JumpEarth Around the World Adventure

The next day went by very fast. We walked around Pokhara and I bought a really cool new backpack and then it rained for about half an hour and we went to sleep. The next day we mostly drove and then arrived at Kathmandu uneventfully. We walked and toured for a couple of days, but yesterday we went to a town called Bhaktapur and walked around the town. As usual, there were many dogs, and we went inside a few museums to see the inside of old houses and climbed a couple of terraced temples. On top of one temple, there was a group of small boys kite battling in honor of a three-day festival going on at the time. They try to fly as high as possible and cut other kids’ kites with their string. Though it looks like all fun and games, it is actually very difficult and a person from one side of town could battle someone from the other side and still be able to cut his kite. After going to the royal section of the city or Durbar Square, where royalty used to be housed when they were in the city, we went to the pottery square and a potter let me mold a small vase. I forgot to write this, but Bhaktapur has many many ornate wood carvings, mostly window covers and door and window frames. They are phenomenal, I know I’m only 13, but I’ve been many places and these carvings were absolutely astounding… I bought a horn there and though it sounded like a fart when I first blew it, it actually sounds mostly good now!

The village of Boudhanath was next on our list and we saw an enormous beautiful white and gold stupa. The gold sphere was painted with actual gold leaf! We returned to Kathmandu and ate lunch, finishing the day’s homework and activities and then going to sleep.

Today, we did homework until 11 am and then went sightseeing again. We went to several villages. One of them was Patan, where we saw a museum, and another was Kirtipur. There, we saw an old mustard oil mill that is still working and got to smell the oil. We also got to smell the leftover fibers of the seeds, which smelled exquisite. We saw many ducks and got to pet some stray kids (baby goats, not human children) with their mothers and really enjoyed the town and the other towns. Aba bought 13 prayer wheels for our home in Boulder, and we are going to ship them there soon. When we came back from our excursion we ate and blogged… That’s right now! Before I post this, I want to warn you that we aren’t going to be able to blog for a couple weeks because we’re climbing to the Everest Base Camp, I forgot to warn you last time, sorry! We are flying to Lukla Airport, sometimes said to be the world’s most dangerous airport, but agreed to be in the top ten, so if we don’t write after a couple weeks, just know that we’re dead and we love you. Just kidding!!! I’ll write more soon, I hope………..

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Ella

The next morning the porters decided to clean their sins by committing the water ritual support early in the morning. Very smart. Then, we woke up and left the village in a jeep. We commenced on what we thought would be a six-hour ride with enough stops to add up to nine hours total on the way to Pokhara, a very large village not unlike Kathmandu. I sang karaoke with the porters, including “Baby baby baby oh, won’t you come with me tonight?” (I don’t think that’s actually the name of the song, but I couldn’t find it). We saw many things on our drive including baby lambs and goats, but we only stopped twice to eat. We got to Pokhara late. Instead of driving for nine hours with many stops we drove 12.5 with only two. Even though we had been in a jeep all day, I was very tired so we ate dinner at a nice restaurant and went to sleep. However, before we got into bed Asher, Aba, Troy and I agreed that we would climb to the EVEREST Base Camp the very next week…! The next day we walked around Pokhara, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. We got some new flip flops and small trinkets and Ganesh and the porters went to Kathmandu in order to get ready for Everest. When we stopped at stores, Asher and I couldn’t help noticing the abundance of FLAVORED condoms!? We also met the Iranian guy again! When the day was over, we had trouble going to sleep because some guy with a really horrible voice had a concert until 11 pm.

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Also, when I accidentally deleted my posts some occurrences got lost, so here are some pictures that I think are cool but don’t remember where to place, sorry!:

