Hello Dear Friends
Today we headed up the famous "unrelenting" Ulleri steps, pictured above passing next to
the Super View Guest House in the prosperous village of Ulleri on our way to Banthanti.
In bright sunshine under clear, cool
skies we left Hille (elev. 5000 ft.) at 7:30 AM to climb the “unrelenting staircase”
to Ulleri for lunch and continue to Banthanti (7,400 ft.) for overnight at the
Heaven View Guest House, where, as you will see, we were truly given the “‘Heartly’
Welcome” announced by the sign gracing the friendly red front of the lodge.
We followed the wide stone trail
through familiar pastures and farming terraces and crossed two rivers on
suspension bridges before starting to ascend first of the 3,300 steep steps. The
night before at the See You Lodge, our dinner conversation had touched on
bicycle touring, and Sky had mentioned a lesson in hill climbing that he had
put into practice with some success. It
was something like “ride as slowly as possible without losing your balance and
you’ll conserve your energy.” Dick,
having acquired the group cold, immediately put that idea into practice to
climb the Ulleri staircase. Following
him proved an effective way for me to move “unrelentingly” upwards at a slow enough
pace to avoid getting too sweaty and dehydrated. AND, we still arrived at
Ulleri in time for lunch along with scores of other trekkers – some were like
us and moving uphill on the way to Ghorepani and others were finishing their
three-week Annapurna Circuit trek and moving smartly downhill.
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| “Tea House Trekking Solitude” among some of the estimated 100,000 who trek in the Annapurna region each year |
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| Everyday life in Ulleri: When stopped to photograph two baskets used for “chicken coops,” Jawane checked his mobile phone. The basket on the left had day-old baby chicks underneath. You can see their feed and water dishes protruding from below the basket’s rim near Jawane’s right hand. |
It should be noted that in the
picture Jawane was using his phone, not just looking at it. The cell phone service in Nepal as in Turkey
where we first noticed the phenomenon, extends into remote places like the Himalayan
foothills and through tunnels [Turkey] where we could never imagine using our
cell phones in California. Lucky for us
that Jawane was able to phone ahead as our plans changed on the trek and he also
had to make a reservation for an additional night for us in KTM because a 10
day trek from April 5 to 15 requires eleven nights of accommodation J. Oops.
The trail continued upward through
more pastures and cultivated fields [I recognized cauliflower, cabbage, and the
orange marigolds used for pujas.] and forests.
We were surprised to arrive shortly at the trailside Heaven View Guest
House, where the bantering, jolly women managers [or were they the owners?]
gave Jawane the keys to our rooms and teasingly welcomed him and our porters
and helpers. The guest rooms were
upstairs, and downstairs there was charming, well-lighted dining room for a
welcome after-trek beer on a warm day or a hot tea by the 50-gallon barrel wood
stove on a cool one – or during the afternoon’s thunderstorm. The dining room provided a well-lighted,
beautiful space for me to write up the day’s adventure while gazing out the
many windows and down into the lodge’s “kitchen garden” and across the valley
to the distant, meticulously-terraced hillsides.
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| Donna shares a laugh with Sky in the Heaven View dining room. |
After washing our clothes and
ourselves and taking naps, in the late afternoon we drifted down to the kitchen
where our hostesses were cooking dinner on the wood-fired clay stove. Jawane
had taken our dinner orders just after we arrived, and our hostesses had picked
ingredients from their garden and bought more from a vendor who stopped by with
produce carried in two big baskets hung from the ends of a long pole. Steamed momos, the ubiquitous Nepali answer
to pot stickers, were among our requests, and soon our hostesses-now-cooks were
happily giving momos-making lessons to the irrepressibly curious and
participatory Donna. To form a momo, a
dollop of chopped meat and/or vegetables is plopped into the center of a
circular piece of dough, the dough is folded over the filling, and crimped
tight to hold the filling inside during the steaming or deep frying that cooks
the filling. Momos are on the menus of most
Nepali restaurants and are often served in orders of 10 with a yummy -- and often
fiery -- chili-onion-cumin etc. dipping sauce. The rest of us sat in the toasty
kitchen classroom as jolly spectators of the momos lessons and the merry
give-and-take of teasing and joking. It
was fun to see that Karma’s spoken Nepali skills allowed him to hold his own in
happy the kitchen banter.
After dinner while our laundry was
drying on racks around the dining room heater, we were still warming ourselves
on the inside with laughter and “on the house” drinks of rakshi as our happy hiking
fatigue called us to bed for a rendezvous the sandman and the ibuprofen bottle.
Tomorrow we would wake early to tend
to our toilettes, enjoy a varied breakfast of omelets, hot cereal, fry breads,
hot milk tea, and coffee, and tend to the daily pre-trek chores of filtering
and treating water, repacking our duffel bags for the porters, and heading out
to the next destination. Happy, lucky
us!
Namaste,
Marian (Chico, CA written on 05/12/12)
P. S. I need to tell you that as we
set out today, Dorje offered to carry my daypack and I said, “Yes, Please, that
would be wonderful.” And it was
wonderful for me to walk without carrying anything. Happy me.
He carried my daypack all the rest of the trek. I was glad that I had brought some
hiking/camping clothes to give to my porter/helper as Dorje was a slim,
muscular guy about as tall as me and I could imagine him wearing them.
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