Mountains and some more mountains

(continued...)

(Let me start this post with a horrible panorama from my Samsung Galaxy Note 1, not that great but captures the essence of this post. )

Sunrise and Breakfast

We woke up early that morning to see the sunrise. It was so cold that even though we were awake by 5 am, we stayed wrapped in our blankets till 5:30 pm. Apparently, the night was very cold and the blankets were not enough but I had slept like a baby and had no idea what the others were talking about. The boys came knocking on our door at 5:30 am and told us that they were going to the tower, rather than waiting for us outside. It was so cold that we were changing slower than turtles inside or blankets. My boss called us 15 mins later telling us that the sun had already risen and we needed to hurry up. This was technically my first sunrise experience and I could not afford to miss it, so I rushed to the tower without even brushing my teeth. I was so scared that I was going to smell bad so I didn't talk much. Fortunately we weren't that late and the view was absolutely breathtaking. The skies had cleared up and we had a gorgeous view of multiple mountains. We could even see the tips of Mt. Machhapuchchhre(6993m) in the North. The scene was truly breath taking. I had never seen mountains so close and that's when the magic happened, one by one those snow-capped mountains started to turn pink. It was beautiful, I had no idea why everybody obsessed over watching the sunrise and that moment everything made sense. I was not thinking about anything, I was truly happy. :)

With whatever that has been going on with me in the past few months, my head has never been clear. I've always been worrying, tensed, flustered, or sad. But in that moment, I left everything behind and I was truly happy. I could not stop smiling at that magnificent view and just got lost in the moment. We were also busy taking a lot of pictures and selfies, as we were not sure if we were going to see something this magnificent anytime soon.

(This is the magnificent view that my phone couldn't give any justice to. You can see the machhapuchhre on the left and the one facing you is either Annapurna II or IV.)

The 'pinking' process was very slow and gradual, hitting all the peaks one by one, so we expected the sun to come out really slow and just chill. That did not happen, the sun came out super fast, it was up and running in no time. 

After experiencing the marvelous sunrise, we decided to go back and have breakfast. But we saw these huge Tibetan Mastiffs chilling on the stairs, which made us think us. Luckily they didn't care about us so we decided to take a selfie with the gorgeous dogs. Typical me eh? 

(And that's Andy, one of my travel companions) 

After the wonderful sunrise we were greeted by a wonderful breakfast, I was definitely on cloud nine at the moment. We had some phaper ko sel, which is sweet deep fried buckwheat bread. We were expecting it to be greasy and heavy but it was so light and crunchy. It was heavenly. And there we ended our visit to Ghale gaun. One of the traditions of Ghale gaun is to see off their guests with garlands and tika. Like we weren"t feeling special enough. 

After saying our goodbyes, we started our hike to bhujung with a stop at Nayu Village, which was a huge disappointment because we had heard that Nayu had hotels, which we were expecting to be better than the Home-stays in Ghale Gaun, but we were greeted with cramped smoky rooms that we could barely stand in. Either way we decided to leave our stuff in the hotel and continue our trek to Bhujung, one of the biggest Gurung settlements. 

the trail to bhujung, isn't it pretty? 

We should always go up

AS we started our journey we found two trails, one was a straight way to bhujung which was somewhat downhill, whereas the other was a stairway to Ghanapokhari which was a few altitudes higher than Nayu. Andy suggested that we went up rather than down. The locals told us that it would take us 30 minutes to get there, so we rock paper scissored into going there. That's how we make decisions, so much easier than actually deciding or choosing. The staircase was pretty steep, mad eof irregular rocks and 10 mins in we were already tired. When we finally made way till Ghana Pokhari, there wasn't much to actually see there. Just went up there looked around. Saw a buffalo minding it's own business and we decided to catch out route back to bhujung. Ghana Pokhari is also on top of a hill so how could we miss the chance of taking more pictures with the mountains? 

How cute am I? 

 It was another staircase downward and man were we tired of steps by the end of it? YESS a lot actually. but we made our way down. I found some really shiny rocks on the way down, I was hoping they'd turn out to be silver but the they didn't. After walking down for quite a while, our knees were starting to give up but we made it to flat ground in no time. 

