It's All About The Tea

I slept like a baby! It was possibly the best sleep I've had for ages. I got up early, watched sunrise and got back into my smelly clothes. I've not showered for 2 days... Eek!

For breakfast we had Indian Puris, pumpkin curry, guacamole, melon, oranges, coffee and of course more tea. By 8:30am we were all packed up and on our way.

The morning was spent walking through more villages farming chilli's with the first stop at about 11am for... Guess what?!... Yes some more tea!

Pyu thought we were barking mad but happily gave us endless amounts of tea at each stop. During the break everyone tried beetlenut Catechu. We had already tried Paan in India so didn't partake and I'm so glad we didn't. It just looked ghastly. At one point Ellia was just spitting out what looked like yellow bile. Why everyone is so obsessed with it here I will never know!

The next 2 hours were tough because of the heat and longing for a break and lunch. There wasn't much in terms of scenery to entertain either and for the first time we saw other tourists. They did not look like they were having fun at all compared to our constantly laughing group.

Lunch was quite a let down to be honest compared to the other days, probably because there were quite a few groups. Again we were the noisy laughing group compared to the solem and barely talking ones. So glad we had such a fun group as it really makes a difference to the experience.

After lunch and tea we had an easy 40 mins hike to the next stop at the river where Pyu, Ellia and Karin went for a dip and the rest of us just chilled in the shade.

The last part of the day was definitely the best in terms of scenery but worst in terms of heat and feeling sluggish. But Pyu knows exactly how to make us happy and after hiking up for a while and seeing a beautiful view we stopped for Tea. The little shop where we stopped had a fab selection of snacks so we all sat on sun loungers, in the shade eating snacks and drinking plenty of tea while listening to Pyu sing and play the guitar.

From there we had about half an hour left of walking before reaching the monastery. When we arrived there were quite a few groups and so we weren't expecting such a quiet and comfortable night as before. As soon as we arrived we freshened up, grabbed some beers and headed up to watch sunset before dinner again. We ate, had tea and got told a new bedtime story from Pyu and got to bed for 9pm ready for our early morning start of 6:30am tomorrow.Read more