The bank is supposed to open at ten o’clock, but this is Nepal and at 10:15 I am still waiting. Not long after, a taxi carrying a woman and security guard pulls up and they unlock the doors. I am a little worried because in the UK a separate security company would come to maintain the cash machine and this only happens at particular times of the day. However, the woman merely asks to see my ID then meanders around the bank for some long minutes looking at various documents and turning on computers etc before eventually pulling out a key. Thankfully the key is in the machine and I leave relieved but in a hurry to get the next bus to the trek starting point.
Our hotel, which has views from our room balcony to the Annapurnas (there are Annapurna peaks numbered 1, 2, 3 & 4), is clean comfortable and cheap at about $10 a night for a room. We agree to come back here for a couple of nights when we have finished and they let us leave our luggage with them that we don’t need for the trek.
We catch a bus to Naya Pul, which is the village where the trekking trail starts. The bus takes two to three hours, depending on how avoidable the potholes are that day, how long the traffic queues up the mountainsides are and also on how crazy your bus driver is. Our bus driver is quite crazy and we take closer to two hours. When we got onto the bus at Pokhara, it wasn’t full and we propped our rucksacks on the back seats (there were no overhead shelves that they would fit onto). However, as our journey progressed, it quickly filled and we felt guilty that our bags were taking up seats. We needn’t have worried though, because people just climb onto the roof racks on top of the bus if it looks full, despite the fact that the bus is swinging madly around mountainous multifariously potholed roads.
When we get off the bus, it is not clear where the start of the trail is. We ask someone from one of the multitude of huts selling titbits and food, and he directs us through a gap in the huts down a slippy mud slope. He follows us and offers to be our porter for $10 a day, which is cheaper than what we were offered in Pokhara. I consider it, but Laurie is still adamant that we don’t need a porter (mostly because she is a cheapskate).
We start the trek getting followed by a group of local adolescents and children. Laurie gets asked by one of the older boys if she and I are a couple. This question reminded me of a moment in a Pakistani police compound where Meg responded to a similar question from the local male inhabitants that, no, she and Dave were not a couple. This led to her being surrounded by men and being offered access to a shower we are not entirely sure existed, not that she was going to try to find out. Laurie does not make the same mistake and lies that we are. To be honest, a lot of the less worldly people of this part of the world assume we westerners are all at it all the time anyway.
We manage to lose many of the local kids amongst the chaos of a donkey jam as a herd of them are being escorted down the trail. After a couple of hours and after we have stopped being followed, we stop at a lodge for dinner and a bed. The accommodation & food prices for the lodges on the trail are all set by the government. They do get progressively higher with the altitude but you never need much more than £10 / $15 a day, if that. The actual accommodation is as basic as a stable with fold out beds, but it is also almost free. It is the food that you pay for and you are obliged to order meals at the restaurant of the lodge you are staying at because of this.
With myself and Laurie spending so much time together, including rooming together (although Brian is usually in the room with us), and now having gone on this trek alone together, the rumour mill of the UK to Oz group has decided that we are definitely sleeping together. The only truth to this is the most literal. However, I haven’t really cared what anybody else thought and nor has Laurie, whose sense of humour is brashly suggestive anyway. She has a boyfriend who lives in Bermuda (long story). He is 6’4” and about seventeen stone (240 pounds / 110 kg) and comes from Derby in the English midlands. He is also somewhat paranoid a boyfriend, which matches nicely with the spectacularly flirty nature of Laurie. None of this matters though as he is never likely to find out about the rumours.....
Tonight Laurie tells me her boyfriend is joining the UK to Oz truck when we get to Vietnam just before the New Year.
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