We kept asking every passerby how long it would take us to get to bhujung, they'd say an hour or two, from what we could see or had experienced, we would get nowhere in the next two hours. We could see the path to bhujung which was straight ahead of us and it literally scared us. We had our breakfast at 7 a.m., it was already 11 a.m and there was no way we could get food on the way. We had to make a choice, either to risk people fainting on the way and go to bhujung or to return to Nayu and eat food. Our survival instincts got the better of us and re decided to return to Nayu where we had food and enough time to get back to Ghale Gaun, cause there was no way we would come out alive the next morning in those cramped up rooms. 

Back in Ghale Gaun 

After we returned to Ghale Gaun we were assigned new homes and we had time to play with the goat and do some rolling down the hills. We finally had time to relax and later on play Taboom in our room. If we had decided to stay in Nayu that would've been impossible. Whatever happens, happens for a reason. We had another wonderful day to look forward to, and we had decided to enjoy the sunrise one last time before we return to kathmandu. So we decided to sleep early even though we were having lots of fun. We even requested kodo ko sel for breakfast. We decided to trek till Khudi village, which they estimated was a 2 hour trek, and then get a bus to besisahar and return to Kathmandu. Our host told us that if we started trekking at the break of dawn we'd get to see some deer and kalij and a bunch other birds. We were definitely looking forward to the nest morning, maybe we anticipated too much. Maybe not. Since this post is already too long I'll add the details of Day 3 in another post. Cheers.

And I am really sorry for not posting this earlier, I've been having a bit of a writer's block. For now I'm just glad to have finished this post. I'll try to update the next post by the end of this week. 

(... to be continued) 

Regards,

Prarthana 

The beauty of Randomness

How often do you get a chance to pack your bags and go on a trip with your boss and his friends, who neither know you or each other. Well that kinda is the introduction to my trip to Ghale Gaun. I had no idea what to expect, all I could do was trust my boss, who is a very fun person, to clear the awkwardness away. And that he did beautifully. So let me begin sharing my experience of Ghale gaun.

The road trip 
The place is not that far away from Kathmandu, we left at around 7:15 am, and reached besisahar around 1:30 pm. Then we took a jeep to Ghale Gaun, which is literally on top of a hill. By the time we were in the jeep, a lot of the awkwardness had already gone away. The only awkwardness there was our driver playing sentimental suicidal songs. We did try to coax him into stopping and we even tried singing loudly to overpower it, didn't work out at all. I slept all the way till besisahar because I was on the wrong side and missed all the view and there was no point staying awake, staring at the trees. We had already gotten closer with the cramped seats in the jeep and on top of that the seats were slippery and facing each other, pushing us closer. You can see how cramped it is below

(the back of our jeep says 'If your shawl flies away, how is it my speed's fault?')

Just want to mention how lucky guys are in terms of being able to pee anywhere. We had a toilet break for a few minutes, which I find very sexist cause it is specially designed for men.
And after a three hour ride from besisahar we finally reached Ghale Gaun around 5:00.

Night at Ghale Gaun
After arriving in Ghale gaun turns out that we need to register the names of everyone is staying there and they assign us a house for home-stay. We got assigned a house really close by to the entrance of Ghale gaun. But turns out the person who cooks had gone away to a nearby village for a festival there. We were really hungry so we decided to buy some biscuits and drink eat at the nearby shop, but our host who was a 75 year old man was kind enough to make us tea because he thought we were tired. Nepal being a patriarchal country, the man of the house is the bread winner and the women is usually responsible for cooking and household chores. Even though we can see men doing household chores today, we rarely get to see old men doing any household chore. We were very touched by his actions. I think getting to drink tea made by a 75 year old bajey is pretty rare in Nepal.

(with the lovely bajey <3)

Let me take a moment to describe our rooms right here, it was awesome for the price we were paying. It had a T.V., three comfortable beds with white sheets, blankets and a pillow. We could tell that it was a room made recently especially for home-stay because the other room that my boss and his friend had was in the main house and was very small. My boss could barely stand in his room, because it was so small but it was good enough.
We went on a stroll of the town just to see if we could get an idea of how the town was, just to explore with our torches and cellphone flash lights and were scared to death by a black bull in the dark. We decided to go back and have our dinner and also bought some beer on the way back. My boss forbid me from having beer because he had seen me high on red bull and was not going to let that happen again especially not on beer.

