Chapter Ten: The Long Journey Down

Fortunately for me, the weather the next morning was abysmal. It was cold, windy, and raining hard at the appointed hour for going to Poon Hill.  We all decided that we would pass on that experience.  We had passed some English hikers the day before who said they got up before dawn and made the climb up there for nothing – the clouds rolled in and obscured the view.   Once more we packed up our things, enjoyed breakfast with spectacular views, then shouldered the packs and headed out for day three of the trek.

   The trail was to be mostly downhill this time.  What I hadn’t planned on was the fact that descending thousands of steps is just as hard on the body as ascending, and sometimes even more difficult.   At times we were on a very rough road that was nearly at treacherous as the steps.

The thighs and knees are constantly braced for impact, and the steps were even more uneven.  Several times Hari had to show me rock by rock how to place my feet so I wouldn’t fall.  I used my poles at all times, as did Rob.  Naturally Hari and Sajan didn’t use poles; in fact, they, like the Nepali folks who regularly passed us with huge loads on their backs and/or heads, scampered among the stones as though it were nothing.  

My legs were quivering with fatigue.  While my lungs were getting a break, my legs were taking a beating.  It took us nearly twice the time Hari allotted for us to get down what he called the deepest gorge in the world.

   The natural beauty of the trail that day was unsurpassed.  Rings of huge mountains revealed themselves out of the mists and fog, even though we were again peppered with rain and hail throughout the day. The massive rhododendrons were in full bloom.  Rob and Sajan both picked blossoms to adorn their hats as we made our descent.

Above us, Mount Dhaulagiri loomed like a massive white tidal wave.  It was positively breathtaking.

   The trail wasn’t exactly all downhill as promised.  We made our way through a lovely spring deciduous forest to our lunch stop, a rustic little guesthouse overlooking the valley.

  There, I had my first dal baht.  Hari had joked that all the guides eat is dal baht (rice and lentils), or baht dal (lentils and rice).  The cook in this roadside hut wore a Yankees baseball cap and made the most delicious food I have ever tasted.  Rob and I were popping Pepto Bismol pills before every meal to ward off any further digestive disorders.  That, and his consistent purifying of our drinking water, kept us healthy along the way. Each meal was accompanied by hearty masala tea, called milk tea because they serve it with sugar and milk.

   While we were eating lunch the skies opened once again and rained down hail.  Another group of hikers took shelter in the thatched, open-air dining area outside the guest house, while the four of us took shelter within.  Every now and then a herd of burros, or donkeys, or horses would pass by, using the stone steps as their highway.  Sometimes we found solo water buffaloes munching on trailside greens, no farmer or farms in sight.  I often wondered who kept track of all these nomadic creatures, both in India and Nepal. Whether in cities or in the mountain villages and trails, they wandered freely just about everywhere.  Our trek continued to Shikha, where we spent another overnight in a guest house.  After two days of heavy trekking that ended in rain/hail storms, I began to fade in and out of consciousness.  I actually lost track of the day we began the serious descent into the deepest gorge in the world.  Rob, fortunately, had taken photos of the day, which helped me remember its events.

   Eventually the rains cleared and we were on our way.  We ascended another “Nepali flat” (NOT!) section of road to a lookout that Hari called “Binocular Hill,” overlooking this huge, deep gorge that we would descend.  The view was indeed fantastic.

All too soon we headed down the road…and into landslide territory.