On to Ghorepani

Our first view of Himalayan Mountains during the first evening in Ulleri. The sky had cleared after the fury of the rainstorm, but then hid among the clouds again by the next morning. 

We awoke the next morning, some of us in the group still bleeding from the leech attack the previous evening, to a very western-style breakfast of toast, eggs, coffee, and juice. The relatively clear view of the sky from the previous evening was now gone but the view of the valley and villages down below was just as stunning in the rays of the early morning sun. After we were all packed, we returned to the village square in hopes that we might be able to play our audio presentation to some locals before their work day started. It seemed as if everyone was busy and couldn't spare the time to listen to a program, which was understandable, so we passed out some tracts to people and then went on our merry way.

A very nice breakfast out on the patio. 

We had met some Christians along the way and while we were passing out tracts. Our Nepali friends found out that there was a church just outside of the town in the direction we were traveling. Being Saturday morning, they were preparing to have a morning service but we couldn't stay long enough to worship with them. We met the pastor and prayed with him over our efforts and the Christians that were gathering there that morning. Some of the kids we had met at the Children's Home the night before were there. Fun to make that connection.

The church building in Ulleri. 

We continued our trek on a well-maintained path, growing tired of stone steps only after the second day of Trekking. The day unfolded very much like the previous (and the days to follow even): hiking, stopped for lunch of dal-baht, more hiking, passing out our tracts, and visiting with people. We arrived at Ghorepani relatively early in the day and had a chance to play some basketball and volleyball with some local teenagers of the village. They let us play one match of friendly volleyball and then kind of ushered us out when they wanted to start playing for money! It wasn't a lot of money either, but threw us off enough that we declined.

A mother and child along the trekking path. The girl repeatedly said the one word she knew of English: "Chocolate?" expecting a treat like she had received in the past from Western travelers. Many young children we met asked for chocolate or candy.

Another group shot, waterfall in the lower right. 

We saw a number of domestic water buffalo along our trip. Since they revere cows so much in the Hindu religion, water buffalo becomes the "beef" in a sense: used to plow fields and other labor as well as provide meat. Shemiah here is quite literally "taking the bull by the horns."

Welcome to Ghorepani!

The basketball court where we played the afternoon we arrived. The long slender blue-roofed building alongside it is the school.

We played basketball until we wheezed from the altitude; it's difficult to wrap your head around being near 10 thousand feet in elevation with a village and large trees everywhere. The idea sprang up to do a program with the teenagers down at the basketball court. So we hustled up to the hotel and got the materials necessary. Our Nepali friend told us we needed to hurry as the basketball players might finish up and leave, getting our supplies and meeting back up in about 5 minutes.  While we were all ready on time and ready to do the program, our Nepali friends were getting in the shower, changing clothes, and otherwise getting "freshened up." Our group loved to give our friends a hard time because they used this phrase over and over: "We'll just freshen up and then meet back for dinner."

This was a healthy dose of "Nepali Time." Everything is a little slower it seemed in Nepal. And if you had a meeting with a Nepali you could expect that they might be a half an hour late and they would think nothing of it. If you wanted it to be on time (at least in our group), you had to clarify whether or not a time was "American", meaning solid and on-time, or "Nepali:" flexible, loose, and usually late.

When we finally met down at the square, some of us started playing music from the Saber player while the rest of us went around and told people about the program. I was blown away by how eager people were to come and listen to the recording. It seemed as though they were excited about Saturday night entertainment, the last day of the week being a day of rest and relaxation. We are really spoiled with our 2 day weekend! The program is about an hour, which I may have mentioned before, and might have been its downfall since the temperature of the evening fell steadily. Some people left for their hotels or homes but many people toughed it out and listened to the whole thing. One of our friends spoke to them at the end and addressed where they could follow up on the story and if anyone had any questions. We had CDs of the recorded material and passed some of them out to interested people.

Then we went back to the tea-house and had dinner. Our friends showed us some card tricks for our evening entertainment and then we ascended the stairs to our beds.

The next morning, we woke up at 4 am to hike to the top of Poon Hill for a sunrise view of the surrounding Himalayas. Our group was the first to reach the top of the hill, evening beating the local Nepali who was carrying thermoses of hot water to sell coffee and hot chocolate. Unfortunately, the clouds had other ideas about our lovely view and it never materialized. But we had fun with some pictures and enjoyed being at an iconic high point.

The lookout tower built at the top of Poon Hill. 

Happy crew despite the lack of mountainous view. 

I have proof that I really was there! 3210 meters or 10,531 feet in elevation. Ghorepani is 2874 m or 9429 ft. 

As we descended we could finally see one of the giant mountains of the Himalayas: Dhaulagiri, the world's seventh highest peak.  

Our attempt at getting a picture in front of the amazing view. Yeah! It was gorgeous! If only I could remove the peak labels from the sky...

We descended down to the tea-house for breakfast and then packed up, hitting the trail relatively early. Our destination was Tadapani and the hike that day turned out to be our longest...