9-day Himalayan trek: $180

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9-day Himalayan trek: $180. 8 candy bars and 2 bags of trail snacks: Rs 240. Hearing the sound of my voice fill a glacial valley while I belt out The Star Spangled Banner: priceless.


All the bitter drama of a long and mentally exhausting trip over, our last hike ended with the trailhead leading us directly down the hill in the "balmy" afternoon to....... Ralph! Oh, my god, when do we NOT see this guy? But it's poignantly humorous that we continue to have him imposed on us since Goa!


We had a good chance to recount some of our best trek stories, though. Like when the cook got tempermental and quit after Thansing and when the remaining porters (dressed in Howard's extra clothes because they were sadly unprepared) knocked off pieces of the roof at the Sameti Lake trekker's hut to burn them for heat. The toilet, also, was just a bit of iron open completely to the sky, its wooden roof long gone.


The little green hotel, in the base town of Yaksum, was full of Westerners: some American girls apparently going to do the trail and a funny group of 3. Two huge guys - a Hollander and a Canadian - and a tiny little guy from Mumbai. What interesting combinations of people travelling makes. Speaking of that, Ralph apparently met Couji (our Japanese-Brazilian friend who we met in the jeep from Darjeeling) in Gangtok. Back in Gangtok ourselves, we find that the Germans we met in Darjeeling, Thomas and Marina, have arrived back here 20 minutes before us. The world gets a little smaller when everyone has the same guidebook.


We heard there's some exciting happening involving monks in Rumtek. Maybe we'll take a day trip there while our clothes have the mud and sweat soaked out of them. Man, I missed food with protein and inexpensive whiskey. Admittedly, okay, I have a satisfying sense of accomplishment. But Mike is already wondering how he's gonna talk me into another trek, I can see. It'll be a warm day at Mt. Kanchenjunga before that happens.


New drink: whiskey and hot lemon

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Photos

Over the river and through the woods
Passing over a river on our 9-day trek in the Mt. Kanchenjunga region of Sikkim.

Rumtek monastery
in Sikkim