Lok's Lair

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I know all 6 of you, our devoted readership, have been feeling real bad about your slovenly and lackadaisical lifestyles compared to this gruesome twosome and our bad new bodies, but as you may already have figured out (or did I tell you?), we had a shadow on our walk. We had a porter. So as difficult as I tried to make our walk sound, to make you feel envious of our badassitude, the little man you see featured in many of our photos did the whole thing laughing with about 23kg on his back. It's very 1920's trekking to do, having a porter, and it did involve haggling over a human being, which was a little awkward, but there it is.

I must admit, that upon seeing Lok for the first time I kind of panicked, a teeny tiny bit. I had just thrown kind of a fit, backing out of a verbal agreement with our hotelier concerning the price of a porter and all sundries. In the midst of this ugly rampage with threats of police involvement and some raised voices and beating of chests we saw the boy who was to have been our porter. He was a big, tall, young, and chipper looking lad and because of my ill-considered, sleep-deprived rage I had lost him for the both of us. This wasn't a good setup for first seeing Lok, the replacement porter I spent one hectic day procuring. He's half my height, looks frail, and is a very reserved and quiet man.

Now the whole reserved and quiet part isn't really so bad. Despite that aura of je ne sais quoi that we give off, Fi and I are really very oldish, and someone who knows how to keep his mouth shut is a valuable commodity on a walk anyway. The frail and miniature parts however were not what I considered appropriate porter features. Turns out that actually miniature is quite the advantage in the mountains and that underneath Lok's baggy clothes he's built like a brick shit-house. You'd never have guessed it by looking at him, I promise you.

And in what appears to be a lucky streak of awesome proportions he, Lok, was yet another person in our travels who welcomed us, treated us like family, and taught us about his country. It's been a real privelege meeting him. After two days walking with him, he'd already invited us to his village to meet his family, and after three weeks of trekking we headed out of Pokhara for his home. It's listed on the map as "The Middle of Nowhere." Ha ha ha, get it. Nowhere! HA! On the Map! See that last part is the real joke. His home is definitely not on the map. The big town, near his home village? Also not on the map. The bigger town near the big town? Nope. The pseudo-city an eleven hour bus ride away from the bigger town? Ding ding ding! We have a winner. It was remote and both the bus into and the bus out of the region failed to reach their intended destinations. The first one fell short by what amounted to a three hour hike. This of course does not account for the already accepted as given, 3 hour hike in and out of his actual to goodness village. The bus back out to Gorkha, ancient city of kings and warriors and currently in contention for the world's biggest shit-hole competition, got relatively close with only a two hour hike tacked on to the end. To be fair though this bus did take double the initially proferred time estimate.

So, it's a pain to get there and away, so what? Remoteness alone does not confer sweetness (see references to Maumere, Indonesia in previous blog entries for copious evidence). In the case of the little cluster of Newari homes known as Ramje, the difficulties of transport were more than balanced by what we found there. Although I will say, being tight with a local resident is kind of a necessity. Not many tourists out this way. In related news, did you know that 15 of the last 16 world-champions of the ISCF (International Staring Competition Federation) circuit come from this very same village. The single outlier comes from a village across the Buri Kundaki river in neighboring Gorkha province which can be seen from Rajme. The defeat is something of a sore subject and is best avoided if you ever happen to be in Ramje. These people take their staring deadly seriously. We were often the subject of this unique concentration of talent. Fi and I did not win a single match, didn't even manage a draw.

The citizens of Ramje are with only one exception subsistence farmers, some of whom supplement their income with trekking income. The one exception is a family of three generations of Nepalese / Indian army grunts. According to Lok, this is regarded as easy money, and accounts for this family's relative wealth. As honored guests, Fiona and I stayed in their spare room. Fiona has been known to say, and I quote, "I'd sleep in a barn if it were free." Well Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. For another month or so (until the monsoons come) the hay is still kept outside and so the hayloft was empty, hence the spare room. Of course they kicked out the four boys sleeping there and Grandma still slept on the neighboring "bed", but hey being offered a room is like being offered food, you don't say "no." Our options were limited in any case, not a Holiday Inn in sight.

