Hey everyone, Chrys here, reporting for blog duty.
Since we last corresponded, our group went on a five-day Himalayan Trek. The night before we left, we got a photo preview of last semester's trek, from our main man Arthur who coordinated all of our activities while in the state of Sikkim.
But before we left, there was a little misfortune as a result of the soccer game, described in the post by Ben and Willa Rose. During the game, Desmond hurt his foot, and so when the group left on Monday morning, he stayed behind with trip leader Andrew to get an x-ray. He found out his foot was broken, got a cast and a set of crutches and is healing quickly. Because of the injury though, Desmond and Andrew stayed behind, hung out, ate great food at our homestay with Sherap's family, watched thunderstorms and went to the gym where they dbefreind the three-tdime Mr. Sikkim champion!
Meanwhile, the rest of us took a long drive up into the moutains. It took pretty much all of the first day. We stayed in a small village, that was actually home to the sisters of our homestay family. We ate great food and enjoyed the village but were a little saddened that the villagers kept themselves separate from us adn didn't sit down to eat with us = we were hoping for a more in-depth cultural exchange. There was a cool rooftop there where we were staying, and we watched thunderstorms and later, were able to see the stars, so freakin' clearly. Being up in the Himalayas was magical.
The next day we did some light hiking around the village, past a school and up to a monastery. While there, we goofed off, and demonstrated weird talents to our guides (mine was doing headstands), and started a fun trend of yelling as loud as we could into the mountains, trying to get an echo and just for the fun of it. We hiked back down, and had the rest of the day for a free day, and spent that night in the village again.
Oh I have to say that Ben played a big part in our dinner that night. We had some chickens from the village, and Ben was the one to actually kill the chickens that were then cooked up for our dinner. There was no electricity in the village at this point, so deverything was cooked over fires, and we ate outside and told riddles around a fire. Afterwards, there was a cultural exchange program where the villagers got together and sang some of their traditional Lepcha songs and dances. In return they wanted us to show them some song and dance from Americad, which was pretty much a disaster! We didn't find out about it until about an hour beforehand, and we had a hard time thinking of anything we had in common that we all knew! We ended up singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat in rounds, adn singing along to "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison and "Cecelia" by Simon & Garfunkel as they played on an iPod with portable speakers! Like I said, it was pretty embarrassing, but it gave some people a pretty good laugh. Then Karen and Graham did a hilarious skit called "Amelia" which, if you ask me, stole the show!
Day three started with a short drive, some very easy hiking, basically up a road pretty dmuch, a stop for lunch on the side of the trail, and then a trail up to another village, where tents were pitched for us and we spent the night. A lot of the other members of the group were much faster, but for those who are reading this and don't know, I am visually-impaired, so the hiking was a bit more challenging for me. As others went on ahead, stopping periodically so we could catch up, I hiked more slowly, with group leader Karen, and with Pema, brother of our homestay host Sherap, who helped guide me and make sure I didn't fall or slip. Most of the time we were walking on narrow uphill trails, rocky and muddy at times, on the sides of cliffs. There was one time that we all stopped, and I stepped forward to take a picture, not realizing at all that I was on a cliff (it just didn't look like one at all to me, even after I was told it was later on) and started slipping. Luckily Karen and Pema were to the rexcue. I also used trekking poles (procured by Arthur) which made a huge difference in the hiking.
So we arrived at the village in late afternoon, and it had started to rain. We hung out in our tents and I did numerology readings for everyone present, then we went to dinner, where again the villagers ate separately from us and we felt like we didn't get to really know them, then hung out by a fire and went to bed. It was pretty cold and wet.
We woke up on Day Four to rain, thunder and more rain. The plan was to hike down to where we had been dropped off the day before and then either do another steep hike to another village, or go back to the village we spent the first two nights at. Group consensus was to go back and forgo the other hike, because of the weather. Our tents were practically in moats! So after packing up, we set off down the way we had come, in the pouring rain and ongoing thunderstorms, and ended up hiking through some thick clouds all the way. In the slippery wetness, I was even slower than usual, and hiking downhill was a lot harder than hiking up, at least visually, so it was a bit slow-going, but Karen, Pema and I plodded through, rescuing each other periodically from slips and falls. We were again on the edges of cliffs on narrow paths, soaking wet and cold. It sounds kind of miserable and probably was to some of our group members, and definitely wasn't ideal condition for anyone. I felt like we would never, ever reach the road, but then we finally did, and still had aways to walk. We actually ended up walking way past our original drop off point, and ate lunch at a pavillion near a waterfall. It was a long, wet day of hiking, we didn't have lunch until after 4pm, but we all arrived in one piece, and I felt awesome just for having completed the hike. Ask anyone in the group, I was pretty giddy and saucy after that!
Our main ambassador Snoop (aka Sanchen) drove us back to the village with his usual door to door serviced, and we spent our final night in the village. This time they did have electricity, and I actually kinda missed having everything by candles. The next day we packed up for the long drive back to our homestay with Sherap.
Back there, at HQ, we had a few days to do laundry, write articles for the local Sikkim paper, spend time with Sherap and family, dhang out in the town of Gangtok and prepare for our next adventure. On our last night, after having great meals prepared for us for so long, a few in our group, namely Karen, Nina, Desmond and Ben prepared an American meal for our host family. We had cheeseburgers, mashed potatoes, pumpkin soup, delicious veggies and improvised mac & cheesed. Sherap, Choden, Pema & Co claimed the meal was "totally awesome!" and said they were in Little America.
Yesterday morning, after giving gifts to all the people we had made connections with while in Sikkim, and a heartfelt goodbye, we piled into a taxi, (and spent a long time piling all our stuff on top) and took off for Darjeeling, where we arrived last night. THe adventure never ends.
So, stay tuned for the next update!
