Day 5 - February 3, 2010 - The Excusion Continues - Back to Kathmandu

Go to Day 4
Go to Day 6

 Sleep at the hotel was poor. All night horns blasted from the highway down the hill, I'm pretty sure most of the rooms were in perfect sonic range for the echoes thundering up. The horns in Nepal are something hard to describe, unless you've been to South East Asia, although it may be similar in most developing nations. It's a loud decending BOObooBEEbee BOObooBEEbee BOObooBEEbee that fades out after 5 seconds, one touch of the horn button by the driver lets out 5 seconds of sound. The drivers usually touch these horns every oohh....6 seconds.

I am still getting used to the cold weather. We woke up, needing to be ready to move at 8am, we had coffee in the parking lot and loaded up (Nepalese aren't big on breakfasts). We drove along, checking out different rocks and cliffs off the side of the road to see if they would be suitable for the abseil. Finally we stopped at a waterfall. We ate lunch at a roadside place and prepared our climbing gear to cross in a cable car. As you can see in the pictures it was probably 200 feet across the river in the car. We gathered everything we though we would need for the waterfall, we weren't coming back for a while.

 We left the driver and Khem hired a man to help us carry stuff for the day. The cable car ride across was exciting. On the other side we stopped at a house and farm to talk to the people living there, one of the men was in a rafting business in Pokara, we might meet up with him again towards the end of the trip for some whitewater. We continued on and navigated the steep and gravely trail that rose almost 400 meters from the river that we crossed a few hours earlier. All the switchbacks kept us in constant view of the valley below. It took us about an hour and a half to reach the top. The man helping us was barefoot, as were most of the other people that we met that day.

 We reached the top and entered into the jungle, Khem rappelled down an 80 meter drop (as I filmed him) to check out the 150 meter waterfall. He disappeared down the cliff and into the jungle as I waited with angst. After about 30 minutes I heard a "hoot" from the jungle some ways away, it was Khem trying to get our position and get back to us. He clawed through the thick brush having walked around scouting and locating anchors for ropes to go down the waterfall and access/exit points as well.

It was getting later in the day, so we packed up and made our way down the trail back to the clay covered farm house we stopped at when we came in. There was a lady waiting there for us, I believe the mother of the whitewater rafting man, she had something in her hands that she was dipping in water and squeezing. I'm sure there are a lot of names for it, I called it "corn jar" as opposed to "rice jar." Jar is an aloholic drink made by fermenting rice or corn, then straining some water through it. That's what it looks like at least, I've never seen the process from start to finish. It may be similar to rice wine, but it's white like milk. The "corn jar" we had was yellow with corn kernels floating in it, it was pretty thick stuff actually, I had to strain it with my lips. It wasn't terrible, I can't really begin to describe what it tasted like (sour-ish alcoholic-corn?), I'd probably have it again though.

We sat and talked for a while and Khem was able to convince the lady to sell us a rooster (in Nepali: Bali). We tied it up and bagged it and headed back to the cable car. We made it across the river and loaded the bird into the floor of the front seat (still bagged) and started to head back to Kathmandu. We stopped twice, once to buy oranges and another to pick up some lentils and tomatoes. We arrived back in Kathmandu around 8. Khem's wife had made us up some thumba, I'm not really sure how to spell it, I usually say it like "toomba" as in Timon & Pumbaa, but with a "T." I'm not even sure if that is correct, I swear I hear it like "Tuhmba" sometimes. Served in heavy metal steins, thumba is fermented milled soaked in hot water and sipped through a filter straw.

I was pretty beat after the previous night's lack of sleep, after our buffalo curry dinner and I fell asleep quickly.

P.S. The rooster was tied out out on Khem's front stoop with intentions to "take care" of him tomorrow...heh heh heh...

Go to Day 4
Go to Day 6