No Money, No Petro, No Phone – No Problem when you have Nepali family with hearts as big the mountains that surround you!

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I arrived in Tatopani with my injuries from the waterfall plunge as a great reason to spend a day recovering. The 3 guys I had traveled with from Kathmandu got up and after buying me breakfast to say goodbye they headed towards Pokhara via bus.  I happily found some comfort in the room for awhile, writing, napping and thinking about my next plan before venturing out to soak in a hot springs. They were beautiful for the body, extremely hot, but the setting wasn’t nearly as scenic as a second place I came to find on my Annapurna Basecamp route in Jhinu Danda.

I was eating my dinner looking out on the road and I saw Anja hiking up, the smiling German gal I ran into briefly the day before while walking. We chatted and had a laugh about how she had watched me ‘disappear’ onto that fateful bus when I decided to jump on with my Nepali friends. Her French friend arrived behind her and they went to find some cheaper options to stay but I knew we would cross paths if I decided to head towards Annapurna Basecamp in the morning as that was her plan.

I left Tatopani the following morning feeling a bit irresponsible and anxious after having come face to face with nearly running out of money. After paying the hotel I was down to less than 800 rupees ($8) because I hadn’t planned on trekking over the pass and continuing my journey so my only real option at getting cash would be to get on a bus to Beni in the opposite direction as ABC and Ghorepani. It’s funny I left the hotel without making a decision on what I was doing and started to walk. Within a 1/2 kilometer I came to the important junction of a footbridge leading East into the valley toward Ghorepani or the road leading South to Beni. I sat down on a rock and called Shree, unsure of anyone else that could truly aide me in my financial dilemma in the middle of the Annapurna Region. He immediately answered, a good sign to start, and continued to respond to my emotional indecisiveness by saying, “keep going Ang Dolma Sherpa (my nickname from our Everest Region Trek), you’re there now and makes no sense to not see ABC”. He said you have to make it to Ghorepani that night and seek out Sunny Guesthouse, there you can speak with the woman who runs the hotel and call him and he would get the money in my hands. My problem was resolved and I instantly had the freedom once again to continue on in the direction I most wanted to go, Annapurna Basecamp.

That day was one of the most relaxing and beautiful of the trek so far. The landscape was terraced hillsides and the daily life of the Nepalese people was ever-present during harvest season. It was constant activity in all of the bustling villages far removed from from tourism in nearly every sense. The men could be seen and heard up on the terraced mountainsides, pushing, pulling, prodding, shouting, grunting and whistling at their bulls churning up the earth with their handmade plows.

Woman could be seen in nearly every home outside on the stone patios beating huge piles of grain with long sticks of bamboo all in unison. They were all talking loudly, laughing and rarely noticed a passing white face walking along and stopping to snap a picture. Some woman use these big hand woven sifting trays, standing to sift like basically tossing something in a fry pan. A more modern approach was a boy using a rudimentary foot-pedaled machine to power a belt that would rotate large beat up metal blades of a fan. His mother stood in front and tossed the grains from the woven tray while the dusty light outer shells blew off and heavier desirable grains fell to the ground in little heaps at her feet.

Little ones were getting bathed outside their with big basins of soapy water where clothes were also being laundered and laid out to dry all across the stone walls and grassy hills. The woman bath outside as well with sarongs around them pouring cold water over there upside down heads of hair and attempting to scrub up awckwardly underneath the sarong. At first it all seems like such a pain but you come to realize after days and weeks of seeing it all over and over that they aren’t looking for better, faster, easier ways to do things all the time. They have a routine in their chores and activities and the time they need to do these things remains the same. Food is on the table, rest is found at night and joy is seen in the everyday activity. There is not this pressure to do something faster or better when what you get from your current pace is all that you need. It’s definitely a healthy thing to witness coming from the culture of bigger, better, faster, more product, less time, quantity, quantity and more quantity.

A man was sitting cross- legged on the ground using an old hand-crank sewing machine, stitching up clothes in the sun while his older daughter chitter-chattered away at him.

It was really the first time I can say I didn’t see any needs or reliance on the tourism to keep the villagers busy in their daily lives. I stopped at one point to take the huge cephalopod fossil out of my pack and leave it behind on a rock wall. There was a little girl and boy on the wall standing over me saying, “sweets”, “picture”, “chocolate” and I smiled and said no sweets but I have this present for you…..and pulled the huge fossil from the bottom of my pack. I don’t think they were very enthused about my gift and it will likely stay there for years without any notice that it’s a fossil from the riverbank 50 kilometers away and hundreds of meters below us!!

