4 November: Bahundanda (1310m) – Chyanje (1400m)
From the official figures we have not ascended very much today but these are deceptive. Trails in Nepal are not exactly flat and, as a trekker walks, we must have ascended and descended hundreds of metres. It’s very frustrating when the path leads steeply down but you know that your final destination is back up again. What a waste of energy!
We settled with the teahouse at about 7.30am. It came to the princely sum of 500 rupees. Not bad for food and lodging for the three of us. This is going to be a cheap holiday. Eugene and I have decided to pay on alternate days rather than fiddling around with wads of change. (No-one in Nepal ever has any change.) It’s really nice when it’s your day off and you can leave all financial calculations to the other. Narayan was tired. He moaned that the other porters had talked all night and kept him awake.
The path wound steeply upwards to the village proper and then dropped even more steeply. On the descent we met Eric and Ingrid taking photos of some picturesque looking mobile haystacks. We entered a phase of gorge scenery and lots of tinkling or crashing waterfalls. This kept Eugene happy. He’s got a thing about waterfalls. We came to a long and particularly unstable looking suspension bridge and Alison had a little freak-out. She had begun walking with Serge and John but Serge (or Surge, as the Brits mispronounce it) is an appropriate name. He had surged ahead this morning and Alison and John were following at a more leisurely pace. We caught them up at a café and drank lemon tea in the sun together. All the ups and downs make our progress today seem slow. Eugene’s alternative guide book is obviously a bit optimistic because all the other trekkers are keeping at nearly the same pace as us. We had hoped to reach the guide’s suggested overnight stop of Tal today but it looks as though we will be stopping in Chyanje with everyone else. We stopped for drinks in Syange. This was roughly half way and Eric and Ingrid ordered lunch here but we decided to press on to Jyagat, preferring to get most of the day’s walking over in the morning. We found the Austrian trio and Dutch Paul sitting wolfing momos in a pleasant garden restaurant. Irena soon came staggering in looking a little rough. She has difficulty keeping up with Paul so she doesn’t bother. As we tucked into fried rice with egg and vegetables, Alison arrived with Aussie Paul, Fiona and Beth. We are establishing quite a core gang. I hope we all stay together to tackle the dreaded pass. It’s perfect weather again. It gets really hot walking and is lovely and warm to stop for lunch in the sun but, should a wisp of cloud pass over, the temperature drops instantly and it will obviously get colder each day as we ascend.
Eugene enforced many waterfall photo stops as we approached Chyanje. John and Serge were sitting with a lively looking crowd in front of the first guest house we passed. It looked quite big and crowded (i.e. long waits for dinner) so we continued into the village proper where Austrian Tony and co. had said they would reserve us a room. Their choice still did not meet with our discerning approval though. I had spotted another lodge with a pretty garden decked with marigolds. The rooms were more spacious here too. Our disloyalty was rewarded by another room with a spectacular view of a thundering waterfall. Clare and Rob, a British couple we kept meeting, were in the room next door and Beth, Fiona and Paul were around. To my great amusement, Paul was in the garden slaving away over a tin tub of laundry while Fiona stood on the balcony above flinging crusty socks down and shrieking like a fish wife.
‘Can you wash these too Paul?’ Eugene is concerned that Paul is a henpecked husband.
Eugene and I thought we would take a walk down to the first guest house to look up Serge and John and have a pre-dinner drink with them. (This phrase conjures up visions of sipping sherry in some genteel cocktail bar, not huddling over pots of lemon tea halfway up a mountain!) Alison had arrived and was fiddling around with her torch. The batteries refused to work. We tried mine which were nearly defunct too. By the time we were due to head back they were as dead as a dodo and it was completely dark. Consequently, we stumbled along, anxious to avoid potholes and sheer drops. It would be ironic to have survived two days hard walking only to trip over a rock on the way back from a drinking session. I was glad we had not joined Serge and John in sampling the vicious local rum.
That night, over a good meal, Narayan taught us the words to ‘Resum Piriri’ and I wrote them down phonetically as a memory aid. We were the dirty stop-outs yet again – till 8.00pm tonight! We went for a short walk to admire the clusters of stars. There were so many that it was almost easier to count the black spaces in between.
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