NEPAL--The Dhaulagiri Trek Continues

The Dhaulagiri Ordeal -- Day Sixteen
Laura's knees started out healthy enough, but soon they hurt enough so that our progress was limited. Her cough, on the other hand, was improving. Her elbow smarted only a little, but her spirits were much improved, and she was as sunny as the sky above us. The trail was new to us, but it was easy, not a monkey trail at all. The day, like most days going home, was uneventful, though we stopped for lunch at a rocky porter roost, and the locals, according to Dawa, said it was two hours Nepalese time to Darbang. We usually doubled the Nepalese time, and that was our time, the slow American time. Wongdee had called us lazy, and we had corrected him, not lazy, just slow. But now Wongdee was gone! Our German friends were gone! The porters, the kitchen boys, were all gone, Priam Rye, Chareen, Sukaman, Ganzaman, all gone. Just Babaram was there to carry our pack and sleeping bags, and Dawa was there to guide us back to Beni, but how we missed Wongdee!

So after lunch in that nameless Nepalese town, nameless to us at least, it was two hours Nepalese time, but the locals also said it was two hours donkey time. We arrived in Darbang two hours later, we had turned from slow Americans into donkeys! What an improvement! The communists, tempered by rest days, were right.

Oh Darbang, dreadful little city. Darbang of the seven mile toilet! Dabang of the noisy teachers. Darbang of the barking dogs! We were back in Darbang, staying in the best hotel in town. It offered fooding as well as lodging. The room was clean and nice, once we spread our sleeping bags over the questionable sheets, and the window opened up on a garbage dump. When the wind changed, we couldn't smell a thing! The meal was simple Dal Baht, but it was nice. We went to bed a little later than usual, as we had candles (since we left Beni at the begining of our trek none of the towns had electricity, a few stores had solar power), and we were not in a tent. But then the dogs took up the second part of their opus (the first they had finished during our last visit), but inside the teahouse their voices were not as sharp. But then at 3:00, men next door began a very loud, very long conversation, and they were either coming or going, we weren't sure, and we thought they might be two teachers whom we met on the trial the day previously. At any rate, they found a comma for their sentences finally, an hour later.

View of a famer's house from above. We camped in their fields.

Aaron coming up what we had just come down a week before

The Dhaulagiri Ordeal -- Day Seventeen
At six we woke, without tea (where was Priam Rye?), ate porridge quickly, and started off to Beni. Wongdee had thought that we would not make it from Darbang to Beni in a day, but we started early, Laura's knee was only slightly sore, and we were going donkey speed. At lunch, we stopped in a hotel/restaurant that was neither. Dawa pronounced the cook a fool and ruffian, pushed him out of the kitchen, and cooked our lunch himself. Babaram sat with us and repeated over and over, two hours to Beni, two hours to Beni! He was anxious to re-aquaint himself with chang, now that Wongdee's prohibition had been lifted due to the auspicious guide's absence. Babaram, though, couldn't wait that long, and he began, at every village, to quaff gallons of liquor at every stop, always hidden, always ahead of us. He would sway with our bundle, his eyes distant, his mouth sloppy with a smile. Dawa was not happy about these turn events, but again, ke gar ne? Three hours later we were in Beni, three hours and five minutes later we were in our room at the Hotel Yeti, three hours and six minutes later we were in a hot shower, and soon after we had eaten, were in the glow of electric light, and we reflected on the ordeal, grateful
that we had made it alive.

Babaram after chang house hopping. Porters use a strip of cloth across their heads to carry the leaf baskets on their backs up & down the mountains!

More, more, more, onto Day 18