Tea House Trek

Following a vision of wool sweaters, glaciers, and prayer flags, we trekked in Langtang National Park, Nepal for 16 days. The mountains and scenery exceeded all our expectations of Himalayan grandeur. During this "tea house trek," we traveled from village to village, which afforded the comfort of light packs, soft beds, and lovely company, both Nepalese and Western. We include here some of the pictures and conversations we gathered in those steep and vast "hills" and valleys.

Zoe - Syabrubesi - Lama Hotel

The Australian Zoe smiled and leaned back over after dinner tea. After several days of hanging out, she was ready to tell her real story.

"Actually, I am supposed to be on my honeymoon in Japan right now. But I called off the wedding and came here instead: a place that I always wanted to see, and I knew I would never get to if I followed through with the marriage. My ex-fiance would never have gone trekking.

My ex-fiance and I had been dating for less than a year when we decided to get married. He really wanted to get hitched. In fact, I'm his second ex-fiance. We made all the arrangements, set a date, booked a venue, ordered a cake, and I bought a big white dress. My parents were really embarrassed when I called it off.

Since I had already arranged to take five weeks off from work, I decided to go to Nepal by myself. I barely survived my first trek. I got really sick while in the Annapurna region. I had sores all over my face and could barely stand up. When we got to the pass, I had an asthma attack and collapsed into the snow. But I had no choice except to keep going. After we got over the pass, one of the guides walked me to a jeep that took me to the hospital. On the day I was to be married, I was vomiting alone in a hospital room. They gave me antibiotics and I went back to Kathmandu to get better. Except after a couple days in Kathmandu, I got food poisoning. And I still have diarrhea. Maybe that's karma.

Anyway, calling off the wedding was the right thing to do. I thought I wanted someone who was easy-going, not too ambitious, good-natured, and unconcerned with material wealth. When we first got together, I was happy as could be playing video games with him. But it struck me all at once: all the things that I would not get to do to if I stayed with him, considering how content he is doing nothing.

My ex is weird. He is doing fine. He's dating someone else already. . . "

"Blankets?" the guides came around throwing thick, dusty blankets at people. It was time for bed.

Martin - Langtang Village

"I never believed in love at first sight until it happened to me. I had just crossed the border from India into Nepal where there was a bus strike. Our bus driver stopped for a woman who had been riding for 22 kilometers in a rickshaw, a giant, rickety, man-powered tricycle carriage, and offered her a ride on our bus. The moment she climbed on our bus, it was love. That was three weeks ago.

She was travelling in Nepal on holiday for a few weeks, so she's back home in Hungary now. I planned to travel for a year, but am cutting my travels a few months short so I can be with her sooner. I will be moving to Hungary at the end of the month. I'll have to learn Hungarian and I'm not sure what kind of work I'll be able to do there, but we are not worried. I did not plan to return to my lawyer job in Austria anyway.

It's amazing - today is her 34th birthday and there's international phone service here in Langtang, in the middle of no where. I called her to say "happy birthday" and she was so happy to hear from me!

Garig - Thulo Sybru

"I need to change my trekking route because my guide needs to leave early. He applied for a visa to work for three years in Dubai and the visa came through. He has two days to say "good-bye" to his parents, wife, and child before he leaves.

What is he doing going to Dubai!? He'll be working in a grocery store earning $250 a month. He says he can live on $50 a month and send the rest home. But he also has to pay for the visa and the plane ticket. And he'll be leaving a wife and child behind in Nepal for three years. I think it's totally not worth it. Not worth it at all. To work in a grocery store in Dubai?

We sat and pondered Garig's guide's new life in a hot city in the middle east. Outside, the sun set on a red colored, fluted, snow-covered peak.

Langtang Baker

"Apple pie? Chocolate cake?"

Zoe, Cindy and Greg looked at each other in disbelief. At over 3,000 meters elevation, after a climb of 1,100 meters, nothing sounded better than apple pie. They nodded to each other in front of the stone house with the dilapidated "German Baker" sign. Following the baker, they ducked inside.

The baker unwrapped an apple pie like a family relic ("baked fresh today!"), sliced three pieces, and delivered them with a small story.

"I'm half-Tibetan and half-Nepali [meaning culturally, not geographically] and I was born and raised in the Langtang. The monsoon season here is very slow and many people go to Kathmandu. But I do not. I like it here. The air is fresh.

I was in Kathmandu for 4 months to study as a German baker. For two of those months, I was sick. I had to go the hospital twice. The air in Kathmandu is brown and the streams are full of garbage. I do not like Kathmandu. I don't understand how anyone could live there.

