Mountains and Monkeys

Yesterday afternoon I went on my furthest and most strenuous hike since I've been in Nepal (just under four hours). Once again I was led by Karki, my 13 year old guide, who I've come to believe must be part jack rabbit and part mountain goat, the way he nimbly scales the steep and often slippery trail (in a pair of flip flops no less!). I was already breathing hard and we hadn't even gone a quarter mile. Fortunately, we came to a clearing where the local villagers were working in the dried out rice paddies and I pulled out my phone to snap a few pictures and catch my breath (see also the pictures in the Harvest Time post).






From here the trail flattened out for a while and then we came to a road. The road was often very steep, but at least it wasn't slippery and my guide steadied his pace down from jack rabbit to simply mountain goat speed thankfully. As we moved higher into the mountains the view was simply amazing. One thing I noticed was that from this vantage point I could see many more dwellings. From the valley it appeared like there were just a handful of homes along the mountainside, but now I was able to see roughly a hundred or more huts dotting the mountain landscape.






We kept going until we rounded over to the far side of the mountain and came to a small waterfall at which point we had been hiking for almost two hours and we needed to turn back in order to get back before dusk.
While the hardest part about going up the mountain was the ever thinning air, the hardest part about going down the mountain is the pounding your feet and knees take. I definitely understand now why I've been treating so many people with knee pain in the clinic. Even 13 year old Karki's knees started bothering him as we journeyed ever downward.
We reached a point in the road where we were surrounded by woods and I asked Karki if he had ever seen any monkeys in the area (I'd been told by a prior volunteer that the forrest was filled with mean monkeys). Sure enough, not 10 minutes later Karki spotted a monkey in the trees that I would have never seen on my own. Over the next few minutes we spotted several more. Mostly in the trees but one off to the side of the road further up.
Three and a half hours after we started we returned to Chanaute. According to my iPhone, we hiked almost seven miles, climbed the equivalent of 158 flights of stairs (which means we also descended the equivalent of 158 flights on the return) and took 16,000 steps. Not bad for an afternoon hike!


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