Dal baht is Nepali food and trekker food. It's such a big deal that I keep seeing T-shirts which proudly proclaim, "Dal Baht Power 24 Hour."
Yes... I lazily contemplated my distended belly. I can imagine this lasting 24 hours...
Matt reads, I scribble with frigid fingers, and the Nepalis outside converse loudly in a language out of which I still can't decipher individual words. Dogs bark occasionally, but all the bellowing water buffalo and clucking chickens have retired for the night.
It's seven pm, dark and cold. Matt and I won't be moving from this room until well after sunrise and our breakfast is hot and ready.
It's crazy how much colder it is up here than in Pokhara. I wasn't expecting this kind of chill. I'm not prepared at all. Holy bananas, I'm freezing.
Matt and I commenced our trek a bit later this morning than I'd anticipated. Showers at Ganesh's homestay have been going through a something of an ice age, and I struggle to extricate myself from warm blankets when a) the room is cold, b) the shower is cold, and c) there's no hot chocolate to be had.
But despite the seemingly insurmountable odds, I finally roused myself, glowered at the cold, and finished preparing to leave. I'd packed Ellie the night before, so the only thing left was to relocate all my extra crap to Matt's room so that Ganesh could rent out my room during the trek.
Ganesh is an odd bird. He spent all of last week teaching at his school and returned for one night. Long enough to give Matt and me a legion of unsolicited suggestions regarding our itinerary and to let me know that I wouldn't have to vacate my room. That I could leave my belongings for a few days and he wouldn't charge my belongings rent because "I am family now." Then he smiled broadly and told me that I must write to him once a week, indefinitely
I thanked Ganesh for his kindness, promised I'd do my best to write (I don't even write my family with that kind of regularity), and informed him that I'd be leaving his homestay in the near future.
My host seemed surprised by this information, which was bizarre to me, as I'd told him quite a few times that my flight to Malaysia was on the 25th of January.
Ganesh took Matt aside later that evening to tell him that, actually, I really ought to clear out my room.
Fair enough. I just... I don't like the way the word "family" is thrown around in this house. I prefer to be a paying client. Sandesh asks me for yoga lessons and demands Matt and I share our food with him because we're "family". But then he thinks Matt and I ought to pay extra for our use of the kitchen on top of our already high rent.
It seems like the benefits of "family" only flow in one direction.
Matt and I ate a small plate of leftovers for breakfast, then set off towards the Peace Pagoda. Because we knew we had a long trek ahead of us and that meals were expensive near the Pagoda, we stopped for a second breakfast (don't judge) at "Don't Pass Us By Cafe" on the way.
The restaurant had been recommended by Lonely Planet, but Matt and I were both severely disappointed by our respective lassis, which tasted like watery yogurt with faint drops of fruit perfume.
We crossed the precarious rope bridge behind a throng of children.
"Hello!" they called to us, grins spread wide over delighted faces.
"Hello!" I responded.
"Sanchai chau?" Matt asked.
As soon as the littles spotted my camera, the flung themselves into a flurry of activity.
"Photos!" they cried.
"Sure," I smiled, still getting used to how much Nepali children enjoy having their pictures taken.
They posed, then dragged Matt into a photo.
After they'd finished their photo session with Matt, the girls demanded I take a photo with them. Then the one of my left promptly became the coolest person in the history of cool and the one on my right could probably tell Ganesh's shower has been going through an ice age.
God knows what the boy in the front was up to. But he's up to the same thing in every single picture I snapped.
There was a time (not so long ago) when I would look at photos of Caucasian tourists posing with Asian children and judge the tourists for pressuring kids into taking photos. Always felt a little slimy. Exploitative.
Um.
I don't look at pictures like that anymore.
Once we managed to break free from the camera-obsessed munchkins, we started up towards the Pagoda, led by a rather handsome, self-walking Nepali dog.
"What shall we name him?" I asked Matt.
"Harry. Harriet, if it's a girl."
"No," I grimaced at Matt's disagreeable habit of choosing boring names. "I think his name is Reginald."
"Reginald?!" Matt protested. "If you were in charge of naming, everything would have stuffy names like Reginald and Winston and Hugh."
I like stuffy names.
