Day 2 and 3: Movin' on up

With my puking behind me and a lot of miles ahead days 2 and 3 were days where we made up some time, moving from altitudes about 5000 ft up to 10K. The trails were steep and long. The weather was amazing though. The beginning of June in Nepal is the rainy season, that's why many tourists don't go there. It can be extremely dangerous during the monsoons. Flooding and landslides are common during this time. Many of the trails hug the river and make travel easy when its dry but when the river comes up you have to go over the higher trails which are longer and more treacherous. In these two days we made it from a village called Tal and got all the way to place called Dhukaru Pohkari. Prior to that we stayed in a place called Timang Besi. It was there that we all got hot showers. Oh my goodness what a blessing. It was there too that I ate for the first time in 48 hours. My meal consisted of boiled potatoes and salt. It was one of the best meals I'd ever had. Phurpu and James thought I was weird for eating the skins on the potatoes. I guess they weren't all wrong. We also had the opportunity to treat an injury there. One of the local boys had a nasty cut on his shin. He got injured when his sister was cutting wood and missed and hit him. I figured that might be half true. But we cleaned up his sound that probably should have had stitches. but it was good enough to keep infection from setting in. We had the guest house to ourselves and it was awesome. I got to call home and talk to Tammy from there for about $3 a minute, but it was worth it, every penny.

The next day was our first glimpse of the big maintains. After a long climb turned a corner and there it was, our first 20K plus peak. Tony had never seen a mountain like that and he was hanging in the back that day so I waited on him with my video camera to catch his reaction. He ambled around the bend and I said, "Hey Tony....look up!"

He did and he just said a long drawn out, "Whoa!"

Words sometimes will ruin a moment. The sight of that mountain was indeed beyond description or pictures, words and pictures would only cheapen the majesty of seeing that for the first time.

I think "Whoa!" sums it up best.

That same day we met a group of young guys coming down the mountain from their jobs high above the treeline. They go up to about 14 or 15K and search in the thin dirt there for this worm that grows a mushroom out of its backside (I'm not kidding). This worm and mushroom combination is said to having amazing healing powers. One guy even told me it cured AIDS. The worms sell for 300 rupees (about $5) in Kathmandu. That is an unbelievable amount of money. So the young men head up to the high country to harvest these things.

Well this group coming down happened to be believers in Jesus. And right there on the side of the trail we had church. We encouraged each other, prayed for each other and fellowshipped for about an hour. One guy looked at Phurpu and said, "I know you". Turns out that Phurpu had bee in that are 10 years before and baptized a bunch of people and this guy was one of them. How's that for coincidence. It was a blessing.

So days 2 and 3 we covered about 24 miles gained some mad altitude and met some great folks and had a hot shower. Not too shabby.....more to follow!