Further along in my walk I stopped to have some soup for lunch and looked down to see this message on my phone that said ‘Locked SIM’. I asked a local Nepali guide at the teahouse if I could use his phone to contact Shree once again for help!  I needed to see if there was anyway he could find out my PUK number required to unlock the SIM.  All I could think was thankfully this happened after I was able to contact him about money earlier in the day or I may have been ‘bussing’ to Beni after all.  I was shit out of luck unless Shree managed to find the code or get me a new SIM card.  I had reached a point in my journey where I had no money or cell phone service. If it weren’t for my Nepali brothers back in Bhaktapur I would have had to scrap the trip much sooner. He didn’t have the PUK number I later found out and my old number was history but he said he may be able to get me a SIM card in the middle of the ABC trek when I crossed paths with one of the iTrek Nepal guides coming back with a client so we left it at that and I remained without a cell phone in hopes of wi-fi to keep in touch as needed. I’ve been off the radar for longer periods of time that’s for sure.

I continued along toward Ghorepani. I was walking along and starting to climb some more ‘lovely’ steps when a little girl and her dog came running down one of the hills next to the trail and she quietly just looked at me and began walking along beside me.  I pointed ahead and said “Ghorepani”, she said “yes” and I attempted to ask her what village she was from but regardless of how simple I tried to speak she just looked at me and nodded smiling.  Cute as a button, she carried her little purse with a long strap on her head like all the porters carry their loads and baskets around the villages.  She proceeded to run up the endless rock steps stopping and looking and waiting for me just like she was out for a walk herself and enjoyed the company.  Her dog went in front of us just a few meters at all times.  She couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6.  It’s amazing the freedom all these little ones seem to run about with, on some very steep and dangerous cliffs and ridges. It was like her home was in the middle of the wilderness where we were walking and it brings a whole new perspective to what their ‘neighborhoods’ and ‘boundaries’ are when it comes to playing in the woods and walking with strangers to and from nearby villages.  I thought I was wild and free as a child but seeing her just run up and down the mountain trails with her dog really brought a smile to my heart.  A little girl and her dog playing in the wilderness, I could relate to that from my own childhood.

My little trekking friend and her dog!

Steps through the forest on the way to Ghorepani

 

After coming up to the next village the little girl did stop trailing along and I came upon a guest house up in the woods and saw a familiar face, it was Anja. We were only a few hours from Ghorepani and she was hiking with a different French guy, Flo, whom she also ran into earlier in her hike when he was with his girlfriend.  He was going to head up to ABC as well so that night we all ended up in Ghorepani, he happened to still get be with his guide and they were also staying at the Sunny Guesthouse which is where we all landed.  I managed to do just what Shree had instructed and the woman from the hotel got on the phone with Shree and 1/2 hour later I had money in hand and he was transferring funds to her bank account. I was a happy trekker among new friends and ready to finish my journey up to Annapurna Basecamp thanks to the beautiful people of this beautiful country.

 

 

Wisconsin disappeared on a bus…..15 drunk Czech’s and a Waterfall later…

 

Wisconsin disappeared on a bus

 

Bus ride to Tatopani

I met Anya for the first time while passing she and her French friend, Javier, taking a rest by a large rock enor ute to Tatopani from Jomsom.  I spoke a few words to them in passing regarding my trek and didn’t stop at that time to make much conversation.  She laughs now about the next hour or so of the walk as they were behind me in the distance watching my decision to hop on a bus.  The journal entry she showed me from that day was something like, ‘Wisconsin disappeared on the bus’.

I had lost the 3 Nepali guys earlier in the day in a little village that I think I decided to walk through rather than around so they were not with me at the time and I had waited sometime for them to walk up at one point so I didn’t know if they were in front or behind me anymore.  So I came to a large bend in the road where the riverbed seemed to widen and instead of taking the road around the entire edge of the river that we were following I opted to traverse the riverbed across and avoid some unnecessary road.  It worked as I had watched, while I stopped to squat and pee before crossing, some local farmers with their water buffalos snake their way across the rocky open span of land.  So I managed to hop, skip and jump over the water, using a little homemade log bridge at one point, and then I heard the sound of a vehicle and looked back to see a bus rounding the bend.  It was the only bus seen yet in the day coming my direction so I gauged my pace and quickened up my steps to make it to the other side of the riverbed and onto the road just in time.  I raised a trekking pole and the bus came to stop in front of me and one of the 3 Nepali guys I was walking with stuck his head out and without a word I jumped on and was whisked away.

