Himalayas

And so begins the journey to the Himalayas. Lisa and I ate our breakfast and were shortly joined by Shom of the Gurung People. He was to be our guide today.

The first order of business was taking a ride to Ghandruk where we were going to begin the hike. We arrived early but things seemed to move slowly and we ended up waiting for more than an hour before we were finally able to get in the van.

The ride itself was quite immersive as they were playing folk music as we traversed the zig-zagging roads. Both Lisa and I had to take motion sickness medicine as the roads were quite bumpy. With some brief stops along the way, we soon found ourselves at Ghandruk. We had our lunch here, a black dog sleeping right by our seats.

We visited the nearby Gurung museum which was really just an old warehouse with several items they used in daily life. There was also a misunderstanding with Tej as we did request two pairs of trekking poles but we only got one pair instead that we had to share so that was very weird but oh well, the hike begins.

The trek took us through various landscapes, from ancient forests, rocky crags, tall waterfalls, and stone stupas. The dog from earlier following us or more like taking the lead. We soon got to Tadapani where we were to rest for the night. The tea house we were staying in had exquisite views of the Himalayan mountain range but nothing beats the comfort of staying by the fireplace. Hours went by, and an older couple and another bloke played cards and chatted away, Lisa joining them at one point.

I made friends with the lady manning the teahouse, Ram Kumari, and she showed me her Tiktok which was so adorable. She and her friends would do these funny dances over folk music as they handled the slices of life: gathering wood and whatnot.

Lisa went to take a shower first, though she did take an awfully long time. It turns out that the water stopped during the shower. Oh poor girl, she wasn't exactly the most cold-tolerant so the ordeal must have been difficult, to say the least.

I had to test it out myself and indeed, the water flow was too weak to warm up the whole body so even with warm water it didn't exactly feel like the hot shower I imagined it to be. Nevertheless, I felt refreshed and tucked myself in our sleeping bags. Only to not get sleep because of that one dude who snored so loud we could hear it from our side of the room.Read more