I awoke with a stomach ache and mild diarrhea. For breakfast I had only a tea, hot chocolate, and an Immodium. I vowed this would be the last time I ate dal bhatt, which had now made me sick three times. We had a four hour walk to Bamboo planned for today, and I decided to go on, but slowly. I mixed a container of Gatorade to drink along the way. As we left the lodge, some porters were playing with a goat outside. Although goat meat is eaten here, the lodge people said this goat would never be killed, because it is a pet.
Chhomrong was spread out all down the hill to the river at the bottom of the valley. We passed a small hydro-electric generator on the way down. We also met a man we had originally met in Lobuje on the Everest trek, who was now going the opposite way. It was warm, and I wore short sleeves. Across the river, we had to climb all the way up the other side of the valley. I stopped for an orange Fanta, and then, after two hours of walking, mostly up steep hills, we stopped for lunch at Sinawa, the last town before Bamboo. I was very tired by then, and feeling weak from not having breakfast. I ordered tomato soup with malt-glucose biscuits. The tomato soup was yellow, and looked like the broth the noodle soup is usually made with. It contained small bits of fried tomato and onion, with more onion than tomato. This was the most unusual interpretation of tomato soup I had seen yet, and I was not sure it would help my stomach. I ate half the biscuits and saved the rest for later.
We followed the valley through a forest, climbing gently uphill to Bamboo. We stopped at an Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) checkpost and showed my permit to the army guard. A strong wind was blowing down the valley with a light rain, and it looked like a storm could be coming. A small crowd gathered inside the small information booth in the checkpost to get out of the weather. Most of the trekkers here were unprepared for rain, which is supposed to be very rare here in November. However, the guard said it was not so unusual this high in the valley to get an afternoon rain. We sat a few minutes, and I decided we would stop at Bamboo, instead of continuing an extra two hours to the next town, since it was raining and I didn't feel completely well.
We walked through a bamboo forest until we reached the town of Bamboo. The bamboo grew very high here. We stopped at the last lodge in town, and put our packs in a private room, which was stone with bamboo mats on the floor, ceiling, and walls. I had tea in the dining room, where a large American group has found shelter from the rain, which had become harder. Lal and some other Nepalese took turns on the porch playing a game involving shooting disks across a powdered board to knock other disks into holes in the corners. A large group of porters outside covered their loads with plastic sheets.
Around 2:30, the sun started to come out. Lal told me he didn't really want to stay here. He said the innkeeper was not a good person. He asked how I felt about going to Dovan, about another two hours walk. I agreed, although this meant we would be walking rather late, and I did not feel well. We set out into the dense, dark bamboo forest, which was now penetrated by a few rays of sunlight. As we left Bamboo, we passed a sign placed by the ACAP which told us the next town was Dovan, that it had three lodges, and we would reach it in an hour. Every town in the region had one of these signs. The muddy trail had become very slimy since the rain. In clearings, I could see that just a little higher in the valley, the rain had been snow instead. During this walk, I felt somewhat better than I had the rest of the day.
We actually made it to Dovan in one hour, and checked into the first lodge there. It was a good choice. They had a really hot kerosene heater in a pit under the table. For dinner, I tried to order the furthest thing from dal bhatt I could find. I chose a pizza with coke. The pizza was the largest and most realistic yet. The crust was burnt, but crispy, and it had plenty of tomato. The host played Nepali tapes on a portable stereo, and changed them constantly. Two German men who barely spoke English were staying here, with porters who also barely spoke English. We sat around the warm heater for a while, and I went to bed while the Nepalis listened to the 8:00 news on the radio. By now, I felt fine.
Scott A. Yost, 1994. All rights reserved.