The last few weeks have been fairly eventful for me.  I had two good friends visit and gave a first-aid training.

First, my friend, Thera, came from where she is teaching English in Korea to visit me in Nepal.  Thera is a friend from Mali where we had many disastrous adventures together; though in my opinion those two words are practically synonyms.

She landed in Pokhara, and the next day we went to my site for an evening.  We set out a bit late the next morning with the goal of reaching a town called Ghorepani which is near Poon Hill which offers the best view of the mountains in this region.  We passed through the delightful little town of Nangi where we had lunch at the community run tourist lodge.  After this we had to head towards a town called Ramche and from there I was not familiar with the trails, so we asked for some basic directions.  We were told to cross three pretty big streams, and then take a road heading up towards the ridge.  Sounded simple enough.

We walked for a few hours and crossed the above-mentioned streams.  The whole time we were walking in and out of a cloud.  Sometimes it was sprinkling, sometimes misting, and sometimes raining pretty hard, but there were certainly plenty of gorgeous waterfalls to look at.  After the third crossing we started looking for roads up the ridge of which we passed many thinking that they were most certainly too small and non-descript for the road to a major tourist destination.  We eventually walked all the way to Ramche where we were pointed to a pretty major road that went up towards the ridge, but while doing so went back in the direction we came from.  I was sure there was a shortcut that connected the road we came in on and the road we were on.  Ramche was the also the point where people started telling us that Ghorepani was too far to reach with the daylight remaining, and that we would not find the correct route in the dark.

Enter the ego.

Psssh, they don’t know me.  I’m Ethan.  Of course I’ll find the path, and I certainly don’t mind walking a bit in the dark.  We reached the ridge with about 15-20 minutes of daylight remaining, and as it got dark we reached the end of the major road we were on and the road turned into a little path through the jungle.  It was also at this time that it really began to pour…and we discovered the infamous leeches of Nepal.  I had heard of these things, but only half believed the reports.  “Oh, they’re everywhere!!  They’re on the trees, on the bushes, and in the grass!  They hunt you!”  Well Nepal is apparently one of two places in the world where the leeches can live outside of the water and mud.  They were on everything.  When we brushed against a bush, we’d have one or two on our hands.  I made sure that we wore pants to help keep them from biting our legs… A foolish idea.  At one point Thera stopped and said, “One made it up my pant leg and is by my knee.”  She pulled up her pant leg and discovered her leg had easily 20 leeches on it, and was just streaming blood where others had bitten and fallen off.  Well shit.  They were just crawling up under our pant legs, and then were being hidden by them.  Leeches apply a numbing agent as well as a blood thinning agent when they bite… they’re basically a chemical weapon.  We decided after spending a good ten minutes ripping the leeches off of her leg that they would just quickly be replaced and we would just waste time yanking them off.

Around 8:30 I issued a “ten minute ultimatum.”  If we did not see anything in the next ten minutes then we would turn back because we had not seen a single person or building since Ramche and I was fairly convinced we were heading in the opposite direction that we needed to be.  I’m not sure where I got this idea because I hadn’t been able to see more than 100m due to the fog since before we got to the ridge.  Ten leech-infested minutes passed and we still had seen nothing.  Well shit, again.  We turned around and started slipping and sliding our way back through the jungle in the deep mud and wildly slippery rocks.  Thera had also managed to forget a headlamp which is pretty much a must on any Ethan adventure because the chances of being out past dark are generally pretty high.

At about 10:30, a little more than 12 hours after we left my house, we spotted a house which was the beginning of Ramche.  Since Ramche is a relatively small village most people go to bed very early and this house was not an exception.  I knocked on a door and woke some guy up.  “Who is it?” said a voice through the closed door.

“Just two foreigners; we lost the road, and we are cold, wet, tired, and very hungry.  Please help us,” I said in my most innocent voice because I just really wanted him to open the door and see us in our bedraggled state.  As luck would have it, he did open the door and a short very old man peered out suspiciously.  When he saw that we just a couple of lost white idiots and not some sort of ghost his face softened a bit.  He grabbed a bag of salt for our leeches and helped us remove them and kill them.  His porch turned into a bit of a war zone.  Our blood was all over the place with engorged leeches trying to crawl their way out of the salt which was basically dissolving their bodies.  Then he went and woke his daughter up and she grabbed some food while he made us some nice hot tea of which we each drank at least three cups.  Regardless of what they actually thought of us, they were kind enough to have mercy.  They stayed up until past midnight cooking us a hot meal.  Most of the family’s men are in foreign countries so they had quite a few extra beds which they kindly gave to us.  We slept like a couple of puppies would after romping in the woods all day.

The next morning they pretty much forced us to eat a meal before we left.  Since neither of us was really up for rallying out early in the morning this was a welcome demand.  We ate, paid them well for their kindness, and then were on our way.  The way back was pretty uneventful other than the sun coming out once in a while. 

The cloud we were walking in lifted for a moment, so I took a picture of a nice waterfall.

Thera enjoying the memory of the leeches from the night before.

Looking at a waterall in the distance

 

We arrived back at my house in the evening after taking many, many breaks for our sore feet on the way down.  We stayed overnight there and then headed out to Pokhara the next afternoon.

Thera hanging crossing the neat suspension bridge in Beni before heading to Pokhara.

 

We had a couple of ideas for our time in Pokhara, but since it was off season some of the activities were closed such as the zip line and much of the rafting.  We saw a number of the nice tourist attractions, and Thera was kind enough to treat me to lots of yummy restaurants that are normally out of my price range. 

One evening we went up to the World Peace Pagoda on one of the ridges just outside of Pokhara.

We climbed as often as possible on the wall near Pokhara.  Tara is pictured climbing here.

Thera, Tara, and I rowed out to the temple on an island in Fewa Lake.  I, of course, try to look as sexy as possible in all photos.

Thera caught me not paying attention, and so managed to get a picture of me that is fairly normal...dang!!

I think laughing pictures are the best.

The island temple

Thera and Tara

hmmmm

Another good laughing picture!  So much more real that a posed smile.  Plus a nice sunset.

 

The highlight of our time in Pokhara was definitely the caves.  I had been to Mahendra cave before, but this time on the way in, one of the ticket counter guys said, “Take a guide and you can see all sorts of stuff.”  This got me thinking, “The cave is only maybe a 100m long, what could a guide show us?  Maybe there are side passages!!”  So we checked every nook and cranny on our way in, and sure enough there was a side passage that involved crawling through a small tunnel to access.  We followed this for a ways, but only had my cell phone light so decided it would be best to come back another day with headlamps, helmets, and masks to help cover the smell of guano.

Thera making her way our of Bat Cave on our first visit to the caves.

Made it.

 

We did just that.  We searched for every cavern we could find, and then crawled inside them.  Some were very tight and pretty frightening for someone who is not really accustomed to crawling around in tight places.  The bats were wild!  As I would be crawling into a tiny little hole, bats would fly out in the 5 or 6 inches between my back and the cave walls without even touching me.

We making my way back through one of the tight spots.

Thera looking enjoying the spacious sitting conditions

Back in Pokhara looking sort of filthy.

 

Thera only had a week to spend in Nepal which went by too fast.  After she left I gave first aid trainings to new trekking guides at the Empowering Women of Nepal office.  One day into this and I got an email from my friend Erik Mehus who informed me that he would be in Nepal in two days, and wanted to go on adventures.  Those adventures will have to wait for another blog as I have to wait for him to get me pictures since my camera was dead the whole time.