April 8th – Halfway up to Ghorapani

As we walked back up out of the valleys, the landscape became more rugged. Here you can see a house surrounded by terraced farming.

After a restful evening in the closest thing to the tropics that I’ve seen, we set out the next morning for Ghorapani. The last couple of days we had constantly been descending from our high of 17,769 feet at the Thorong La to around 4,300 feet in Tatopani. Now we would begin our hike back up to close to 10,000 feet. Blaine’s knees had gotten even worse and we had to make the decision if we were going to continue hiking to Ghorapani or head to Beni and end the trek early.

Blaine decided to press on, and we found ourselves back to our goal of hiking towards Ghorapani. The morning was slow going due to goofing off along the trail. Blaine is a big fan of insects and spiders and the walls that lined the sides of the trails had cobwebs that were contained huge spiders. Some were a good three to four inches across. He was intent on dropping ants and whatever other insects he could find into the webs to see what the spiders would do. Mike and I were of course captivated by all of this, but it lead to delays in the morning. Around midday, I had to stop to use a bathroom along the trail and my rumbling stomach told me, that all was not well. All I could think about while in the dark squatter was the size of the spiders I had just seen along the trail.When trying to fall asleep at night, you have the same thoughts. I would beat the sleeping bag before I crawled in, just to make sure there weren’t any visitors waiting.

This is the daughter of the guest house owner where we stayed.

As we continued on, the trail was hot going as there was very little shade. The sun beat down on us as we hiked higher out of the valleys below. As we hiked higher we were surrounded by terraced farming with the occasional small home. The locals stended their fields as we walked by although I didn’t recognize many of the crops they were planting. They looked like multiple different kinds of vegetables, but I don’t know specifically what they were.

After several hours of hiking, we found ourselves about 2,500 feet higher in the village of Shikha. We decided to stay at the “Hotel Mona Lisa.” It was run by a family with four young children and we had the place to ourselves. The family was delightful, friendly and very eager to please. They were a joy to be with and let me take pictures of their children. The rooms were also very clean and the prices were reasonable. I definately would recommend it to future travelers.

The older woman that I photographed.

After cleaning up and enjoying my first shower in a while, I took a stroll around the village to try to take some pictures of the local children. I found a couple of children who were eager for me to take their pictures. An older woman was watching me take pictures of the kids and when I smiled at her, she gave me a big smile too. I asked for her permission to take a picture, and was surprised when she said yes. We were two weeks into the trip and she was the first older woman to let me take her photo.

Dinner was good with chicken fried rice, cornbread and Coca-Cola. I also bought Raj and Anish some dessert of their choice. I believe they settled on the apple pie. After dinner, we played canasta by candle light. While playing, it started to feel like someone was punching me in the stomach. I went to the bathroom with severe gas pains and explosive diarrhea. This condition would unfortunately plague me through the night as I had to get up every 30 to 45 minutes and go to the bathroom to repeat my experience of bad gas pains, diarrhea and frequent burps.

Sometime around 2AM after the umpteenth trip to the bathroom, I was back in my bed trying to get some rest when there was a loud rumble and it felt like the whole hotel shook. When I asked about it in the morning, no one else had felt anything and they all looked at me like I was crazy.