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It rained all night and the mountains were completely hidden at dawn. The room was hot and damp and, with the prospect of Mozzi bites, it was a choice to be bitten or be boiling, so I opted for the latter.
Tom was feeling better this morning but wasn't eating much. Bob had a rough night with his tummy and wasn't in any state to do more walking. After a discussion, we asked our guide to call for a jeep so that they could go back to the hotel and rest for the day.
As we waited for the jeep driver to have his cup of tea, it's Nepali time after all, we spotted this sign painted on the side of someone's house.
After waving them off, we climbed a further 1,600ft to Australia Camp where we stopped for lunch. It was a small collection of buildings and houses and it had no road, so everything was bought in on mule trains. To our surprise, the tea house had wifi and we were le to message Bob and Tom and they were taking it easy in their room.
Meals in these Tea Houses seems to follow a similar pattern: dhal bhat
(metal dish with rice, lentil curry, spicy pickle and some sautéed greens), pancakes with a range of toppings, fruit fried in pastry and breads. The sweetcorn that everyone seems to grow is used to make corn flour and the fresh corn bread was delicious. Cas even ordered a snickers that has been wrapped in pastry and fried - it was very, very wrong. We washed down every meal with Masala tea as its really quite refreshing..
Australia camp sits at 7,200ft and from here the trail meandered downwards into the next valley, again on stone steps. Cas was very grateful for the two walking poles that she'd borrowed. At one point she said that if she'd known it was a 4,600ft ascent then she wouldn't have come, however, now that she was here she'd really loved it and would like to come back for a ten day trek. March would seem to be a good month as all the red rhododendrons are out and there is no cloud cover, so the snow capped views are constant. Ed and Hat have become much stronger and more resilient since we've come away and they coped brilliantly with the climb. Hat's feet have
also grown as her boots were tight and we had to distract her from the discomfort with a combination of word games and Haribo's.
We got back to our hotel around 4.00pm. Bob and Tom had rested and Tom was a bored patient. We went out for a drink down by the lake and poor Bob found the stroll a struggle as he had no food inside him. He passed on dinner, so I walked him home and he went to bed. The rest of us had a bite to eat in a restaurant overlooking a grassy area which was filled with young people playing football, volleyball and cricket.
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