Ella

The next morning we embarked on possibly the easiest hike I had done on the Annapurna, the trail to the Annapurna High Camp. It was in short segments and the steepest part was only five or ten minutes long. Also, on the way there we had stopped at a pastry shop at the Annapurna Base Camp and eaten cinnamon and chocolate rolls. When we got to the top, we met up with the Swiss woman and her dad. I sat down and worked on two or three more bracelets and talked with the woman, whose name is Lea. After a while, we headed inside and played UNO with Lea and a man called Hui. Hui was from Vietnam and we’d spoken with and walked with him a couple of times on the trek. He was very fun, and together he and Asher teamed up to win about five rounds. Lea was also a very good player and she won at least three rounds in a row. Hui’s friend had been mentioned earlier because of his BB-8 droid and he played with him again. Everyone ate lunch, but at dinner I was the very very very very very last person to get their food (very). We all talked a little while longer, but at eight o’clock we went to our room to make room for the porters who were beginning to eat their dinner, but then we decided to go back inside because Aba got cold. However, after five minutes we got kicked out so that the porters could go to sleep in the kitchen and dining area. We got ready for bed and blogged in the bedroom. Aba and Troy had one room and Asher, Ganesh, and I slept in another room. Before we went to sleep, Asher played a video game on his kindle and made an odd noise at some point so Ganesh freaked out because he thought that Asher was having trouble breathing at the high altitude! After that laugh, the next morning we woke up at five am and ate breakfast. While we were eating, we saw an Israeli that we had met a couple nights previous wearing Tefillin and reciting his daily prayers, which was interesting. His girlfriend hadn’t seemed to be in the best of health or moods since we met her, and that morning wasn’t any different. The night before she had looked grey! At the moment she was trying to scoop some frozen Nutella out of a jar… Who would have thought that Nutella freezes? In the beginning, the hike was cold and my face was numb, but only for ten or twenty minutes. After that, we saw the sunrise in the trail and everybody warmed up.

We got to the pass without incident and we all smiled so wide that our faces hurt! It was a very easy trek that day and we achieved our goal!

I’m especially happy to have made it to the pass because when I was five years old Aba had gone to the Annapurna with my cousin, Oran. We printed out the Annapurna mountain on a piece of paper and moved a printout of Aba’s head up the mountain every day. I had wanted to come, but when Aba came back he promised me that we would climb the mountain together. We hiked down the mountain and encountered many bicyclists carrying their bicycles. When we returned to civilization we all drank fresh juice and then continued on to a village called Muktinath. We went to a hotel that Aba ate at when he trekked here previously, and I ate a Yak steak for the first time. I bought some new string for making bracelets and then met Lea and her dad and decided to go to a temple with them. We showered and then met them and the porters at the temple. There, we saw some tourists enacting a spirit-cleansing ritual. They stripped and only wore underwear and had to run through about 100 cold fountains without any protection! Then, they had to submerge three times within two pools of freezing water, still almost naked. We walked around the temple and saw a giant black Buddha statue with its head covered because it was going to be unveiled in the following days.

We then walked across a beautiful hill to the actual temple and saw a man welding what looked like a very skinny throne. However, when he finished he attached an exercise bar and Ganesh and the porters did pull-ups and tried to impress Lea, failing miserably. However, one of the porters, Banu, managed to do a couple of pull-ups using only one finger! The porters and Asher and I laughed a lot because we had a hilarious inside joke… We then went inside the temple and saw a lot of art on the walls.

Then, we walked back to our hotel and worked a little. Lea joined us for dinner and we all played UNO again. We learned that aside from his two-year-old daughter, Ganesh also lives with and educates four orphans in his home! He has a bull and milks it and does many other things. We all thought that this was amazing. Then, we said goodbye to Lea, so hopefully she’s reading this blog! I went to sleep soon after dinner.

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Ella

The next morning we woke up early and began a steep hike across a landslide-ravaged trail. We stopped at a camp to eat lunch and then continued walking across the steep areas until we arrived at the highest lake in the world, Tilicho Lake. It was an almost fake-looking blue and it was absolutely beautiful.

