Training Adventure

I’ve had a couple of small adventures recently.  The other day I walked down to the creek near my house with one of my fellow trainees; I was very interested in getting to some waterfalls that I’ve seen from my house.  I had tried previously but I took a fairly direct route and ended up getting stopped at the edge of the rice paddies due to some pretty exciting stinging nettles.  They hurt!!  And the next day my leg was really numb.  We took a sort of short cut down a few steep gullies through the rice paddies.  My plan was to get to the river, and then follow it up to the waterfalls.  Based on my previous experience I figured this would involve wading up the river to avoid stinging nettles.  I was right!!  At the river, my fellow hiker decided going up the river was not to her liking, and decided to bail.  I continued on, and after an hour and a half or so of walking up the river, I got to the first waterfall.  I didn’t completely manage to avoid all the stinging nettles, and I walked headfirst into a number of very thick spiderwebs with some big spiders that did not appreciate my head in their home, I’m sure.  I made sure to duck under them as much as possible.

The first waterfall off the main creek bed on a little tributary and was very pretty, but was not the one I wanted to get to.  I continued up the creek and got pretty far and then was spotted by some people in the rice paddies who immediately panicked and started whistling and waving at me to get me to come up to them.  I wasn’t quite satisfied with my expedition, so ignored them and continued on.  I scaled some steep rice paddies to another tributary and found another pretty fall which was not quite the one I wanted to get to, but they were in levels, and the next level I could not reach.  So I continued up the main creek, and shortly got to a little canyon.  This was the prettiest area.  There was a waterfall at the end of the canyon, and another coming in over the right side of the canyon, and a bit above the fall at the end there was another little fall tricking over the cliff.  This canyon also contained a lot of spiders, but was very beautiful, so worth the effort.  At this point I walked back out of the canyon and up a little trail in and around the rice paddies until I reached the people who had been whistling at me.  I told them there were no problems, and that I was just taking pictures…and by people I mean 13 year old boys.  They still decided I was hopelessly out of my league and horribly lost and so guided me back through the rice paddies to my village.

The next day was Saturday and we had the day off, so a bunch of other volunteers came down to see my village and the one down the road from mine in the afternoon.  I spent the morning washing my clothes and cleaning my room…and by that my host sister and law helped me…a lot.  She just could not bear to watch my struggle with my clothes, and then decided to start cleaning my room so I had no choice but to follow and help. Later, all of us volunteers walked down to the real river.  We took a shortcut through the rice paddies down to the creek I had gone to the previous day.  The Nepali boy who was guiding us brought us to a crossing, and shortly after that we reached the road that we had started on.  We had just cut off a bunch of switchbacks by going through the rice paddies.  And a little after that we reached the river.  It is a pretty good sized river: a bit bigger than the South Platte in CO.  There were a bunch of local men bathing at the bridge.  Public bathing is popular in Nepal.  You have to leave some sort of underwear on (preferably shorts or boxers), and women wear some sort of dress thing.  I went down to where they were, stripped down to my undies, and jumped in the river.  Towards the center the current was really moving and it was pretty deep so I decided to swim across to the other side where there was an overhang that runoff water was cascading over, and when I stood under this overhang it was sort of like a shower.  I was quickly joined by another volunteer, but no one else was quite as into playing in the river.  I swam back across, re-dressed and we all hiked back up.  This was a very hot and humid experience, so we stopped at a little tea shop on the way up which had cold cokes and it even had ice cream!  I didn’t partake as I am trying to hold off on the soda and stuff until I am really desperate.  I learned that soda can be pretty addicting in Mali, so I’m trying to stay more on top of my “flavors of home” cravings.