Nepal: Day 2 (11/06/19)
I got up early today and packed my backpack for the 4-day hike I had negotiated with the hostel folks yesterday. Saajan met me downstairs at sunrise and we packed into a car for a long drive out of Kathmandu proper and into the mountains. Sajaan and I talked the whole way up about what the hike was going to look like, which was a relief for me since I had pretty much told the hostel folks to just go for it so I wouldn’t have to worry about the details. He explained that we were in for about 10 hours of walking a day and 3,000 ft. of elevation. And oh lord did that elevation come on fast!
We got out of the car at a small dirt trail between houses on a mountain road that overlooked Kathmandu below. We made our way up the trail which followed a river bank upwards. Then the stairs started. The hillside was heavily forested and the stairs wound back and forth like switchbacks, so it was impossible to tell how much elevation the covered - but it was a lot. We spent probably the better part of 2 hours on those stairs, with Sajaant pounding out stairs at galactic speed and me following behind: panting, sweating, and legs on fire. Turns out Sajaan is a university student and works as a tour guide on the side, skipping school for several days at a time to make money. He’s been doing it for several years apparently, which was explanation enough for me as to why he was an unstoppable StairMaster. Around halfway through the ascent we had to stop by a small shack and get park permits as well as cross a damn spanning a particularly muddy section of the river which gave me a much needed moment to breathe.
As we neared the top of the ridge the soil became much more sandy and the trees thinned out to be replaced by hundreds of houses on either side of the stairs - which now seemed to act as almost a central thoroughfare to a sprawling town. We stopped for lunch at a 3 table diner where I ordered dal bhat at Sajaan’s recommendation, which literally translated to “lentil rice”. It was a plate of rice and sides with a bowl of yellow lentil soup that came from a huge pot they had boiling in the other room. While the sides were limited, the rice and lentils were not, and the two of us demolished plate after plate of it. While we were stuffing our faces I asked about the houses we had passed, since they were almost all reinforced concrete with sheet metal roofs and often had excess rebar sticking out of them, which was dramatically different than anywhere else I had been. Sajaan explained that they looked like: concrete was cheap, sheet metal was easy to carry, and many houses had upper floors removed. I didn’t ask about that last one but found out later that when the area was hit by an earthquake in 2015 many of the houses were partially destroyed, particularly the upper floors, and had to be removed.
We continued our way up the mountain and eventually came to the end of the concrete stairs at a guardhouse and gate that Sajaan negotiated. I assumed that the uniforms and rifles meant they were like park guards but I was honestly the elevation was killing me and I was too out of breath to ask. From that point on we were on paths of dirt, roots, and old stones under a gorgeous canopy as we continued to climb well into the afternoon. We hit the Sundarijal peak at 2,430 meters as the sky was starting to get foggy, which struck me as odd until I realized it wasn’t ground fog but low clouds drifting along the ridge. A little later we had crested the ridgeline and the view opened up to show miles of valley, scattered towns, far-off mountains, and puffy clouds rolling along. It was breathtaking, made even more special to me after the climb to get there.
We turned off the trail shortly after into a small collection of buildings, several of them ruined and crumbling, and got rooms at a small inn. To my surprise it was actually pretty nice, they had running water (which I foolishly drank, but more on that tomorrow), a flushing toilet, and even a cold shower. Sajaan and I cleaned up, I took a nap, and then we had dinner. Afterwards I broke out my deck of cards and Sajaan taught me how to play a game called Counts (It was literally UNO with regular cards, but he seemed really excited to teach me his favorite card game so I didn’t stop him) along with a with a solo traveller that didn’t speak a lick of English. I also introduced the two of them to BS (I think internationally its called Cheat), which was a hit. We stayed up several hours shouting “Bullshit” and declaring more and more improbable lies about our cards. It was a really good day and I was absolutely pumped for tomorrow when I passed out at like 8pm.
