrounding my lungs were beginning to feel sore from so much effort, but apart from feeling slightly euphoric, I felt well considering where we were and what we did to get there. We couldn’t stay long at the top. Just enough time to snap a couple triumphant images of our smiling faces amongst the hundreds of layered prayer flags, the only bright colors in the landscape for miles. The way down till our lunch stop was technical dust and steep.  Much of it was more like bike sledding than biking, at least for me. After lunch though the real riding began. The steepness was perfect and allowed you to glide over the rocky and swooping terrain. The narrowest suspension bridge was also included in this section of riding. We whooped and hollered with glee as we had finally hit the sweet feeling of pure downhill bliss after the hardest uphill I’ve ever experienced. Down we went into Muktinath, a small town in the Mustang region. It is dry and desert-like here. Everywhere you look there is a stand filled with hand woven baby yak wool scarves, shawls, and blankets. Even in this desert landscape there are great white mountains towering in the distance. We are now looking at the Himalayas from a different perspective. From our guesthouse we can see Dahligiri in the middle, Niligiri to the far left, and Tukuche just to the right of Dahligiri. 

10/29/18

Today we head to Marpha! We woke up early to walk to the famous Muktinath temple above the town. People travel here from all over Nepal to bathe in the freezing cold mountain water that flows through the temple. The ride today started with a long downhill on a paved road. The landscape was dry and arid. Water carved the landscape where the ground was soft creating tunnels on the hillsides. Painted streaks of twisted metamorphosed rock ascended towards the wide blue sky creating layers of orange, rust, tan, and corn yellow. Behind the sandy hills and rocky angular peaks were still glimpses of white capped mountains poking holes in the whispery clouds. After our smooth downhill came a lot of rock gardens. Avoiding the looser stones was a fun challenge, and I was very glad that the uphill sections were short lived. Our goal was to make it to Jomsom before 11am because at the same time everyday, a headwind comes in that is awful to ride in. It is so regular that there is a Nepali song about the Jomsom wind. We stopped for drinks where I had fresh squeezed local apple juice before heading another 6km to Marpha. Marpha is like no other village we’ve seen thus far. First of all, it is very clean. There was almost no trash on the ground or in the corners of the streets. It is built completely of stone stacked homes squeezed together creating tiny alley ways that block the wind. The stones are whitewashed with paint and the walkways are made from perfectly aligned slate. Channeled irrigation water rushes through the town feeding the gardens and apple orchards that we ate our meals from. After a rest in the sun we walked the stone pathways to a monastery. Alin joined us on our walk and gave a us a historic tour of the town. In the monastery he instructed us on a brief history of Buddhism and Hinduism and how they are interconnected religions.  I learned that Buddhism originated in India, but Buddha was born in Nepal. The religion then travelled north into Nepal and up to Tibet. It arrived in Tibet because a princess in Nepal was married to the prince of Tibet. Originally, Tibetan people practiced a religion that aligned with the natural world and the prayer flags are a leftover of that religion. The colors of the prayer flags symbolize earth, wind, sun, water, and fire. In order for the princess’s message of Buddhism to be received she had to incorporate Buddhism into the existing religion, thus joining the two. Today prayer flags are flown in places to purify the area, often placed where there may be danger. Buddha it turns out was a reincarnation of a Hindu god. In the monastery we enjoyed beautiful statues and murals of Buddha. We also watched as the monks young and old unwrapped three golden statues that they would place atop one of the buildings. One monk introduced us to their cat, a talkative young tabby with a white belly. From the monastery one could overlook all of Marpha. The flat roofs were used to dry stacks of wood, various hued grains, and rich golden corn. Our day ended with dinner and pre dinner snacks before retiring for the night. Tomorrow would start at 7:30am so an early night was in store. 

