April 4th – The mountain’s revenge
After a late night of cards playing, followed by a large meal, I was treated to a night of Michael snoring. The man really got himself in a good rhythm because no matter how many times I kept kicking the bed, he never stopped snoring. Needless to say, sleep was scarce during the night and I woke up exhausted.
The group had planned on going to check out a local Hindu temple in the morning before hiking further on. I got up to get ready with some packing and breakfast. My first trip to the bathroom forecast how the rest of my day was going to go. I had diarrhea and very bad case at that. It was bad enough that it was pretty much only brown water.
I’m sure that’s much more information than anyone wants to know, but our trekking trip has been filled with a multitude of discussions around poop and other bodily functions due to our bodies reacting differently to different foods and altitude. I don’t know if I got it from the chicken the night before at dinner, or if it was lingering effects from being at high altitude the night before, but I was not feeling well.
My symptoms were bad enough that I got antibiotics from Mike. While the rest of the group went to the local Hindu temple, I stayed back in the hotel to offer repeated homage to the porcelain gods. To add insult to injury, I had to play a balancing game every time I went to the bathroom because all they had was a squatter. By the end of lunch, I had visited the bathroom literally 25 times, had used over a roll of TP, and probably increased my leg squat max to 800 pounds due to all of the balancing. The rest of the group returned from the temple and I joined them for lunch. While they enjoyed the other foods on the menu, I did my best to choke down a bunch of porridge.
The rest of the group then set off for what was supposed to only be a two hour hike to Kagbeni. Our guide underestimated the time it would take us to reach the next village and the third hour of hiking seemed punitive at best. After the spectacular mountains before the pass, we looked like we could have been on Mars. Everything was brown and ugly. Lots of dirt, dust and rocks. I know that Mars is the red planet and all while we were surrounded by brown, but the landscape we walked through would not have been out of place on that planet.
As we neared the village, we were out exposed on a trail above a large valley. The wind really whipped through the area and having windproof clothing was invaluable. I gave Anish my windbreaker to help him stay warm as I donned my larger winter jacket. I might have as well thrown a bed sheet over the kid, as it was quite evident how different our two sizes are. He made some modifications by tying off part of his jacket and we were on our way.
Down in the valley below, the cliff sides are dotted with several caves. I was very interested in exploring them, but Raj our guide explained that it’s not allowed to go visit them due to the valley being a protected area. Several of them were very high on the cliffs and with no ladders or other way to get up there, it made me wonder how old they were. I wonder if far enough back there used to be a larger river in the area that wore down the valley over time, leaving the old cliffs higher up the rock face.
After hiking further on, we reached Kagbeni at an altitude of 9,400 feet which is another descent of 2,800 feet. The bad news is that due to his descents, Blaine has really hurt his knee. It’s an old injury that has really acted up and he has been peg-legging his way around the hotel. After looking around a bit, we settled on the New Asia Hotel. It’s a very nice and large place and the rooms are quite comfortable. They do a good job of keeping out the wind which continued to howl all around the hotel. Mike and Andrea even managed to find me a room with a sit down toilet, given my earlier discomforts.
After getting settled, I promptly unrolled my sleeping bag and crashed for two hours before joining everyone to choke down some chicken noodle soup before returning to bed for the rest of the night.