We were the only people there because we had started later than others, but we had planned it that way on purpose. There was a teahouse there and it was very expensive because it was the only one and it was cold! Also, on the way up, I had noticed a snow formation that looks exactly like a frog wizard or princess! Nobody else saw it, but tell me what you think! (This is a bad shot, by the way)

We descended and arrived at camp. There, we got ready and had to squeeze against the wall because there were so many people in the dining hall! For real. There. Was. No. Room. ANYWHERE. We talked to a couple who was also backpacking around the world and then we found a table surrounded by sleeping girls and later went to sleep. The next morning, we woke up at a reasonable time and laughed as we saw the stragglers of Tilicho Lake’s World War III to get out the front door. The first hundred people had already left, but the other hundred were the stragglers we witnessed. They were all going up very early in the morning and we knew that it would be freezing and packed with people. Also, they would hardly have any light! We hiked and ate breakfast uneventfully, but the scenery was beautiful and we got to pass by the ruins of an old village. However, when we got to Yak Kharka, there were three areas of guest houses and none of them had any room! Ganesh ran ahead and reserved us two rooms at the farthest guest house, but at least we didn’t have to sleep in the kitchen! We had passed a large group of millennials earlier and I had no clue where they were going to sleep. We worked on homework and read a bit, but then Troy made me gather the courage to ask a Swedish woman if I could watch her make string bracelets. She said yes and even offered to teach me! Therefore, I made one rainbow adult-sized bracelet, and it wasn’t too shabby if I do say so myself! She gave me three extra sets of string and then we went to bed.

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Ella

(This is where I start writing well, sorry!) Then, we started hiking on our way to Manang, a large village. We hiked for a while but the time went by very fast. However, early on we stopped at a tea house for a break after a steep climb and I saw a person taking a picture of a little BB-8 droid from Star Wars! This was very funny because I’d heard of traveling gnomes before, a gnome or other figure that you take with you and photograph on your travels, but I’d never imagined that I would see a Star Wars droid on a trek across the Annapurna Circuit!

Anyway, we kept hiking and snacked a little on the way until we arrived at a village very close to Manang. There, we saw a beautiful kitten with vibrant, grass-colored eyes. Then, a fluffy black dog came bounding in and Ganesh fed him a whole packet of butter biscuits! He was wagging his tail and barking and rolling around and then he devoured all of the food! We continued on to a monastery or Gupta. We were allowed to go inside and saw many colorful statutes and wooden prayer slabs and it was very nice.

Also, the incense smelled wonderful! We walked until Manang and got to the hotel. Ganesh and I briefly walked around the town and then we all took showers and did homework. I went to see a dog who was chained up and crying, but though I played with him for a couple of minutes, I had to leave him to come to dinner.

We played UNO and then went to bed. I didn’t sleep much that night, but the next morning Asher woke me up at nine am and we ate breakfast. After we got ready, we went on a very short hike to a stupa right outside of Manang. From there we walked the short distance to the next town, passing by a herd of goats, yaks, and cows, and saw a bit of the people’s daily lives. We met a group of small boys who were very eager too give us fist-bumps and say “boom!” They followed us to a group of women collecting peas and we got to eat some of the fresh greens. Then, we went to a bakery where everyone including the porters, ate sweets, but I wasn’t in the mood so I didn’t eat anything. The rest of the afternoon was mostly uneventful, with me only working on a craft and doing homework, but then we took showers and prepared to go to a movie screening. However, the electricity went out so we stayed at the camp and played UNO. We played with the dog again and ate dinner, but then we went to sleep. The next morning I started to get ready and then ate breakfast. While we were waiting for the food and the other people, Aba pointed out a guy who was wearing this weird hat that looked like a pull-string bag. Two seconds after Aba told me that the man was French, he entered the room next to us and boomed, “Bonjour! I’m French!” As you may have guessed, Aba and I started cracking up! I mean, honestly, who says that?! We said goodbye to the dog and then hiked for six hours, but nothing exciting happened. However, when we got to Shri Karka we ate and took showers, really hot showers! It was amazing. Anyway, I did homework and had a conversation with an Iranian/Persian and an Australian about the world and the political situation in the United States (*cough* Trump *cough*). I finished my homework, and then we went to dinner. As we were eating, the Iranian guy came over to show us a picture of Troy ‘s doppelganger! Earlier in the day, he could’ve sworn that he’d met Troy before, but then he realized that he was thinking of Hooman Khalatbari, the Austrian-Iranian composer and pianist!

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We played UNO, but before we went to sleep four Asian women entered the overcrowded restaurant, sat down at a giant table, and started eating their own food from plastic bags! After laughing at that, we went to sleep.

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Ella

The first day of the trek went by uneventfully except for the astoundingly beautiful scenery and people. We passed corn fields and gardens as well as a herd of goats.

