A Bad Bhang Lassi -- Sauraha, Nepal

Matt and I arrived at the unanimous decision to end our trek a day early. I was knackered and my sinuses were hell bent on my destruction. Matt had writing to get cracking on (he writes for money. Like, it's his job. I fantasize about this happening to me one day). Hence, we were both quite content to end our excursion on a high note, pack our bags and catch a bus home to Lakeside. So on the morning of the 15th, we ate breakfast on the rooftop of our guesthouse and then waited for aforementioned bus.

Catching buses in Nepal is akin to interval training.

"Should we go wait for the bus?" we asked our Nepali hosts, who were also taking a trip to Pokhara.

"No, bus, half an hour."

"Okay," Matt and I twiddled our thumbs and stamped our feet in the cold, admiring the view and counting down the minutes until we'd be home in Pokhara and in the vicinity of a hot shower.

"Is the bus coming?" we asked when we heard the telltale elephant horn.

"No, bus, ten minutes," they casually waved us off.

We paced to keep warm, rubbing our hands together and warily sidestepping a flock of particularly contentious ducks.

"QUICK!" our hosts came scampering up behind us. "THE BUS! QUICK!"

Jesus Christ, I grumbled internally as I sprinted pell-mell up a hill towards the bus stop. We could have just meandered to the stop and waited there. And forgone this sprinting shenanigan altogether. 

The bus rumbled to a stop just as I stumbled to the top of the hill, wheezing, coughing, sinuses exploding with pain and rather annoyed.

So unnecessary. 

We boarded the bus. And then just sat. Sat and waited for a good twenty minutes before finally barrelling down the mountain towards Pokhara.

I just... I just don't get it. 

 
Matt and I caught a tourist bus out of Pokhara on the morning of the 17th.  I drank my last honey latte at Easy Cafe, we played our last savage game of scrabble (Matt beat me by two points. I was... err... not thrilled) and we ambled through Lakeside for the final time. I felt the all too familiar pangs of fear, uncertainty, sadness, gazing out at Phewa Lake and contemplating closing this chapter.

I can always come back to Lakeside. But I'll be a different person when I return, if I return. Matt may or may not be here, and even if he is, he'll be a different person too. Lakeside will probably be nearly unrecognizable, with how quickly things around here change. So... so the only thing is to completely let this go. To be grateful for what it was and to understand that it will never happen again. 

And to be okay with that. 

Which isn't easy. Not with chapters like these. 

After a staggeringly jarring six hour bus ride (which seemed perfectly delightful when compared to our perilous journey to Santa's village), we arrived in Sauraha, gateway city to Chitwan National Park. Our guesthouse had sent a jeep to pick us up from the bus park, and we were even presented with complimentary hot cups of tea upon our arrival.

Mmm... I could get used to this. Arriving at a place and not having to worry about anything. And then being given tea. Sometimes being intrepid is overrated. 
 
Tickets to enter Chitwan are expensive (for us poor travelers, anyway), running at 1700 rupees for a two day pass. On top of that, one has to pay for the services of guides, jeeps, canoes, etc. Which makes sense, I suppose. Blindly wandering into a jungle teeming with tigers, rhinos, elephants, crocodiles and pythons doesn't seem like the healthiest of life choices.

We decided to spend our first afternoon wandering through Sauraha and asking different tour companies about prices and safari options. When one has no steady income, spending forty dollars on an adventure becomes something one thinks about very carefully.

Forty dollars... that's more than I've earned in the past... umm... 8 months. Other than the donations people made for my Thai massage training. 
 

We paid twenty five rupees (a quarter) to visit the Tharu Museum. Through the years, the Tharu people had become resistant to malaria, so were unique in their ability to survive in the malaria rife jungles of Chitwan. However, when the World Health Organization joined the Nepali government in eradicating malaria from the region, other people groups thronged to farm the fertile region. And promptly enslaved the Tharus. Enslavement was possible because of a Hindu law from 1854 which classified the Tharu people as "enslaveable alcohol drinkers."

This law was not abolished until the year 2000.

That's... ummm... not very long ago.  

Then when Chitwan was turned into a National Park, all the Tharu people were evicted from their homes in the jungle. 

It took me a while to get used to elephants lumbering down the road. 

Oh hey, there goes an elephant.

Chitwan National Park begins on the other side of the Rapti River.

After watching the sunset from the bank of the Rapti River, we walked back to our guesthouse and promptly made a dumb decision.

We ordered Bhang Lassis.

I've had miserable trips in the past, but nothing has ever escalated to the level of anxiety, pain, and fear of imminent death I experienced that night.

"Is it strong?" Matt asked our host.

"No, very weak," was the response.

Matt seemed disappointed by this news, but I was pleased to pieces. 

Maybe this'll be a good trip. If it's super mild, it might be just right for me. Maybe I won't hate being high this time. 

But I did. Oh, I did. I thoroughly, unremittingly, comprehensively hated being high.

About fifteen minutes in, my skin started to prickle and burn.

"I need to go back to the room," I told Matt, starting to feel lightheaded and nauseous.

Then my back began to ache.

This is a normal bad trip, Bourget... just... just keep breathing. It's okay. It won't last forever. And you won't ever drink a Bhang Lassi again. 

Then my heart started pounding. Ferociously. Rapidly. Explosively.

I panicked.

And it all escalated from there.

Matt and I erupted from our room, sans shoes, hollering for a doctor. We clamored into the back of a jeep and were rushed at breakneck speed to a clinic in Sauraha. Where the doctor took one look at us and said, "You had a Bhang Lassi?"

"Yes."

"I've seen this many times before. You're fine. Go home, drink hot lemon. You know that this is illegal, don't you? Where did you get this drink?"

"At a... guesthouse," Matt replied, not wanting to throw our hosts under the bus.

"It should not be on the menu," the doctor said rather sternly as he checked our vital signs (Matt had a heartbeat of 135). "Here is some medication for the anxiety. You'll be fine."

I can't recall a time I've a) felt more embarrassed, and b) felt like such an abysmally stupid tourist.

I was too nauseous to drink any of the hot lemon. Instead, I vomited all over the gravel pathway in the guesthouse courtyard.

'Cos I'm classy like that.

We'd hoped to book a two day walking safari through Chitwan, but were forced to spend the next day recovering from our lassis instead. So we made the most of it, and walked to the Elephant Breeding Center.

I love that the wild pig showed up for dinner.

 Back at the guesthouse, we booked a one day jungle safari for the next day. And ordered dinner. And made a rather sheepish joke about not ordering lassis this time.

Never. Again.