We made it to the outskirts of the village by late afternoon and stopped to rest on the terraces. Mountains - or indeed foothills - aren't naturally particularly useful for farming, so over the generations the people have turned whole mountainsides into innumerable steps, each providing a little strip of flat, plough-able land. While this simple idea maybe wonderful for local agriculture, it's a real pain for tired tourists walking up hills. I imagine building them wasn't a lot of fun either.
In some ways, the walk was a revision course in human anatomy: by the time we arrived, muscles ached that I'd entirely forgotten existed. My feet held up surprisingly well given that I was wearing only trainer-walking shoe hybrids that really aren't meant for such hardcore trekking. Still, Peter and Suzanna did the walk in trainers, Sungitta managed in flip flops and our drunk Jakari friend didn't bother with footwear at all, so I don't really have any room for complaint. When we arrived at Purnee's house we found that Purnee wasn't there. She was still up another mountain looking after sheep but would probably be back tomorrow. In the meantime, her mother-in-law was looking after the house and the children and would gladly welcome us in.
The houses are made of stones held together with mud, with slate and corregated metal roofs. There are no windows as such, certainly no glass. Instead, wood is carved into ornate patterns, with plenty of big holes to allow light and air into the upper two stories. The ground floor was all one main room, which had no windows at all. The walls and floor appeared to be made of the same cement-like mud that held the whole structure together, while woodern beams held up the wooden floor of the next level. The ceiling was fairly high but hung with useful things, so you had to stoop to avoid hitting your head anyway. There were shelves along one wall filled with plates and pans, and a bed in the corner. There were innumerable large clay pots and wicker baskets that - to the uneducated eye at least - could have come from any number of places and times throughout history. At the back of the room is the fire pit where all the cooking is done. This is also where we all gather round to eat or just to sit in the evenings. With no electricity and only a few precious gas lamps, this is the place to get light when the sun goes down. And heat. It's cold in them there mountains. Noticeably abscent is any form of chimney. Some of the smoke escapes upstairs, through the space above the ladder. Some escapes through the door, if we decide it's so smokey that we can brave the cold of an open door for a while.
It turns out that this is to be a house of three languages: English, Nepali and the local dialect of Gurung. No one person speaks more than two of these languages and some of us can only manage one. At no point in my stay did I find this a problem. Apart from myself and Peter, no one in the village spoke fluent English and only a handful of people spoke any English at all. There was a good number of people there would were unable to speak more than a few words of Nepali. But you can get a long way with smiling, pointing and, most importantly, trying.
That first night was filled with the kind of conversations that you don't need to speak the language to understand. For example, I was offered a cup of tea. Yes please, I smiled and nodded, but no milk powder or sugar. Peter translated. The mother-in-law (all the time I was there, she was only ever referred to by her title; presumably she had a name but I never found out what it was), who's Nepali was not good, was confused and looked to Suzanna for confirmation. No milk or sugar? Are you sure? Did I fully understand what they were offering? Was I familiar with the concept of 'tea'? Confirmations followed first in Nepali from a laughing Peter then in the local language from Suzanna. Mutterings followed in Gurung. You can't have a cup of tea without at least a little milk or sugar. These strange foreigners, they'd want it without hot water next! She whispered to Suzanna - unnecessarily since neither Peter nor I at that point understood any of the language at all - to put a spoonful of sugar in the kettle while we weren't looking. It was done, but not very subtley. Caught in the act, Suzanna blushed an apology and I laughed, and drank my too-sweet tea. A similar conversation arose when I asked that they didn't put the chilli powder in my chow mein, with similar results. Still, the obvious difficulty I had eating excessively spicy food produced some kind of remorse. This was the first and only time such food requests were ignored and I got non-sugary tea and not very spicy food for the rest of my stay. Mother-in-law simply moved on to putting excessive amounts of salt in everything cooking, unless carefully watched.