While we were having dinner, we also learnt that our host was a Women Health Worker. We were almost done with dinner when our host got a call from the 'Aama Samuha' because a group of 20 people had requested a traditional gurung dance performance at 8 pm, and to our surprise they were more than willing to participate and invited us as well. So we decided to join the group of 20 people to experience some gurung culture and followed our host to a performance hall. Unfortunately we ended up waiting there for almost an hour. Because it was just 2 days after a dill moon, the sky was bright and I couldn't see any stars.But one of us stumbled upon a beautiful view of the mountains, yes at 9 pm we could see the fucking mountains, how awesome was that? we were so excited that all of us were cursing ourselves for not owning a DSLR. Like who knew that your cellphone was not going to capture such a magnificent image? Fortunately, Andy's digital camera caught the image and we thanked our lucky stars for that awesome shot.
After waiting for another half hour we decided to ditch the cultural program and go back to sleep because we wanted to wake up early to check out the sunrise.
(...to be continued)

I think this is getting too long. I'll continue day 2 and day 3 in another post :) 

Regards,
Prarthana

To infinity and beyond

Hi guys,

After having a hipster blog forever with everything cramped in one place,I've finally decided to create another blog for my love for travel and food. So that other food and travel junkies know where to look, and I can specialize in what I love without being all over the place. 

My history of travel 

Sadly, I have not been to many places, but my heart thrives to wander. One of the most recent places I visited was Rasuwa, one of the 75 districts in Nepal. I stayed in the district headquarter Dhunche for 8 days. I also had brief visits to Syabrubesi, Timure, Rasuwagadhi. I was there for work, so I couldn't wander much but from what I saw I can tell you that it's a beautiful place and the people are so nice. Timure and Rasuwagadh are not very densely populated compared to Dhunche. They're building a dry port in Rasuwagadh, so the chances are its going to become super popular and crowded in the next few years. Dhunche used to be a starting point for gosaikunda and langtang but it has shifted to syafrubesi in the past few years. So you might not find as many tourists in Dhunche than before. We stayed in a guesthouse called ' The Sunshine Guesthouse', the person who runs the place was a very nice guy and treated us really well. The only so called problem we had there was that someone kept changing the password of the wifi and it was hell. We had to communicate with people in America and update them with our work and we were struggling to do so because the password kept changing every other night. If you're there to get away from the world, I don't think that's going to bother you much. A suggestion if you are planning to stay in Dhunche choose a hotel which is away from the hill or on the other side of the road from the hill, you'll be able to enjoy a spectacular view every day. unfortunately the place we stayed was on the other side so we didn't have a spectacular view. my room was facing away from the hills so I could see Mt. Langtang every morning but it was a combined view of houses in Dhunche and Mt. Langtang. 

Another interesting thing that happened to me while in Dhunche was wining some trout fish!! Yes, winning. So what happened was, we were on the terrace of our guesthouse and we saw that the house right in front of our guesthouse had a radio tower, our curiosity got the better of us and then we decided to tune into the radio station. A call show was in progress and we had to choose one  out of 5 numbers and answer the question that followed. There was a caller on the show and she got the question 'Which bank has the highest number of branches in Nepal and which bank is it?', We desperately started googling that and Nepal being the tiny country that it is, didn't have such information online. My other boss was predicting a country so my other boss decided to call, to our luck, we got through. But the answer was wrong and this continued, all of us called Rasuwa FM by using each other's name. I decided to call too, being the only girl in the group I had to mix someone else's surname with my name. I was a little flirty with the RJ, told him I was going to Gosaikunda and was looking for a companion. Our original plan was to keep the conversation as long as possible. I have no idea if the RJ was nice to me or I was just lucky but I got a very easy question and that was ' What is the full form of FM?'. My friend whispered me the answer and I was told that my name would be inserted for a lucky draw but by chance I was the only one who got a correct answer in the whole show. The next day we went to the FM telling them I didn't have an id card and the RJ was nice enough to give me the hamper anyway. I won a coupon to eat trout fish for two 4kms away from dhunche. That night we enjoyed fresh Rainbow Trout Fish and it was delicious.

I'm going to Ghale gaun tomorrow for a 3 days 2 nights trip. So my next post will be about Ghale Gaun, if everything goes as planned, I will also be uploading a video about Ghale Gaun. If i have internet access there, I swear to update you guys everyday. 

Regards, 

Prarthana