Chapter Eleven: There and Back Again

   We had begun seeing evidence of landslides a few days earlier, but I hadn’t thought much about it.  Now we walked past many piles of stones that sometimes were being hammered into bricks for building houses for the locals.  

We saw a bulldozer or front loader here and there down below on the walls of the gorge, trying to cut free a section of road that had collapsed.  The road we were on became very steep and rocky, eventually causing us to have to climb up on the mountainside to pass.  At one point we had to navigate over a very steep mica landslide.  Mica is a shiny mineral (sheet silicate) that flakes off and is reflective like glass. It’s very slippery.  The landslide we had to traverse was at about a 40 degree angle, and just below it was a cliff that fell maybe ten feet to the broken road below.  I summoned all of my courage and what I could remember about my climbing days:  Keep your body weight over your feet, and don’t lean over!  Hari walked ahead of me, backwards, using a stick to try to clear away the mica shards and make places for me to put my feet.  It was definitely touch and go.  I made it carefully (“slowly, slowly, catch the monkey”), breathing a sigh of relief when I crossed to the other side and descended to the now-passable road.

  After keeping to the rugged road for a long while, we again took the stone staircase that materialized out of the woods, winding our way down through terraced farmlands and small villages. 

 We didn’t stop for lunch.  As this final trekking day progressed and the stairs grew steeper and steeper, I began to lose hope.  How could I continue on this nearly vertical course, picking my way among boulders and slippery stones, to reach the valley below?  Hari was way ahead of us now, but Rob always stayed with me.  I felt really bad at being so slow; I could only imagine how hard it was for Sajan to keep this snail’s pace with a heavy load on his back.

   As we made our way ever downward, I began to breathe more easily.  The altitude pills had kicked in, and I could make decent progress.  The songs of the beautiful birds rang out in the forest.  I actually heard a cuckoo!  They sound just like the mechanical cuckoo clocks.

   The valley floor grew closer.  All along as we made our way carefully along the stone steps, we would pass school children, immaculately dressed in their government school uniforms.

 Rob and I marveled at how fresh and clean they looked, knowing that the plumbing in the villages was quite rudimentary.  I guess if you wash with a bucket and a dipper your whole life, it becomes natural.  Hari told us that the school children walked an hour each way – not flat - to get to their schools.  School is required up through tenth grade, then it’s optional.  Some lucky children are sponsored, usually by foreigners, to go to boarding schools in the villages or cities, where they can earn levels of advanced education.  We noticed in the towns and cities there were many billboards advertising schools. Education is at a premium here.

   I grew wearier and wearier as the stone steps dropped precipitously toward the valley floor and the river below.  Finally, we reached the road that would lead us into our final destination, Tatopani.