Never ending stairs
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2011
1
26
88
Trip End
Ongoing
Ulleri, Western Region, Nepal
Saturday, October 1, 2011
On the way we saw lots of goats being brought to the villages. In a few days, there will be the Dasain festival –past monsoon period, that lasts 15 days. It celebrates the victory of Durka goddess over the evil personified in a buffalo demon. The festival is marked by the biggest animal sacrifice of the year. Several people were already walking with a goat that they chose to scarify on the coming days. Sometimes also a bull can be sacrificed.
We arrived to Nayapul as many other tourist trekkers and got ready to start. We had a daypack each with water, some biscuits, sun cream, sun glasses,, raincoat and the 1st aid kit. Our guide, Arjun, had his own bag and we had a porter that carried our stuff. We only packed what was really necessary for our next coming 4 days. We started making our first steps around 10am that were still going to last for 5 hours. The sun was burning and the walk was hard on rocky hills, going up and down, but we were enthusiastic. We walked along a river, and the water seemed so fresh. We asked the guide if it was ok to stop by and refresh a bit. We end up having a bath. It was so refreshing and nice. We even saw a green snake swimming which seemed firstly a leaf. Apparently it was poisonous.
We continued our path until lunch break in Hille. The half an hour of rest felt good and to have to restart with our stomach comfortable under the strong sun was hard, especially when the road was steep. After 1 hour, the weather started to change and it became cloudy and fresh. We had reached our destination for the day – Tikkedhunga (1500m), although we were still with energy and time. It was only 1pm and we knew that next day was going to be tuff. So we decided to continue a bit further, 2 hours more. Those were the worse 2 hours we can remember of physical effort we ever made. It was literally 2 hours climbing stairs, really steep unshaped rock stairs, never ending stairs under heavy rain.
Finally we reached Ulleri (2010m). It was a little agglomerate of guest houses with an amazing view across the valleys. We were introduced to our facilities - A little narrow room with 2 beds. Fred didn't like the decoration. Toilet and shower were at the end of the corridor. Very impressive we had hot water to warm us up after 2 hours of exercise under pouring rain.
We met 2 other travellers during dinner, a German girl travelling already for 9 months around Asia and an Australian that was living here and there - Always such interesting lives. With us at the same tea house was a big group of noisy and annoying Chinese. Even if exhausted, it was hard to fall asleep with their talking’s on the other rooms only separated by some cartoon walls.
