Career Break Central

The long downhill trek back to Jomsom wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I wore two thick pairs of socks to protect my ankles and didn’t suffer too much. The wind blowing up the river valley was intense, though, and we had to cover our faces with scarves so we could breathe. When we arrived at the Majesty Hotel in Jomsom, our trek was officially over. Over the past ten days we had trekked over 100km/60 miles, climbed over 2500m/8500 vertical feet and crossed more than 20 suspension bridges while experiencing some of the most incredible scenery in the world. We had discovered that we could do anything we put our minds to and that our kids were capable of amazing feats. It was now time to bid goodbye to our faithful porters, Dhorzi & Kumal, and our kids were not about to let them go quietly. After a twenty minute wrestling match and many hugs and photos, they were off to their next trekking group.

The first thing we all did was take a long hot shower – the first truly hot shower we’d had in days. In Nepal, most guesthouses’ version of hot water consists of putting the water tank on the roof and hoping the sun will heat it up. Depending on the weather, the results are variable and most showers were quick, cold and very refreshing. My next task was to try to get some money from the only ATM we had seen since leaving Pokhara. Since I had given most of our cash to Claude and a good portion of what was left to our porters as tips, I was in desperate need of money. The ATM had been down on our first trip through Jomsom and now I discovered that it was closed for two days because of a public holiday (I guess machines need holidays too). Great! To make matters worse, when we got up the next morning to catch our flight to Pokhara, Hari told me it had been cancelled due to wind in the valley. We ended up waiting three days for the plane to come. During that time, the kids caught up on their lessons, performed endless concerts on the beds in our room (they know all the songs from High School Musical and Grease) and played hopscotch in the street. One night, Simon left his notebook on the table in the restaurant and when I found it the next morning, a local girl had written a whole page of information about herself as a way to practice her English. Hari never left us and gave me constant updates on the situation. He commented on how cool I was about the delays and I told him that I could think of worse places to be stranded and that, with Claude still trekking, I had no reason to rush back to Katmandu.

In the meantime, we met Fred and Cindy, a 60-something couple from Utah, who were in Nepal as part of a humanitarian mission and had taken a few days off to go trekking. Fred is a doctor who specializes in preventative and tropical medicine and Cindy is a nurse. Their organization is working to help small villages establish working medical clinics with trained local healthcare workers and adequate medical supplies. Fred has been traveling his whole life and kept us entertained with stories of his time spent in various jails throughout the developing world (which he credits with helping him learn Indonesian). It was his knowledge of Indonesian which allowed him to be very instrumental in helping to coordinate the relief effort in Sumatra as one of the first doctors on the ground after the 2004 tsunami. The kids were thrilled with their temporary surrogate grandparents and made themselves right at home in Fred and Cindy’s room doing crafts and drawing pictures for them.

After the second day with no plane, Hari approached me with a plan to get us back to Pokhara if the plane didn’t come the next morning. We would take motorcycles until the road ended, hike 4 hours to Tatopani, have lunch, hike another 2 hours to Beni and then take a Jeep and then minibus back to Pokhara all in one day. Fred and Cindy asked if they could join us and we were actually beginning to look forward to the adventure. I was now completely broke and desparate for the ATM to be working so I could finance our escape plan. On our third day in Jomsom, I walked up the street three times and was told each time that, although the bank was open today, the ATM wasn’t working due to the constant power outages. Each time the power goes out (about 10 times per day) the machine has to reboot, which takes about half an hour. Finally, on my fourth try, it was working and I cheered as I took out enough money to cover us all the way back to Katmandu. The next morning dawned bright, sunny and calm and Fred was actually disappointed when the plane showed up.

However, the flight back to Pokhara was spectacular; we floated down the narrow valley and got close-up views of Nilgiri and Dhaulagiri as we retraced the trail we had taken to Jomsom. That night, Fred, Cindy and I took Hari out to dinner as a thank-you for taking such good care of us in Jomsom. He recommended a restaurant where we got to enjoy traditional music and dancing as well as delicious food. Simon was so enthralled with the dancers that he moved his chair in front of the table to get a better view. Fred and Cindy had fun trying to stump Alexa’s 20 Questions game and were really spooked when it was able to guess “okra” (Fred’s word) and “Yeti” (Hari’s).

Because we had missed our original bus back to Katmandu, we had to spend an extra day in Pokahara before we could leave. When I called Bishnu to let him know when we would be arriving, he informed me that Claude was already back in Katmandu waiting for us! He had completed the second half of the Annapurna Circuit in only 5 days (most people take 7 to 9 days) and had beaten us back. Well, our adventure wasn’t over yet. After over hours on the bus, we were on the outskirts of Katmandu when traffic ground to a halt. Our driver got off the bus without a word and didn’t return. When I got off the bus to see what was going on, I could see buses and trucks lined up behind us as far as the eye could see and hundreds of people had disembarked from the local buses and were walking along the side of the road toward Katmandu. The only bus employee I could find (the luggage guy) didn’t speak much English and I got several stories ranging from a Maoist roadblock to a big accident to a house fell on the road as explanations for the delay. When I asked him to call the bus company to inform them of the delay, he made me do it and I ended up calling Bishnu who told me he would let Claude know where we were. After over two hours of waiting, our bus driver suddenly reappeared without a word of explanation and traffic started inching its way into the city again. When we finally arrived at the bus station, we were over three hours late and Claude had been waiting there for us for us the entire time. By that point, we were just glad to see each other and go back to the hotel to exchange war stories. Despite all the problems and delays, this had been one of the most exciting and rewarding legs of our trip and we vowed that we would definitely be back for more trekking in the future.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Nepal, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.