The image that think will stay with me from this walk is not the mountains or the waterfalls or even the landslides, but of the old woman in the Langtang teahouse, methodically finishing her dinner every night and then, equally methodically, raising her plate to her face to lick it clean in long, vertical strokes, then a 90 degree turn, then more vertical strokes till every speck of food is gone. She is 78 and of course looks over a hundred, speaks only Tibetan and, with her prayer wheel in hand is clearly in the forest phase of her life.
We left at around 7.30 as usual and clambered back over the desolation of Langtang, this time much more easily than before. The previous night a fog had descended but it was not as cold as I feared though many of the small streamlets were frozen and there was frost on the grass till around 11 even several hundred metres down.
After I slipped the first and second times, the guide clearly decided that traversing the fresh landslide we had crossed on the way in was beyond me, so he took us back a different way. The first half of this new way was very beautiful. It was on the other side of the river and felt extremely different, much more what I had hoped this walk would be. Instead of walking along sandy, stoney ridges, hugging cliffs, we walked through forests and meadows, and spotted langur frolicking in the trees and wild Sichuan peppercorn bushes. Behind us the snowy mountains, ahead the deep valley.
The second half of the walk was less pleasant though still very different from the way in. It was a steep downward incline through dense forest and seemed to go on forever. I was very grateful we had not taken this way in – I think I would have sat down and demanded an immediate helicopter rescue.
We returned to the old path (though not for long) at the Riverside Hotel where I said ‘hello my old friend’ to the toilet and had a cup of tea. According to our itinerary the planned stop for the night was the Lama Hotel again, but this time we turned away from it ourselves and decided instead to press onwards. We chose a different path from the one we had come in on, a higher one, to spend the night at Sherpagaon. This route climbs up to the top of the hills and then descends into Syarubesi from a different side.
And here I am in Sherpagaon. The route was far more beautiful than the way in, along the tops of hills, with mountains visible and the river too far below to hear. There were grasscutters working on the precipitous hillsides, far more of those than hikers. At the highest point of each hill were the inevitable prayer flags fluttering, and we passed many of these flags.
My feet are certainly suffering from the downhill and I fear I might lose a toenail.
Sherpagaon is a pretty little village, perhaps because it looks like a village not a collection of teahouses. There are small terraced fields, and even a primary school, and it is perched high on the hillside facing the other wall of the valley. It is very quiet.
The teahouse we are staying in is clearly very new (though not very clean) and I nearly wept to see to modcons. These include a shower directly over the squat toilet and an actual tap in the bathroom though no sink. Perhaps best of all, the wastebasket in the toilet had been emptied before I arrived.
I have washed my face and hands and feet but a shower will wait for Syarubesi. And since I now realise I miscalculated the day I shall return to Kathmandu, I will have a day or two before my homestay and am now considering squandering my savings from the trek (I spent considerably less than the Rs 4000 per day I was told to budget perhaps because I don’t drink) on a clean, new and super-generic hotel. The more generic the better.