Stateside again

I’m home in North Dakota, safe and sound. I arrived in Dickinson last Thursday, the 3rd, to a welcoming committee of my parents, my brother Russ and his wife Cassi, and three of their four kids. It was actually my second 3rd of July, after crossing the International Date Line. After leaving Pokhara and Sam’s House on Monday morning, Chris, Hannah, and I spent that evening and all day Tuesday in Kathmandu before leaving Nepal on Wednesday. We then flew from Kathmandu to Bangkok, spent the evening in Bangkok, took an early morning flight to Tokyo, and then had our 9-hour flight to Los Angeles. In LA, after 5 weeks of traveling together, the three of us parted ways. Jennifer’s brother and sister-in-law graciously housed Hannah for the night before her flight back to Ohio the next day, Chris (accompanied by Jennifer, who had flown to LA to surprise him!) went back to Minnesota, and I rushed to catch my flight to Denver (also with help from Jennifer’s brother and sister-in-law, who drove me to my gate) and then Dickinson.

It was a pretty busy final week in Pokhara, so I didn’t get a chance to update my blog like I should have. The three of us had planned on going on a 2-day trek to Ghandruk, a nearby village, beginning early Monday morning our last week at Sam’s House. However, our plans changed when we learned that all of the taxi drivers (or “transport entrepreneurs,” as the Kathmandu Post calls them) in Nepal were going on strike to persuade the government to raise taxi fares in response to rising gas prices. In order to begin our trek, we needed to take a taxi to Nayapul, 45 minutes away from Pokhara. We were grounded. I had been feeling a little under the weather, so I was a somewhat glad for the delay, but still bummed. School bus drivers were also participating in the strike, so school ended up being canceled, which was great because it was another day we got to hang out with the kids. We taught them Pictionary, a game that seemed to be a hit with kids and didis alike. Later that day, Chris, Hannah, and I walked to Mahendrapul, the shopping district of Pokhara, mostly to just get out of the house for a while and take our mind off of trekking. We went to bed that night praying that the strike would end so we could begin our trek, but sadly, that wasn’t the case. We spent much of the next day kind of moping around the house, since the kids had school again and I think we were all a little depressed about our foiled plans. We did use our free time to give the didis a tiny break and make kajaa (afternoon snack) for the kids. We served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pudding snack packs—American staples. They seemed to get mostly positive reactions, and a few kids even asked for seconds. The next day was our last chance to go trekking because we wanted to get back before Friday afternoon (a few of the kids were going to be on the radio and we wanted to listen—more about that later), so again we went to bed hoping for good news the next morning. Sure enough, as soon as Hannah and I woke up on Wednesday, Chris informed us that the taxi strike had ended and we were going to leave for our trek around 9:00 am. Hooray!

We were all excited to go trekking, although it seemed to us that our day was cursed from the start. Because of the strike, taxis hadn’t been able to get gas, so our taxi driver was stuck in a petrol line and was going to be about a half hour late. We were anxious to get on the road because we wanted to get as much walking in as possible before the daily afternoon rain. We needed to get trekking permits before we could begin, so, of course, we went to the wrong office at first and were directed to a different one on the other side of town. We finally got to Nayapul (much later than we’d hoped) and began walking and Chris’s walking stick broke, so we had to pause to buy tape to fix it. And then came the rain. It began to pour somewhere between 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon, so we admitted defeat, found a cute little lodge and restaurant, changed into dry clothes, and ate a nice dinner while listening to the rain.

The next day was bright and sunny, and soon after we began walking we met a couple coming toward us. They asked if we were going to Ghandruk, and we replied yes, we are. They chuckled a little (making us a little uneasy) and then the man explained that we may run into some trouble because there was a bad landslide up ahead, but with some help from the locals, we would probably be able to cross it. We got a little worried, but figured we could handle whatever came our way. We could see the landslide well before we got close to it, which should indicate just how large it was—I don’t think any of us were prepared for how big it was. Some local residents led us up to it. It was basically a big, muddy dropoff that led to a big, muddy, rocky, rushing river that we needed to cross in order to continue on our way to Ghandruk. I was skeptical. We decided to at least go down close to the water to assess the situation and figure out just how brave we were feeling (answer: not very). We shimmied our way down the steep hill as gracefully as we could, considering it was made up of very loose rocks and dirt that tumbled along with us. We stood around for quite a while, trying to pick out a stable path to cross the water, but it was rushing so quickly that the landscape seemed to change every time we looked away. A little crowd of locals assembled, watching us eagerly to see just what these crazy Americans were going to do. A couple of Nepali men offered to lead us across, and we got all ready to go. We packed away our cameras, rolled down our pant legs (to protect against leeches, which Chris assured us we would get. Eeek.), changed into flip-flops, and planned which rocks and sandbars we would use in our route across the water. And then stood around some more while we thought carefully about our decision to cross. Our concern was that, because the water was rushing so quickly and literally changing the land before our eyes, although we may have been able to cross at the time, what if the next day we wouldn’t be able to cross back? And if it rained heavily that night, the water would have been even higher, complicating things even more. Eventually, reason prevailed. We dejectedly admitted defeat and decided to turn around. To add insult to injury, in the short time we had been by the water the bank had gotten much muddier and on the way back up, my foot got stuck up to mid-calf (it was like quicksand—I actually had a sort of panicky moment when I thought I was going to be stuck for good) and my flip-flop was swallowed up, never to be seen again, except maybe in an archeological dig hundreds of years from now.

I’m going to pause here, because I’m tired of writing and no one really wants to read a 14-page blog post anyway, but I promise to continue soon.