The bus stopped for everyone to unload and have some tea, bathroom breaks and the guys got some sort of curry in a little dishes that I gladly took.  Then back on the bus I was squeezed next to a drunk man in his 30’s or 40’s maybe, he kept elbowing me, smiling big and dancing with his arms to the Nepali folk music playing loudly in the background.  One more stop for the 2 or 3 tourists including me to check in at a TIMS check point (Trekking Information Management System). Everyone has permits when trekking in various regions and these are checkpoints for you to have your permit stamped and then your next intended destination documented in a ledger in case of any emergency so that you can be back-tracked so to speak.  Last stop for that bus was short of Tatopani – due to the petro shortage the buses don’t just keep going because they literally don’t have enough fuel and we needed to hope for another bus with fuel and enough passengers to go the last stretch.  I immediately noticed a large group of foreigners seemingly having a great time standing and sitting around a table in the open dusty ground of this ‘bus stop’ where there are a few little shops that serve food and beer.  The group was 15 Czech’s and their 8 guides and porters waiting for their privately hired bus to arrive and proceeding to get drunk on Kukri rum and Tuborg beer.  I asked about their plans and they indicated they had ordered a bus and laughed about it maybe showing up…so they were just whooping it up, chasing ducks and I was happy to be welcomed immediately to the group by being offered a coke bottle with straight rum in it to have a toast.

I told my Nepali mates they needed to talk to the guide(s) because we could get on the bus with them and just needed to know how much they would want to charge us to tag along.  In the end the bus arrived and we all piled on  – packs on top and booze inside for an adventurous ride.  The bus had colorful yarn macrame hanging down all around the front of it.  I found it to be full of dust as it rained down on my head every time we swayed and bounced which is every 3 seconds!!  The singing started immediately from the Czech’s and continued endlessly back and forth in a battle between the Czech’s and then the Nepali’s each singing their own traditional songs, anthems and cheers.  I sat as the single American foreigner humming, laughing, gasping every so often at the crazy driving on the edge of the mountain and appreciating my company of a bus full of cheer the whole 4 hour ride.

We stopped to ‘pile’ out of the bus at one point and see a waterfall on the side of the road and I went out with the Nepali guys to get some pictures.  I handed my phone to Hari, one of the 3 I was traveling with, to take a picture of mhe.  I njstepped down on the rocks to get closer to the spraying water and that’s when my 1st of 9 lives in Nepal was used up.  Suddenly my foot slipped and I careened head first into a deep crevice of rocks that was being beaten by the forceful water falling from above.  I hit my head so hard, that was the first thing that smacked against the rocks, and immediately was aware of this loud and chaotic force pinning me upside down.  I just remember thinking long enough about being upside down and not having the ability to right myself and no concept of where my arms or even the rest of my body really was – I was simply conscious of my head being where it was and I think my only option was to move my head in a way that I could find air amidst the heavy weight of water in my face.

Thank God within only seconds Hari had thrown my phone and jumped down to grab me by my arm and leg and pulled me up onto the rocky ledge I started on.  I didn’t have time to even think about how I was going to get out on my own before I felt his hands dragging me out.  I immediately came to feeling like I needed to regain control of the situation and saw my purple jacket down in the rocks which I was able to stoop over and get myself, thankfully I had my go pro on my wrist (the selfie stick) because it came back up with me.  The first thing Hari said to me while looking me over head to toe and staring into my eyes was something like ‘and this is why I am never leaving your side’.  I felt protected at that moment and I understood the feeling of having someone next to you in a moment of crisis when you aren’t able to get out of something by yourself and you have no control.  I went back to the bus where the Nepali guys had all heard quickly what happened among themselves and were all worried and making sure I was ok. I felt stupid at that moment just feeling the need to stay in control and find my pack on the top of the bus, none of them were happy when I jumped on the ladder myself and climbed up before they could stop me, so that I could get my dry clothes out and change.  I walked down a little path so I could get out of sight to change and it felt like I had 10 Nepali watchdogs that wanted to stay next to me the whole time.

I was lucky I came out of it all with a big goose egg on my head and only bruised legs and arms, that night after we got into Tatopani the guys made it a point to check on me in the evening as I could have a minor concussion and didn’t want to be left alone to sleep all day the next day or anything.  They were so good about everything and Hari especially really has continued to check on me as I haven’t returned to Kathmandu yet and I owe him a nice meal at least after saving me from dying in a waterfall in the Himalayas.

Bus Ride on a Cliff side

 

Pre-waterfalling….