Traffic

Six hours of walking up and down hills, and I feel really good. We climbed up 450 m, but only ended up 250 m higher than last night. The key seems to be to walk really slowly, and use my stick to lean on while climbing. Amazingly, my feet don't hurt yet.

Today we shared the trail with lots of Israelis, porters, trains of mules, and herds of water buffalo. The trail is narrow, so when this stuff comes through, you'd better get over!

Not surprisingly, a lot of the kids are beggars. They hang out by the trail, and ask for "school pens," or to be photographed. I wish people would realized that if they wanted to help the children with their apparent dire shortage of pens, they could just give them directly to the schools.

We had lunch at a restaurant on top of a big hill called the Superior View Restaurant, and was billed as being "Not recommended by Lonely Planet." That's good enough for me. The view was indeed superior, with the green/blue river far below, the hills on both sides of the valley, and the top of a rocky snow-capped mountain poking over a hill. I'm thinking it may be best to stick to dal bhat, since our fried rice was poor.

Dhal Bhat

We've been passing through Hindu country, which Tak Pun describes as "not interesting." Tomorrow we enter Tibetan territory, which I look forward to. I have a feeling I'll see more Tibetan culture here in Nepal than in Tibet.

The tiny village we're staying at, just some building along the trail, like many villages, has no electricity. So it was chess by candlelight.

State of the Bowels Report In Kathmandu I had a recurrence of my Giardia. I decided to treat it again, this time using the proper dose, since the doctor I saw told me the wrong thing. But the last two days I had to run to the toilet for an urgent Hershey squirt. Thankfully, this hasn't happened on the trail yet. But the toilets aren't much better, since they are of the squat variety. There are few things worse than trying to squat properly so the violent explosions from your ass spray into a hole, and not onto the floor, or your legs. This would be easier if I understood the Asian art of squatting comfortably. Looks like I'll be getting plenty of opportunities to practice.