Bahun Danda (1310m)

After arriving at the Superb View guest house in Bahun Danda, we ate lunch and had the beautiful sunny afternoon to relax and take in the (you guessed it...) superb view. Once our legs had recovered, Yen and I and a few others in the group decided to descend the stairs to the village and have a wander through.

As we were walking, we met a man who spoke English quite well. He was a local school teacher and offered us a tour of their school. Unfortunately, it was exam time and the students were gone for the afternoon, but we still got to see the classrooms and school yard. He took us into the head master's office, where he was marking the morning's exams and explained how the school system worked. We read through some of the English exams and I have to say that it brought back some horrific memories... "Read the following passage and explain your thoughts on..." Nightmarish flashbacks ensued. We donated a bit of money to the school and signed their guest book. They're hoping to acquire some computers soon and asked for our email addresses for the students to be able to contact us and practice their English.

Back to the guest house we went and after dinner we were out like a light.

Upon awaking the next morning, I wasn't feeling so hot. I'd ordered fried eggs and a Tibetan bread for breakfast. Tibetan bread is a plainish and fluffy deep fried pancake shaped bread that's pretty much a staple everywhere we've been. I didn't think I could stomach the eggs so I gave them to our porters. I took a few bites of the bread and Yen ate the rest. Although today's trek was only supposed to be 10k and only up 120 metres, it was expected to take 6-8 hours due to the difficult terrain and big winding ups and downs. Today was certainly going to suck.

And suck it did.

I managed to last a good few hours just feeling a bit uncomfortable. Then the fever set in and combined with the lack of eating and exertion I was feeling a bit dizzy. It was at this point that we came upon a section of the trail along the side of rocky cliffs that had been blown out while attempting to widen the path. There were workers prying rocks out of the cliff walls along the path with steel rods, I guess in an attempt to restore the route. In any case, what was left of the path was a very thin ledge along the rocky wall with nothing down below. Our leader conversed with the workers for some time, and in the end they all worked together to start herding us across the ledge one at a time. I was at the back of the pack due to my current physical state and watched in awe as everyone seemed to make it across quite easily.

I'm dead scared of heights, which I'm sure didn't help, but at the time I was feeling too dizzy to really think about the height. It was more just thinking about staying upright and hanging onto something that was consuming me. I believe the workers had hands all over me at the time but I don't really recall much of that event. Yen caught it on video though, and although I've not seen it yet, hopefully I'll post it here once this gets up. If it does appear next to this paragraph in the future, please feel free to point and laugh at the panic in my eyes and movements.

I hadn't had much to eat so our group leader gave me an orange at our mid-morning break, which I did manage to squeeze down before heading back out on the trail. Then the stairs started and didn't stop. It was all I could take and left my orange beside the trail along with those few bites of Tibetan bread. Every step became a bigger effort than my body had ever expended. We hadn't even hit mid day yet. Thankfully our guide and assistant guides were really supportive and offered to carry my day pack for me. Despite it not being very heavy, it really really helped. While it did make it easier, I was still struggling. Every few steps I had to stop to catch my breath and sometimes empty anything else left in my stomach. At one point I was even ready to give up. You know those movie moments where some poor soul tells realizes his fate and tells the rest of his crew to go on without him... It was one of those moments. The cheese music had begun playing in my head and I'm pretty sure I saw a few tears in the audience. Somehow though, I got up and kept going. I remember trying to hypnotise myself into thinking I was floating so I didn't consciously have to work my legs. Sometimes I pictured the ground moving under me as though I was being carried by our porters. I guess it helped in at least a small way as somehow I made it through the day. The only other part of the day I remember is arriving at the guest house and immediately sitting down on a step with my head in my hands having feverishly sweated through every layer of clothing I had on. When I dragged myself up there was a large gross puddle of sickly sweat on the rock. Eeeewwww.