Part II

 Dave and Laura are gone, maybe the best week-long friends I’ve ever had. Laura headed off to do the Annapurna Circuit and I frankly don’t know what happened to Dave, but I’ll get to that in a sec. In the meantime, Peace Corps Nepal and my friend Alex rolled into town and I now have 18 Americans my age to party and hang out with. Seeing Alex was great because even though we’ve never really met, we’ve looked after each other over the past 6 months. Not only was she the first familiar face I’ve seen in five months, but we can just sit around and talk about Winthrop and college and crazy shit that people do in this part of the world, and generally things I haven’t talked about since I left home. So these are my new night-time friends (they have PC training for 10-12 hours each day) and I have to entertain myself sunnyside. So that’s how I came to publish two blogs in a day.

Little boy and his pink sheep

So like I said, Dave and I shortened our trek and were supposed to start two days later. For every occasion we meet outside the Once Upon a Time restaurant in the middle of town and Dave was uncharacteristically late…he was sick again, but he wanted going to power through it. We had paid $45 each for these trekking permits and he wanted to get out of town so we hired a taxi that dropped us off at the trailhead for the trek to Poon Hill. Almost as soon as we started though Dave was clearly in pain and we only walk about twenty minutes before he decided he couldn’t do it. We drank a cup of tea and Dave felt like shit on the whole. He gave me some meds and I started up the trail by myself. It’s funny how this Pokhara cocoon of friendly people to be with all day has softened me a little to being on my own. It went away quickly but I had this specific lonely feeling that I haven’t felt since I read The Road in my first few weeks in Pamohi.

Waterfall pool that I put in the sketchbook. 

As trekking often goes, the walking part was not that interesting. I gained 1080 meters between Naya Pul and Ulleri. It was hard, but not as bad as I imagined. The guesthouses didn’t have any singles and the guy who ran the place I stayed simply told this Japanese guy that I would be sleeping with him. He understandably wasn’t so keen on his lack of options but he turned out to be a nice guy who had been traveling the world for 2 years. That night I didn’t have much to do so I went to bed at 6:30 and had a glorious 11-hour sleep. The next day I went up another 800 meters to Upper Gorepani but I got to the guesthouse at 11:30 even with a break to sketch a beautiful little waterfall. I was only at 2800 meters, not where I would expect to get altitude sickness but my lungs weren’t feeling quite right when I dropped my stuff in the room so I just took a nap in all my sweaty clothes! Unfortunately I didn’t bring a book so I wrote everything I could think of in my journal, wandered around a little, meditated, ate dinner and chit chatted with some nice Australian people who were finishing a 16 day trek around the Annapurna Circuit. Then I slept.

That's me!

The climb to Poon Hill started 5 and I saw the bottoms of two 8000 meter peaks. I took the requisite picture in front of the sign, and actually some other nice pictures too. I ate my breakfast with the Aussies and as soon as I was finished their guide told me I needed to leave my chair, so I took that as my cue to leave. I chugged down the mountain and finished a total decent of 2200 meters in about five hours. I forgot to cut my famously long toenails so they were a little sore but even with my new Nepali hiking boots I got no blisters. The roof of the local return bus to Pokhara seemed to shift back and forth independently of the frame, like the screws were loose and the whole thing might collapse, but it was fine and I warmly re-embraced the giant iced-lemonade and free internet that makes Pokhara great. It is the best feeling to come back to a happy, safe place with friendly people after doing something emotionally or physically draining. That was probably the hardest part of traveling in India - I might get off a sleepless night bus at 6 AM to find that my only comforts were a railway station bench and a pay-for-use toilet. Needless to say, it makes me appreciate HOME, wherever it may be. I think Dave and I decided that we could just live here…he’d rent his house and do some advertizing work on the side to live like a King on $20 a day. He didn’t know if his super-FINE girlfriend would go for that though.

Fishtail

Speaking of Dave, I was supposed to call him up when I got back but his phone was off. I knew he moved from his first guesthouse so I asked where to and his next guesthouse said he had gone to a doctor and moved out the night before to stay with a friend. The office where he bought his plane ticket back to Kathmandu said he’s never been there so I couldn’t meet him at the airport and he wasn’t at any of the usual spots. My detective work failed and I have no idea what happened to him. If you read this Dave, I’ll meet you back here in a year.