I woke up feeling much better, but still quite weak. I was really excited because, if all went according to plan, I would see seth in the late afternoon! So, I head downstairs with my Kindle to have some breakfast. I was absentminded and made a breakfast mistake. Nepal doesn’t really do dairy products. And, I”m going to go out there on a limb and say that they don’t eat yogurt. So, when they try to serve it, it’s just not right. Their yogurt may even be dry from a packet. It kinda fizzes like soda and almost melts any other food item it touches. Anyhow, I was debating between muesli and yogurt and porridge. I figured that the muesli and yogurt would be lighter than the porridge, and my stomach still wasn’t all the way better, so I went with that. I should have gone with the porridge.
As I was sitting outside at my little picnic table reading, listening to donkeys with their bells tinkle past on the mountain side, when people started coming in from the front street. About twenty Australians ascended upon me in my quiet solitude. A nice woman named Ana sat down with me and chatted me up for the next hour. It was nice. Eventually they left, but soon thereafter another plane landed and another large group of people ascended upon me again.
I decided that I should try to go on a walk and check out a bit more of Phalpu. I was still so weak that all I could muster was between five and ten minutes and I was exhausted. Still not 100%. At about ten o’clock I decided to head up to my room to make myself presentable for Seth when he arrived. Though he was supposed to show up between 12 and 1pm, I got a knock at my door from Cook at about 10:30am. Apparently Seth must have been running to get to Phalpu. I trotted down the stairs to meet him. It was so nice to see my sweaty, dirty husband. Though I was happy to see him early and in one piece, I was dismayed to find that he’d slipped in yak poo and scraped his arm really good, and he was walking with a bit of a limp. No good. We scarfed down some noodle soup and caught up a little bit.
Pretty soon Purba came to tell us that we could get on the flight at noon to Kathmandu. We ended up running onto the plane and were two of four passengers. It was a bit scary getting on the plane. I think I failed to mention in an earlier post, but during our trek there was a plane crash of a plane that followed the same flight path as ours. So, we were nervous to fly. But, we ended up receiving an unexpected treat on the flight. Other than the little coconut caramel candies, we were able to catch an above the clouds view of Everest and the surrounding major peaks. Pretty astounding.
We picked up our extra bag from Hotel Manaslu and made our way to Hotel Courtyard, where we will be staying for the rest of our time in Kathmandu. It’s a really comfy, reasonably priced hotel. It’s clean, has great internet, comfortable rooms, decent breakfast, and each room has a DVD player for the giant DVD library downstairs. We both took nice, long, hot showers that were much appreciated, before resting and eating. Aahhh, Kathmandu!
