After 4 hours of walking, most of it at elevations approaching or over 4000 m, we drop down to Lo Manthang.
This is, apparently, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It's definitely old and it has heritage, but in my mind, the best part is the scenery along the trail.
It may be a consequence of being late in the season, but we have found the villages along the way, including Lo Manthang, to have little to recommend them, other than a few pictures. I'm not finding cattle and their byproducts in all their streets all that endearing. In some ways, these villages have all the attractiveness of a small prairie town on a hot, dry, summer afternoon. To top it off, it's really too cool to make wandering around all that enticing. The activity that we experienced in KTM and Pokhara is missing here completely.
We have been rethinking our schedule. There is some hiking we can do a bit further north which we will probably do tomorrow. We might spend another full day here, just wandering around. After that, however, we plan to head down valley pretty quickly.
Sunday, Nov 6th
After a very fragmented night of only some sleep, Sunday morning finally arrives. This lodge was certainly party central last night. A large group of young Nepalis arrived late in the afternoon, and brought their boom box and associated loud noise with them. Our room also appears to be right underneath the room with the TV. Football, anyone? As well, the social conventions we have at home about smoking inside don't seem to exist here.
They did shut things down early enough. The music stopped at 9 pm and lights were out at 10 pm or so, but when you go to sleep at 7 pm and are awakened two hours later, it does affect your sleep patterns.
I've also started to notice something odd about my breathing during the hours I've been lying here. My breathing will be quite shallow, then I get this odd sensation, almost like a mild panic, which causes me to take a couple of deep breaths, after which everything returns to normal. I think this is a blood chemistry issue caused by the altitude. I don't notice it when I'm up and walking around because I'm breathing more deeply, but I think it's also affecting my sleep.
Needless to say, I'm not feeling all that perky this morning.
We hike in the morning an hour or so north for the views. It's windy and cold now so I'm in my sleeping bag again. Tomorrow we will start heading back to Jomsom.
Monday, Nov 7th
Had a pretty good night. It was quiet, thankfully, and other than a few hours of podcast listening, the night passed uneventfully.
By 7:30 am, we start hiking south. We're actually on the trail home. From now for the next 2 weeks, every km will be either south or east. In a way, it's the turnaround point in the trip, even though the half way point was reached some time ago.
We hike, mostly on a dirt road, for 5 hours, with a short break for tea in Chrang. We press on and arrive in Ghami at 1 pm. After lunch and some laundry, we discover actual HOT showers.
Tuesday, Nov 8th
A long, hard day. Much up and down, perhaps 25 to 30 km, but the effort got us to Chhuksang, which is back on the Kali Gandaki, within 4 hours of Jomsom. The hard bit is done now. Tomorrow we have a leisurely hike to Kagbeni where we can shower and get caught up on news and email. The next day, we hike a couple of hours to Jomsom. We'll do some day hikes around Jomsom and fly back to Pokhara on Sunday.
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