My elective ended early when I got fed up with learning nothing so geographically close to such awesome mountains and, with permission from concerned parties of course, Kel and I departed for Muktinath, one of the holiest places in both Hinduism and Buddhism. It boasts a unique earth-fire-water combo that is patently supernatural. It is the convergence of mountain with an icy stream and natural gas jets that produce a dubious "eternal flame". We didn't go there for the fire, which was lucky because while I wasn't expecting a Crown-Casino rivaling explosion of hydrocarbons from the ground, I was still a little disappointed by the pilot-light-sized spectacle sitting (mostly obscured) behind black chicken wire underneath statues of various Buddhas. It was okay, but I was hoping Hindudom (and/or Buddhadom) would hit me with more… Call me unappreciative if you will. I will say this unreservedly though: the mountain views were humbling.
Fortunately (or so one would have thought), having flown directly to Muktinath our trek was only just beginning, and there was plenty more on the itinerary. We were pumped for a week of great scenery, old historical villages, and a lot of exercise. The problem was that both of us started puking our guts up hours after arriving in Muktinath. This posed a problem because puking kills the motivation to enjoy just about anything, and the unpalatable kill-joy followed us like a desperate salesman for most of the next 3 days, alternately harassing one and then the other of us as we stumbled from town to town. I don't know if it was caused by altitude sickness or gastro, but I suspect on the basis of the full (unmentioned) symptomatology that is was gastro.We soldiered on, and were just about better by the time we got to Marpha, the apple capital of the Himalayas. Kelly still had the runny nose that had plagued her since before we left home, and neither of us had the requisite appetite for full paced trekking, but we both really enjoyed Marpha, a very pretty and well organised town.
After a two more (long) days and treks we'd descended 1.5km (and that's net; it seemed we spent more time going up than down) and walked 45km horizontally, but we must have seen 30 waterfalls, navigated through dozens of landslides (which I found fun, if a little unnerving), passed through 15 or 20 unique and ancient villages, seen a thousand goats on the death-march to Pokhara, avoided being bowled over by troupe after troupe of heavily-laden and dogged ponies carting chocolate bars, pringles and mineral water to every conceivable corner of the Annapurna ranges (as long as foreigners can get there too!), and snapped 400 photos. It was a great couple of days, and ended up being the best we had on the journey…We hit Tatopani, famous for its "luxurious" hotels and wonderful food (and that's by Annapurna circuit standards, I can assure you), and crashed for the night in relative comfort. At 2:00AM Kel woke up in agony with middle ear infections in both ears, and couldn't sleep. We hoped it would pass, but it didn't, so we were stuck in Tatopani for the whole next day, and Kel's ears were not getting any better. There was nothing I could do to help her either except hand-feed her paracetamol, since the health post was "closed for the festival" (yes, let's discuss what would happen if that health post was in Australia when I get back). The next night, Kel woke again at 2:00AM, pain much relieved, goo dripping out of both ears. I panicked and evacuated her that day just in case she'd perforated her eardrums. I use the word "evacuated" with the loosest possible definition of the word, because the evacuation consisted of her walking for 4.5 hours to the closest place with a jeep, which would have been 3 hours if a car hadn't broken down in the middle of the track and systematically blocked it off the day before.
Meanwhile, when stopped for a rest and a drink I opened a coke bottle at a deli with a bottle opener, as you do, and the neck of the bottle broke in my hand and cut a nasty deep gash in my ring finger that didn't want to stop bleeding.
I didn't pay for the coke.
So the trek was a debacle. But at least it was a debacle in a nice place. We got back to Pokhara, and a doctor who professed to be an ENT specialist subsequently told me that Kel hadn't damaged her eardrums, and then prescribed cefpodoxime and blamed the pain on barotrauma. I'm not sure what his explanation for the discharge is, because even though I specifically asked he didn't explain himself at all lucidly, which I put down to the fact that he was unused to his patient speaking the same language as him. My finger's healing well, and for some reason never really hurt much.
The other thing I wanted to mention was the incredible transformation that occurred in the orphanage while we were away. All the furniture Kel ordered has arrived, and the place looks much more habitable. The amount of money deposited into our accounts to help the children was really amazing. Even after buying them 5 bunk beds, mattresses and blankets, drawers for each child, benches for the classroom, a cabinet to store schoolwork and resources, a large collection of sports equipment, and a DVD player with a good collection of Hindi, Nepali and English DVDs, there was still money left over (!), so we got a quote and left a large sum of money with the only remaining volunteer in order to have the roof fixed properly so that it doesn't leak and ruin all the nice stuff you've everyone's bought...
The family we were living with in Pokhara held a nice party for us last night, complete with meat (a big deal)! It was a really nice gesture, and we had a good time. There were farewells to the doctors, the orphans, the other volunteer, and our de facto family, and then we jetted back to Kathmandu for a stop-off before flying into Adelaide via Bangkok and Melbourne tomorrow.Thankyou for putting up with my crap for the last 4 months and not complaining about my long-windedness or incomprehensibility. For the last time, my PicasaWeb page will be updated with photos of our trek after I get home tomorrow, or you can always come round to our house and see the photos that will doubtless be plastered all over our walls. We just need to find a house first!
Dan
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