Nepal Part 3

May 12, 2008
Tengboche, Nepal
9:00 pm

**another entry from the old travel journal


Today I am grateful for hand sanitizer and my precautionary Pepto bismol chaser I take before each meal. As we move higher and closer to Everest, societies' luxuries begin to break down and crumble. Lights only work part of the time and toilets are 100% non-exsistant up here. I never realized how wonderful and such a treasure having running water and a toilet truly is. I will never take advantage of it again! In fact, I am quite certain that as soon as I get home I am going to hug our toilet. I miss it so!

Our tea the past few days has been made of rain water taken from a barrel placed under the rain gutter of the roof. All other water is hauled up from the river on the backs of young porters. No pipes, just nature is giving us our water. Such a strange thing that all of our water at home comes to us through pipes and yet it is normal. It seems in some sort of instinctual way it should be the opposite, water from the river and rain should seem more correct.

.. As for the dreaded toilet subject, yes I am going to talk about it.. I will try to keep it as sanitary as possible in my explination.. quite unlike the conditions. The "toilets" up here consist of a slab of concrete in the floor with a hole in the middle. There is a porcelain piece with two places one on each side of the hole to stand on and then squat to do your business. I had no idea how this strange contraption worked at first so I would sit on it to pee... gross and disgusting I realize.. but what is a girl to do? After a couple of days of getting really tired of having to sanitize my butt each and every time I had to pee (please note the "I"m grateful for.." up above and the vast amounts of water I have been taking in noted in another entry), I figured out how to squat. This ritual included taking one shoe off in order to carefully take one of my legs out of my pants and balance without getting my now shoeless foot anywhere near the hole or the ground around it, then squatting doing my business and carefully doing the ritual again in reverse finishing with a grand finale of a huge amount of hand sanitizer. The bathroom is horribly stinky as all the [toilet] paper products can not go down the hole but has to be thrown away in a large garbage barrel that sits in the room and is only emptied every once in awhile. The smell is enough to swallow you, so you also have to do the ritual discussed above while holding your breath. I can balance, hold my breath, not get my feet dirty and squat all at the same time.. who knew? I have had to go el numero dos (#2) for a couple of days now, however not quite knowing how that ritual works yet, I am holding off for now! This proves to be the hardest part of our journey. Luckily we have not gotten sick (thank you again Pepto!) but I can only imagine what a nightmare many of these poor food poisoned people are going through! I am certain that my little pink pills are saving me from this fate at this point! It is not that the food is bad, it is just different, prepared different and our stomachs aren't use to it! We are not eating any meat or cheese (Yak meat and Nak cheese just isn't sounding so good), we have been living off of soup and toast.. and potatoes, at least for the first couple of days. Lets just say, I will not be eating potatoes for quite some time when I get home!

In Kathmaudu, Geljen told me to "drink like horse, pee like elephant," this I have been doing and then I have to pee starting only about an hour into the walk, but I hold it as long as I can until I am about to pee my pants before I venture to the nearest hole. ok, enough about holes..

The walking is difficult being either straight upor straight down, however the view and the scenery is so jaw dropping beautiful that even the toughest of walks is an incredibly good adventure. Birds sing, ravens cackle, the river gushes below and the wind bustles around me like it is rush hour in New York. Best of all though is the lucky moment when the clouds part to reveal the most amazing peaks. John and I both stop in our tracks and stare up in amazement each and every time! It is simply incredible! There are heart shaped rocks that are all over the ground up here, literally thousands of them that go for miles. I have been filling my pockets daily with these little treasures and then have to narrow down my selection on which ones I can bring home to my heart rock collector mom and then release the hearts back to the mountain in the morning! I am convinced with all of the hearts everywhere that this is a sacred place. Today John and I saw our first glimpse of Mount Everest!! We just saw the very top floating in the clouds! What a pitter patter moment! I have a feeling we are going to bore everyone with our thousands of pictures when we get home!

Yesterday was Mother's Day and with the 12 hour ahead time difference I was able to call my momma on Mother's Day evening in SLC. I have been emotional lately and had to really hold it together while I was on the phone not to cry! I miss my family, Ebi, friends and home. This amazing adventure is so incredible and is making me appreciate my home and family so much more! I really miss everything that encompasses HOME! I need my support team and crew! Anyway, so I got to call on Mother's Day from a sherpa lady's kitchen at 7am (not Mothers Day in Nepal) while she was cooking breakfast over a fire for her children. It was a surreal moment to contemplate where I was standing and where I was calling and me being caught in a time warp somewhere in between.




Ama Dablam

Everest