When we got to our waterside village, Ganesh told me about a memorial for some army soldiers that had accidentally died on a man-made avalanche and he drove me there on a motorcycle. As well as seeing the memorial, the ride to it was an exciting and memorable experience. On the way back toward the village, we even got stopped to make sure that I wasn’t being kidnapped!

The next day had a steeper and less gradual slope, but it took a very long time even though the hike itself wasn’t terrible. The reason is that when we stopped for lunch we weren’t aware that there was only one cook, so we had to wait two hours just to get our food. The owner of the establishment felt so bad that he wrote us a message on our Tibetan Bread!

Because we were very far behind, toward the end of our hike Asher rode on a motorcycle with a monk to our hotel.

I rode for a very short time because the monk came back and I really had to go to the bathroom (sorry! TMI!) I drank hot chocolate and slept later that night. The next day’s hike was also beautiful and we got to stop at a wonderful apple orchard famous for its fruit! They were delicious, but the rest of the day was quite peaceful. This was actually one of the most carefree days of the trek and I enjoyed it immensely.

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Ella

Hi! I previously wrote a lot of blogs but then accidentally deleted them, so they’re going to be shorter and less detailed. Sorry! Also, sorry I forgot to mention how long we’d be gone! Also, I’m going to edit this over the next couple of days, so check back for more photos:

When we got to Kathmandu, we met our guide, Ganesh. We arrived at our hotel and ate a local soup called Thukpa which was very good. However, Asher was so tired that he fell asleep on the floor! We did homework for a little while, but we mostly slept. We walked around the town a bit and then ate at a restaurant called the New Orleans Cafe. There, I tried momos, a really delicious steamed dumpling stuffed with chicken or vegetables (or cheese or potatoes or just about anything else)! We got settled in the hotel and went to sleep. The next morning we ate breakfast with Ganesh at a restaurant with a tree growing of the middle of it, and I saw a man casually walking down the street holding two chickens upside down by the feet! After breakfast, we went to a temple, or stupa, and climbed massive amounts of stairs to get to the top. However, it was worth it and we got to see some amazing views and storms of monkeys.

I also got to eat a coconut! There are a lot of dogs there and around Kathmandu, but they all looked healthy and happy. Later, Troy and I bought some cashmere scarves and a couple other things that we needed and then went to get out hair dyed with henna. Henna is a natural dye that is used on both hair and skin. It is extremely healthy for hair. It turns either orange or red depending on the color of the original hair, but if it is done wrong it turns green. Troy went first and, sorry Troy, but it turned out horrible! He looked like Bozo the clown or as if he and Trixie had changed hair colors! It was so bad that the next day he shaved it off! My hair was dark enough that indoors one wouldn’t even be able to tell I had henna, but outside it catches the light and takes on this really nice reddish tint in the sun.

It started to drizzle lightly, so Aba, Troy, Ganesh, Asher and I ate at the New Orleans Cafe again and I ordered momos! Then, we worked at the hotel and went to bed. The following day was uneventful because we spent it packing and organizing, so I won’t bore you with it. The next day we got in a jeep and started to drive to our starting place on the Annapurna. On the way, we stopped and bought off-brand Kinder Eggs called King Eggs! We opened them, and they looked so disgusting that we didn’t even taste them!

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We drove for a few hours and stopped for a snack, but then we ate at a restaurant with a beautiful view of a lake. There, we saw two puppies, a boy and a girl. They were very small and fluffy. The girl was pure white and had a lot of character. She was very insistent to be petted, and she was a little bit bossy with her brother, though she was also very sweet. Her brother was white with a few orange spots and very shy. However, once I got to know him he was angelic and sweet like his sister. They reminded me of myself and Asher!

We kept driving until lunch, where we had to switch jeeps in order to drive partway up the mountain until we were forced to stop by a construction project. A team of construction workers was installing a pipe under the road to carry water, but we were only stuck for about twenty minutes. While we were waiting, two dogs had mated and gotten stuck… Let’s just say that it didn’t look even remotely comfortable. It only took us fifteen minutes to finish our drive, so we played UNO, ate dinner, and fell asleep.

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Ella