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Sunday,
November 23
A moment near
Pokhara
Krishna showed up with a taxi van and we drove out of Pokhara
to the foot of the trail up the mountain to his village, where
his family home was located. I had put some band aids on my
2 blood blisters, but one of them was pretty deep. Normal
walking did not bother it, but I thought the climbing up and
down the mountain might. I took one of my walking sticks as
a walking cane, which helped. Rob was not feeling that well,
having caught the cold that I had had and Andy was getting
over.
It was maybe a 45 minute climb, stone steps and grades. As
we walked, I asked Krishna if they have snakes there, and
he told me a story about his next youngest brother, Prem,
when he was a young boy. There are poisonous snakes that lurk
in trees, and apparently Prem climbed a tree and got bitten
several times. He was on the verge of death and they called
upon a folk healer, an old woman who used herbs and such,
and eventually he recovered. We kept our eyes in the trees
for a while, but Krishna said the snakes usually appear in
the rainy season.
After reaching the
top, we followed a trail along the crest. There were some
farmhouses along the trail, but there was no road. On the
other side of the mountain, it plunged steeply down into a
valley. In some places where the mountainside leveled out
were terraced fields. Beyond the valley below was a spectacular
view of the white Annapurnas, even though it was not a particularly
clear day.
His father was on
a stone patio on the valley side of the house, where the entrance
to the house was. His father was using carpentry hand tools
and some wood from the forest to fashion a new yoke for the
ox. His mother came out to greet us, a woman who smiled and
laughed a lot and made us feel welcome, despite the language
barrier. Krishna's parents had beautiful faces, leathery and
expressive. The house was a story and a half. In a shed connected
to the house was a water buffalo, a couple of young goats,
with chickens and a rooster running free. The house was basically
2 rooms. The main room for living and cooking had a loft where
the parents slept. There was one of the wood burning clay
stoves I described before. The water supply was rain run off
from the mountain, which was gravity fed and stored in a large
black plastic tank with a faucet.
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