Trekking Day 2

10/23/2011
Chomrong
450m descent, 870m ascent

Who knew you could get good chocolate cake in the Himalayas? Well, Chomrong Cottage Guest House is famous for it, and for good reason. Yummmmmm. So good after 8 hours of trekking! My body has begun to get used to trekking all day - this afternoon I got into quite a groove, going at a slow & steady pace, using my hiking poles to help me along.

Here are several strategies for climbing up REALLY steep hills:
a) Plant your feet, gaze up at the seemingly endless flight of stairs, and say, "I'm gonna KILL you, Motherfucker!"
b) A more peaceful strategy, chant "God, Love, God; Love God Love," with every three steps.
I used both of these strategies today depending on my mood.

Not to brag or anything, but there is something TOTALLY BADASS about being a single woman CARRYING HER OWN PACK up this gnarly trail in the Himalayas! I feel so good about myself right now (grin!). Most of the other tourists I see hire a Nepali man to carry their stuff. Those guys are amazing! (the porters) Some of them carry 2-3 tourists' bags (which are not light to begin with), and they may only be wearing flip flops. (Many porters do have boots, though) I even saw one porter carrying a double mattress! That's how they get everything up here in the first place. Everything has to be carried on someone's back, from the food, to the beer, to the lumber the lodges are made of. Makes me really appreciate everything up here.

I really enjoy the sounds and scents of trekking, especially in the early morning. Today when we set off at 7:30, there was a lovely mixture of hay, woodsmoke, and buffalo dung in the air (really, when it all mixes together in your nose, it smells good! Like a horse barn in the country.) I also love seeing the rice terraces, and the way the light gets caught in them, like shelves stacked up on the hillside. My favorite moment today was as I was hiking alone up a never-ending flight of stairs, deep into my steady trekking rhythm. I spotted a small, white-painted shrine off to the right. Pausing to pick two orange marigolds, I continued up to the shrine to pray and offer the flowers. My prayer was of thanks, joy, gratitude, and glee. I read what the shrine said on the outside - it was all in Sanskrit, so I could pronounce the words but did not know what they meant.

Tomorrow I will go to Himalaya Hotel. I am a little nervous about the distance and the elevation gain, but as I've learned so far, the first hill is always the toughest. Once I get beyond the fear response, I am carried by trust and love into the circumstances I need for care and support. So the "fear response," as I call it, is always followed by the "trust response." Before I arrive at a future destination I can imagine the thousand myriad things that can go wrong, so much that I almost psych myself out of going. But somehow, I always go for it, and most often I am taken care of in wonderfully serendipitous ways.

For example, I began this trek alone, and I hiked up the first hill from the road alone. During that whole time, running through my mind were thoughts like, "You should never trek alone. What was I thinking?!! This is so risky. Especially as a woman. What if I fall and break my ankle? Or what if some crazy man jumps out of the bushes and rapes me? What am I going to do then, huh?!!" And so on and so forth, until I reached the top of the hill, and met a wonderful couple from Germany who agreed to trek with me for the rest of the day. Just goes to show the power of the mind and what it can do to you!

Even though I am tired, I feel good, I am happy, satisfied, and content - the most I've been since arriving here.

As they say in Nepal,
Namaste!
- Melissa