In the monsoon season, I make cheese from the Yak. The Yak only gives milk during the monsoon season, so the cheese factories are closed now. I still have 90 kilos of cheese from last season if you want some. Many people have asked me to send my cheese to Kathmandu, but I do not. I like to sell it here. I make pies, cakes, bread, and cheese. I also sell wholesale to the hotels. Come to me if you want anything cheap!" And with that, we licked our plates clean and ventured out into the crisp mountain air.

Krishna - Sing Gompa - Gossainkund

"My father called me two weeks before my wedding and told me that I was getting married. My family is Hindu - second cast - and it was an arranged marriage. I met my wife one week before we were married. She is second cast as well.

Getting married is expensive - you have to buy your wife gold jewelry and throw a big party. My wedding cost around $2,000. I was still in school, so my father paid for everything.

That was four years ago. Now we have a three-year-old daughter. Love marriages may be better in some ways, but with an arranged marriage we will stay together. Divorce is not acceptable."

Kevin - Malamchigyang

On a beautiful sunny afternoon, surrounded by stone houses, rock walls, cows, plots of greens and wheat, and large mountains beyond, the Australian Kevin, Cindy and Greg sat down to tea and coffee at a picnic table.

"You know, that place, Gosainkund, is bizarre. I think it is the wind. The wind up there makes people crazy. You are not the only people with a strange story of the place.

When I finally got up there, I was completely knackered. I layed in my room, with my feet elevated against the wall to keep the circulation moving. Just at that moment, the wind blew my door open, and the proprietress of the place walked by and saw me lying there on my back with my legs up the wall. A few minutes later, my guide came in and said that we had to go to the other guesthouse. I packed my things and moved. I found out later that the proprietress had decided that she didn't like me and kicked us out. I wonder what I did!

You know, I'm not very spiritual. I'm a yoga instructor, sure, but I'm also a butcher. In fact, one time during a yoga retreat, we all had to write something spiritual on the board. I didn't know what to write, so I wrote the first thing that popped into my head, "Bullets cannot harm me, my wings are like a shield of steel." I don't know where I came up with that. Everyone else had either been thinking about spirituality for a long time, or they seemed to have been reading a lot of poetry. It took a while for the instructor to forgive me over that one, but we eventually became friends.

Anyway, there is something about that lake, Gosainkund. It is a Hindu pilgrimage site, but it doesn't make the place have good vibes. In fact, don't the Hindus go there to wash away their sins? Where do their sins go? I think they just hang around in that icy, devastating wind, and cling to the poor people who live there."

We thought back to Gosainkund: the lodge without a cook, the drunken proprietor, the mysteriously missing key, the satanic graffiti, the cold pools of dead flies, thick swarms of mountain mosquitoes, the pre-dawn run-away maid, and Kevin's trail of vomit in the fresh snow. We nodded in agreement - the sins the holy had washed away lingered in that place.

The Old Ladies - Helambu

"Hey! It's Greg and Cindy!" one of the "old ladies" yelled to us as we arrived back to the guest house after an afternoon saunter through a medieval-looking stone and wood village. We smiled and beheld the most impressive group of all the trekkers in Langtang, the 6 Americans, four of whom were over age 70. They were enjoying their afternoon popcorn while telling us about themselves. "Two of us are from Boston. We trained for this by walking up a 300 foot hill over and over again. I threw out my back on the first day, but I've been living on Aleve and doing fine."

"Among all of us we have enough medicine for all of Langtang."

"A friend asked me where I buy my clothes, 'Chicos?' I said, proudly, 'Kathmandu.'"

"Today was the first day that I didn't fall. You want to see my bruises?"

"(To the guide) That was a hard day, my son! (To us) Two of us decided to adopt our guides for the trip, that's why I call him, 'my son.'"

Garden of Earthly Delight

In Kathmandu, Nepal, while organizing our Himalayan odyssey, our minds drift back to Thailand. We dream of spicy coconut curry, rich with rainbows of julienned vegetables; the sounds of blenders crushing ice into refreshing mint shakes; steam billowing carrying exotic aromas from boiling pots; trays of green coconuts poked with flexing straws; oil sliding and popping in great sidewalk woks; little pyramids of mystery custard wrapped in green banana leaves; plate after plate heaping with starchless vegetable delight. Yum. Every meal was an extravagant sensual journey.

Thailand intoxicated our gastronomical senses while spellbinding us with visual whimsy: rows of golden Buddhas lotus positioned; fat, giant amusement park Buddha wearing lipstick; smiling garden cherubs gazing, laughing, playing; hot pink flowers blooming in perpetual summer; glowing green vines; miniature temples for invisible little household gods; orchids flaunting delicate features from the trunks of coconut palms; clustered green coconuts hoovering 30 feet above the sand.

Thailand's humidity reduced us to limp, languid lumps. Whenever we aroused our limbs, our senses were saturated within steps. These rich environs lulled us into lingering, never far from where we started, intoxicated and spellbound in the "land of smiles."