10/30/18

We woke up to sunshine this morning and actually felt warmth as we road Jeep track and bumpy single track to Tukuche. Some of the trails took us through groves of stunted juniper trees with alpenglow mountain views. Others brought us on rock laid paths alongside apple orchards enclosed by stacked stone fences. The apple trees were heavy with ripe apples, hanging their yellow and orange leaved branches low over their enclosures. In Tukuche we stopped at a Dutch and Nepali owned bakery and guesthouse for breakfast. We sat in their sunroom filled with cacti, vine plants, and jade. I enjoyed home pressed apple juice and Dutch roasti. Roasti is basically fried hash browns with onion topped with egg all melded together to make what looks like a big pancake, it was deliciously greasy and filled me all the way to Ghasa where we had lunch. Along the way to Ghasa, Usha brought us through tiny village pathways along river beds and through stone homes then over rooted and rocky trails in a pine forest. Epic views of Tukuche and Niligiri were viewed all day. Tukuche has an incredible glacier tumbling down like a fat tongue unrolling itself from the mouth of a sleepy dog. Here the mountains meet the jungle in a striking contrast. Glacial chunks of ice quickly turn to teeming jungle foliage. After fried rice with egg and local mushrooms, we headed off on the final feat of our day. Usha said it would be Jeep track the rest of the way, and it was! Literally the most dusty, muddy, trafficky, convoluted mess of road. To top it off the road was cut into the side of an ever sliding mass of dirt and boulders. We would forever dub this road the most treacherous section of our journey. From dust so thick you couldn’t see what was in front of you to buses wobbling on the edge of the road that plummeted way way down to muddy water raging below. At one point we finally had a chance to pass a bus. As I moved forward to pass the the bus, with Meredith behind me, it began lurching forward causing us to squeeze up against the side wall of the road. I yelled to the driver trying to get his attention so that he would not cut us off completely and end up squishing us between his bus and the wall. He started yelling at us in Nepali then lurched forward again. I screamed at him again with ferocity, waving my arm. He continued shouting back at us and shaking his arm out the window, but this outburst provided us just enough time to slip past him without getting squashed. The rest of the day, we made sure to stay ahead of that bus, listening for the tell tale turkey gobble horn call of the bus to send us scrambling onward. In Tatopani we had warm showers, a cozy room, and were finally at a low enough elevation to have an alcoholic drink. I tried a Nepali cider which was deliciously the flavor of apple juice. We then made our way down to the renowned hot springs to reluctantly join the frothing waters surrounding the rambunctious Dutch/German group that we continued to be on the same schedule as. Luckily they mostly stayed on their end of the pool, splashing and making a ruckus. In the pool, I saw movement in the trees and grass on the greenery rich cliffs above us. I watched as a band of white faced, brown and grey bodied monkeys swung and leaped from branches across the slope. They seemed to be peering down at us with the same curiosity I had about them. Some fried rice with egg and a walk through the local shops filled the rest of our evening. Tonight no one would be chilly. As we fell asleep, the air was warm and thick. 

10/31/18

Happy Halloween! We would not be celebrating this year. Instead we would be barreling down dirt road with our bike bags jostling. My seat bag was over loaded at this point with Nepali gifts and with every pothole it rubbed along the back tire making a hilarious noise and adding some friction to my ride. No amount of air pressure added to my flimsy shock would help the situation. We rode for about an hour and a half before rolling into Beni, but we pedaled hard and fast the whole way. The traffic was better this early in the morning, but we still came across a number of jeeps, busses, and motor bikes as well as a couple herds of spiral horned goats. The Jeep tracks have a certain appeal to ride on with plenty of obstacles keeping your mind active the whole way. It’s like a never ending game of Mario carts. In Beni, we unloaded and awaited our Jeep that would bring us to Pokhara. I was hungry again (at 9:45am) so I had an early lunch, hoping to give my body energy to fight off a bit of a sore throat. The Jeep ride was unappealing to say the least, but at least we got to Pokhara safely and as efficiently as we could. Our bikes even made it in one piece, no one’s roders were bent in the process. In Pokhara we loaded up for a final time to get to our hotel that we had read about, the Peace Eye. It is a comfy little hotel with a hippie vibe. Delicious vegetarian food and fresh juice. We walked the main drag of Pokhara along the lake tonight and stopped to get a drink and appetizers at Busy Bee, a local gem with tasty morsels. Here, we had a cheers to completing our journey. It felt surreal that all the anticipation of this journey was now over. We were filled with memories and reflection from our time in the Himalayas, but it’s hard to put it all down in words. I hope my journal entries will do it some justice, but in all reality you just had to be there.

11/3/18

Today I woke up and prepared myself to launch into the air with a running start. We signed up for paragliding with the first Nepalese paragliding company. All of their guides are highly experienced and most have held titles for paragliding competitions. I went up with the original owner’s son. He grew up flying and made it a career after he finished college. He told me that when he first flew it was like tasting the sweetest nectar and he had to make it his life. We lifted off with a short running start and then there we were gliding through the air. We swirled up catching a warm draft and enjoying peekaboo views of the Annapurna range. It was quiet up here with just the rush of air and we flew by Egyptian vultures soaring in the same spiraling updrafts. The homes and city below looked like a patchwork quilt with all shades of yellow and green. The rice fields were turning a golden hue, ready to be harvested. Raj, my guide, took me across one of the ridges to catch another updraft. Higher and higher we flew. My sensitive inner ear was giving me a feeling of sea sickness, but my mind was ecstatic with the sensation of flying and comprehending the logic of where I was. Again, we glided further along the ridge as it took a slight turn to the right heading towards the lake. Twisting up along an invisible path in the sky we were carried higher. On our slow and controlled decent we hovered over the lake and gently came in for a landing. I barely took two steps and we were down. A perfect landing. Celebration was in store with another round of pina coladas and some kothe chicken mo:mos.