Reggie trotted quietly ahead of us for about forty five minutes. Then he tagged onto someone else' adventure, abandoning us just a few minutes walk from the Pagoda.
"He could probably tell that we've already eaten two breakfasts and were only going to order coffee."
After our coffee, we set off in a direction that seemed about right, armed with only the name of the town at which we hoped to end up and Matt's intermediate Nepali.
Most of the warm, sunny afternoon was spent with Matt asking locals where we ought go to and me smiling and saying, "Dhanyavad," at what I hoped was the end of the conversation.
Whenever we entered a village, we were immediately ambushed by swarms of eager children. Instead of asking for photos, these ones held out their grubby little hands and demanded, "Chocolate! Sweets! Five rupees!"
One particularly particular child rushed us and asked, "Apples! Volleyballs!"
"Now you're seeing another side of the kids trekkers meet," Matt told me as we shrugged our shoulders and displayed our empty hands to the clamorous children.
"No chocolate."
About an hour and a half away from our destination, we were set upon by another couple of boys who wanted their photos taken. I happily obliged, and then we walked together for a few yards, engaging in clunky, limited conversation about names, ages, nationalities.
"Where you go?" a young man wearing a black jacket bounded down a nearby hill towards us.
"Bumdi," Matt replied. "Is this the right way?"
"Oh, you take the long way, " Black Jacket shook his head disapprovingly. " Very long way. If you want the short cut, it is up that road."
"Which road?" Matt squinted. "I don't see a road."
"It is here," Black Jacket led us over to a small rocky path.
"Okay..." Matt and I started up the shortcut, littles clamoring along behind me.
I liked the long way, I instantly regretted embarking on the shortcut. It wasn't straight up the side of a mountain. I could stop and take pictures whenever I wanted. I could blow my stuffed up nose without being gawked at by littles and teenage Nepali boys.
"You don't have to walk with us," Matt tried to tell the older boys (another had joined the party) when we reached the top of the ridge.
"But you won't find the way," they insisted.
"We'll be fine," Matt tried again without success.
They're going to demand money for this. I know it. Gosh, I hate this sort of thing.
"When are you going home?" Matt asked Black Jacket.
"After I take you."
"Is your home near Bumdi?"
"No, it is near where I catch you."
Caught us. That's sure what it feels like. Ugh.
"We don't have any money," Matt let Black Jacket know. "We didn't hire a guide because guides are expensive and we wanted to do our trip just asking people for directions."
Black Jacket didn't have much to say about that.
About forty-five minutes later, our unwelcome chaperones finally slowed to a halt.
"You keep going this way," Black Jacket pointed down the road.
"Okay, thanks so much," Matt and I shook their hands and turned to leave.
"Wait," the boys called out. As I knew they would. "Money. It was long walk."
"You didn't say money at the beginning," Matt shook his head apologetically. I didn't even turn around.
You convince us to leave our perfectly good path and to take a really challenging shortcut, insist on tagging along, go way too fast for me and make my inured knee hurt a LOT...and now you want to be paid even though Matt told you again and again that we were too poor for guides? Am I MISSING something?
We kept walking.
"Money, please!" the boys yelled at our backs.
We continued on, grim, disappointed faces stonily set on the ground in front of us.
I hate this.
"FUCK YOU!" a voice rung out behind us, dripping with anger.
"FUCK YOU!" the voice came again, laced with hate.
"FUCK YOU!" the cursing became a chant, following us as journeyed towards Bumdi.
"Well, that was horrible," my stomach was all tied up in knots.
I haven't felt that much hate... that much anger... directed at me in a very long time.
"I think seeing the cute little kids first took down my defenses," Matt mulled over the unpleasant experience. "But I should have seen it coming."
"Next time, if someone wants to walk with us, we need to say very clearly at the beginning, "we are not going to pay you.""
"But that doesn't mean they won't ask you at the end. You'll start walking, then they'll start telling you about their dying grandmother and ask for money."
"Yeah," I frowned. "I guess it's just best not to accept that kind of help in places like this."
We finally found our guest house, ordered two dal bahts, and wandered off to enjoy the view as we waited for our trekker dinner.
Few meals have felt quite so satisfying as that dal baht. Five hours of trekking in Nepal does not, a small appetite, make.
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