Okay so where was I.. right Namche Bazaar having made lots of friends that I would most likely never see again but I'm pretty confident if I ever contacted them they would be happy to meet up. After Namche Bazaar I was splitting from the crowd in pursuit of Gokyo Ri, sure base camp would have been cool but I'll just get there when I climb Everest some day ;) Little piece of advice if you decide to go trekking in Nepal, i think you get a bit more of an authentic experience and truly get to feel the beauty of what's around you if you take the road less traveled. I'm thinking the Mustang Region is my next stop. Anyway off we went headed for a small village called Dole. In general we were only supposed to be gaining anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 ft a day but we got to Dole a mere 3 hours after starting out. My first reaction was, what the hell am I going to do this whole day in a 5 house village, only 2 meals, a deck of cards and no toilet paper? Oh well duh let's just keep hiking. Krishna (my mountain guide...just s guide, no porter, don't even think or a second I would let someone else carry my stuff, thats my job) was a bit skeptical but I was persistent. i mean this isn't just trekking this is my work out for the day and obviously 3 hours isn't enough (you can cringe at the thought of that if you want). So on to Machemo we went, a nice big 6 hour day. I got into the habit of going to bed at 7 if there were no people around to talk to, my way of fighting off the loneliness that sometimes crept in soooo yeah 7pm lights out after the normal dinner of Dahl baht of course. We were getting deeper into the Himalayas now, the nights were chilly and we ate dinner around a small furnace for warmth. They even had lots of tissues to make up for my missing toilet paper. Next time you use the bathroom don't take the toilet paper for granted it's such a wonderful luxury. i finished the night having tea with the family who owned the tea house and at least a whole pack of coconut cookies. I could see the stars from my "bed" and my sleeping bag smelled like 5 days of hiking but man was I content :)
im gonna go to yoga now (in Luang Prabang) and then read to some kids and bike to a waterfall but in between that and jetting off to vietnam I'll hopefully be able to get one more post in!
