Day Eight & Nine: The Himalayan Resort

Morning comes early in the Himalayas, but nobody is willing to get out of bed. It is bone chilling cold in the morning at such a high altitude. We just hung out in our sleeping bags like big lumps in a blanket. We dreamt of hanging out in the Himalayas. Soon the Himalayas came into view and we were more awake.

We had to keep the camera handy to capture the beautiful sight of the mountains. We sat at our camp desk and made small piles of acorns. These comprised the food that we would have in the pots that morning. We kept our butts warm with clothing and our sleeping bags neat. We knew that we would need buttswarm. We were all sweating in the mountains.

Tomorrow would be our last full day in the mountains. It was our last opportunity to explore the beautiful Nepal. We eagerly waited and went to our butts hoping for a new adventure.

After a long time, we decided to move to a small lodge in the middle of the village. We were the only foreigners there. We were also the only couples there. It was quite an adventure to have our own hut in such a remote place.

We decided on the regular lodge because we didn’t want to be too far from the trail. We walked a little way when we saw a young Tibetan man heading our way. We stopped and admired him. He was carrying an iron frame (it was a door frame, I guess) for the door of his little house. He had a big metal pot on his back with a thick metal plate inside that covered the door. He had some cloth tied around his head and was wearing a white shirt with a blue symbol on it, as well as a pair of blue overalls. I thought to myself “I am pretty adventurous” and “I am not quite sure what that symbol is”.

I measured him with a silverware measuring system and realized that he was about six feet tall. six feet seems a safe estimate for a heavy mountain adventurer. I kind of like that estimate. He sort of moved towards me and I tried to avoid his gaze. He was about 30 feet away and I was trying to take a picture of him when he made a movements towards me again. I froze. Just begrudgingly, I looked. Sure enough, he was looking at me! I was so shocked that my whole self started to jerky dance left to right towards the tent. I quickly looked away and tried to put the tent back into its proper position. I was centimeters away from this giant wiry bear attempting to share my tent with me!

We sat down dejected. We had tried to be friendly and easy going. It was not our fortress. We had not expected him to be so brave. We just wanted to get away! Well, of course we had to sleep. We crawled into our butts and made it through the night. In the morning we headed back to camp hoping that the dog had gotten a good night’s sleep. We packed up and headed home.

The next morning we headed a little ways to the dump. We thought that the dump might be deeper so we kept going up.

We were surprised when we reached the top and saw that the dump was a pond. Wow! We knew that the dump was deeper than it looked but we were still shocked. We decided that we had better get out of the way. So we headed off to the stream. I noticed that the dog was looking for something to do. I asked him what he was doing. He pointed toward the trees surrounding the pond. I looked and sure enough, there were trees. There was a thick set of branches covering the top of the pond. The dog let me know that he was looking for a hand out. I guess he thought that he could get to the trees. Actually, the tree was over half the size of the dog and he was very frustrated that he could not get to the ground. The dog soon learned that there is in fact a leash down there somewhere.

We passed many large boulders and we needed to put the large boulders aside so that they would not damage our trailer. I noticed a raccoon looking into the window of the camper. I called to the raccoon and asked him what he was doing. The raccoon appeared to be checking something out. Then he disappeared into the woods. I am pretty sure that he was looking for help. Within a few minutes, a large son with long white hair wearing a greenish shirt came out of the woods. He was carrying something. The dog and I skulked toward him hoping that he would show us some of his stuff. We began to walk toward the trailer. I began to inspect the damage.