When not seeking respite in our little bungalow from the constant stream of staring competition offers, Lok showed us around town and the surrounding Jungle. (Fun fact: Did you know that each year one or two buffalo are lost to tiger attack in this very village?) We were assured that we would not be lucky enough to see a tiger during our brief stay, wrong season apparently. We were also just slightly too early to witness the emergence of the leeches from their Spring hibernation, when they welcome the monsoon rains. Bad timing I suppose, but we were lucky enough to catch the nation's third largest festival, Little Deossoing (the spelling is off by miles, but that's what my ear hears and it's a Romanization anyway so quit with the doubtful squints at the screen). This festival is a distant third to the other two truly huge holidays, but it's better than nothing. For the real big Deossoing, each family in the village slaughters a goat and the trails run with blood. We'll catch it next time. For the little one the whole village shares a single goat and merely one courtyard gets the gore treatment. The goat's divided up into little half-kilo piles of assorted goat parts and then apportioned out according to familly size; every family pays the same pittance regardless of the size of their share, and so the family whose goat was slaughtered is compensated. Basically the people of Ramje eat meat three times a year and this is one of those times. Fi and I got a half-kilo between us and it was all what you'd call real meat, that is muscle. The meat piles are part muscle, part fat, part skin, part intestine, part liver, part heart, part jowl or something (I never did get a decent explanation of what one particular part was) etc. All those miscellaneous parts went to Lok and his family. It was a really sweet gift. Best pan-fried goat I've ever had.

As long as I'm recounting vegan horror stories, I might as well touch on the buffalo. On the way to the village I had expressed an interest in seeing some buffalo milking and maybe even trying it myself. If you've read the photo captions already then you know that a personal attempt at milking never really got off the ground, although he did let me watch his wife do some milking. However, as I should have known, expressing an interest in buffalo milk guaranteed that I'd be drinking some. As it turned out both Fi and I drank a steaming cup of fresh buffalo milk twice a day. Fi and I hate milk, but what can you do? It was an amateur mistake, but actually buffalo milk is a bit better than cow's milk and having it hot was kind of nice.

In our walks around the village we could actually see a couple of the peaks we had seen on our hike, which was neat. Lok had pointed to them a few times on our trek and said they could be seen from his village, turned out he wasn't just making shit up. Although saying you can see Manaslu from your house isn't that big a deal. It's 8162m, putting it sort of mid-pack in the top-ten world's tallest mountains. You can practically see it from Arkansas, but still we were seeing it from a different angle and under different circumstances, so cool points were awarded as appropriate.

And now for something completely different. The bottom boy, in the picture of five boys, real name, I shit you not, is "Coffin' Drop." Don't pronounce it funny. Don't shorten a syllable or put the accent on the wrong syllable. His name is "Coffin' Drop."

Back to our regularly scheduled programming... The other really important event in our little stay in Lok's village happened just as we were walking out. He gave us each a mala. A mala is pretty much indistinguishable from a Hawaiian lei, a flower necklace. For little Doessoing you give these to your brothers and sisters. Brother and sister kind of encompasses everyone in the village, and even neighboring villages. At one point, Lok pointed to a cluster of homes a little farther down the mountain and said, "All Darkhal." Everybody in that little village was part of his family. Everyone in the whole area kind of resmebles each other, and calling someone your brother or sister often really means cousin or uncle or something else. In any case, I think Lok giving us malas was kind of his way of saying we were like his brother and sister. What a guy.

Three hour hike. 10 hour bus ride (amazing driving crew). Two hour hike. Racism at the Gorkha Palace. Kathmandu strike (bunda) so stuck in Gorkha an extra day. Gorkha bus strike because local transit entrepreneur was shot in the chest a few times for violating said bunda. Stuck in Gorkha another day. 5 hour bus ride. Kathmandu. Recuperating. Enjoy the photos. Please refrain from leaving any comments.

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Photos

Lok's Ladies
Sit, Sumitra, and Sunida (Wife, Daughters of 5 and 3)

Five Star Suite
"We slept here" is the new "I shit in the woods."

Lunch Break #1
This happened in the first of eleven hours on that bus.

Holding Down the Fort
This man left this spot only to take one shit a day. Urination did not warrant a trip to the toilet. You figure it out.

Batman and Robin
Batman had a few banging around in the belfry as well.

Goat Have No Good Luck
Those are the goat\'s legs to the left of the big bowl of whatsit in the middle.

Boobies!
I asked to do this. Lok said, "Ok," and handed me the bucket. He's not the best teacher.

Heave Ho
This is the first time the passengers pulled the bus out of the mud.

Spelunking for Sanity
We're only half of our way through our bleak stranding in Gorkha here.

Gramma
She's actually quite a softie.

Tee Hee
Aren't they cute.

AttenTION!
In reality, they ordered me to take the photo, not the other way around.