Highly Elevated 3

Back In Time

Sunrise, my room is on the right. Yeah, I went back to bed, I was freezing to death.

These guys just crossed the bridge

Here we go again

No swinging on that bridge

Another homemade buff gate

Through the fields

I climbed and climbed, to another beautiful old village called Ghandruk.

Tibetan Gurung gompa

The main street. Pedis only. Great to see some solar panels.

The Annapurna area is partly populated by the Gurung people, an ethnic group originating from the mountainous regions of Qinghai province in China, thousands of kilometres away, on the northeastern side of the Tibetan plateau. Unsurprisingly, their language is of the Sino-Tibetan family, and sounds pretty Tibetan to me.

They practice Tibetan-style Buddhism, although some have kept practices that originated in the ancient Bon religion, a spiritual belief system that pre-dates Buddhism.

I stumbled upon this little museum in Ghandruk

It’s an original Gurung home. Tiny home, for tiny people

Old padlocks

Smoking pipes

Homemade brass pots

Sheep wool blanket

Woven baskets for winnowing, ie, separating grain from chaff

A dhiki, a simple device to crush wheat, millet and other grains. You just use your body weight and step on the bottom part, on the right, the wood lifts, and then you let it drop. The weight of the wood is enough to crush the grain. It works. I tried it. Often the crushing part drops into a hole, and the ground flour automatically falls into a container below the floor.

Winnowing millet

I remember guest houses like these when I first came to Nepal, in another life.

More fucking, I mean beautiful, steps.

Spider burbs

Langur-ishing

More foliage on foot

Eyeing each other up

More spider apartments

I couldn’t find a resident, and didn’t want to stick a twig in or anything, just in case I accidentally poked one in their spidereye, or squished their guts.

I spent the night in Kliu, in another tiny guesthouse. Susila, a beautiful local woman, made me a delicious dal bhat, and we chatted in broken everything.

My final day’s walk was, unsurprisingly, down down down.

Way less scary

Drying rice

My final destination

Can someone please fill me in? Why are these two rocks hanging from the power lines? Some sort of game?

Beautiful waterfall. Notice the round erosion of the rockface. This fall must get huge amounts of water pouring down for long periods, in monsoon season.

I was trekking at the beginning of monsoon season here once. I couldn’t believe how much water would sometimes come down at once.

The rolling breasts of Mother Earth.

The hay’s actually stacked around a wooden structure, the impressively tall and skinny nipples are the central bamboo posts.

I followed this beautiful river downstream for a few clicks.

And then suddenly I was back in civilisation! Well, it’s decidedly less civil than in the quiet, slow, clean mountain villages, I’ve gotta say.

Back on the magic bus

A wake of vultures. Great collective noun. Traditionally, Tibetans and other Himalayan peoples would carry their dead to the top of a mountain, cut up the body, and leave it to be eaten by the vultures. I sorta like the idea.

But I bags not being the butcher.

East To Kathmandu

I feel like I’ve been cleaned out. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been breathing in cold and fresh mountain air, been eating nothing but healthy organic food, my body’s been working out hard every day, and I’ve been sleeping lots.

My body and my spirit are grateful.

It’s been so amazing to stay in the tiny villages in the mountains, to feel the stillness and complete silence of the nights, and the sunny relaxed warmth of the days.

Nepal really is a magnificent place, especially when you explore it on foot.

I have a little more of it to see before I return to India, where I’m planning to scoot down the east coast, and eventually make my way right down to the bottom of Kerala, to meet Phil, Frankie and Ajuna.

They’ll be down there in less than 3 weeks.

Yay!

I’d better get a move on❤️

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