Nepal: With the Peace Corps

On my fifth morning on the Annapurna Circuit, I decided to change course and join a college friend who was heading out that afternoon for a four-day trek with her fellow Peace Corps volunteers. As much as I didn’t want to abandon my newfound friends on the trail, continuing onward with them would entail a steep slog amidst wet and cold conditions and then huddling up with dozens of other trekkers to wait out the icy winds and snowdrifts in Chame, the Circuit’s next outpost.

The Annapurna crew, L to R: Takeshi (Japan), (Me), Gauthier (Belgium), Nils (Germany) [Taken in the village of Danakyu]

I parted with my trekking companions of the past four days as they set off towards Chame, and attempted to depart the Circuit with enough time to catch Becca and her friends before they left Besishahar. After setting off on my own two feet from Besishahar four days prior, I had gained almost five thousand feet of elevation, and to undo all of that in mere hours, I would need to find my way onto a passing Jeep. Luckily, I was able to obtain passage in the bed of a packed Jeep (closer in build to a tank than to a suburban whip) on its way down from the upper villages. I shared this open-air space with two teenage boys, though we continued to pick up local hitch-hikers on our swift and steep descent. Soon the human occupancy of our vehicle totaled seventeen - ten of us in the bed alone - which had since gained an older man, a mother and her three children (one of whom she was nonchalantly breastfeeding mere inches from my knees), with two young men in business attire hanging off of the tailgate - one holding on with only one hand while holding a phone call with his other. With clouds both above and below us, I held on for life as our heavily laden vehicle ripped along a primitive road that hugged the mountain wall. We stopped briefly outside a larger village where I and the other passengers in the bed jumped out and scrambled across a rickety pedestrian bridge to sneak past a police checkpoint that the Jeep couldn’t pass at its current bloated capacity. Just as the sky threatened to dump buckets on our exposed heads, our ride reached Besishahar, concluding my hasty departure from the Annapurna Circuit.

The view I awoke to on my last morning on the Annapurna Circuit

The last time I had seen Becca was almost five years prior, back in Des Moines when a group of our mutual college friends convened on a summer night; and if someone had told me then that the next time I would see her would be in Nepal, I would have never believed it. Now having joined Becca and her friends, we set off together late in the afternoon from Besishahar towards Becca’s home of the past two years, which belonged to an unnamed village atop a hill that offered breathtaking views of peaks taller by several thousands of feet than any I had ever seen. I was now in the company of volunteers of the Peace Corps, the majority of whom were in Nepal to help modernize agricultural practices, but also to advise on dietary habits (as the locals tend to be blissfully unaware of the consequences of eating copious amounts of rice at each and every meal), as well as women’s reproductive health education and support. 

Himalchuli, standing just shy of 26,000 feet is the world’s 18th tallest mountain. This was taken essentially from Becca’s doorstep

Our plan for the next three days was to follow the Gurung Heritage Trail, which links a number of Gurung (an ethnic group of Tibetan origin) villages throughout the Lamjung province in central Nepal. The Gurung Heritage Trail (GHT) is somewhat obscure compared to some of the more famous trekking routes, so we didn’t encounter any other foreigners in the villages or along the trail. The villages along the GHT felt much larger than the ones along the Annapurna Circuit, but didn’t have the teahouses characteristic of the more well-known trekking circuits. Without teahouses to call in at, we lodged instead at homestays. Along with being more intimate, these establishments had no menu to order meals from. The Didī of each homestay prepared Dal Bhat for dinner whether you liked it or not, and sent you off  the following morning after an immense breakfast and a heartfelt, traditional farewell ritual (“Didī” is the Nepali word used to respectfully address an older woman, and I was told it translates more literally to “older sister,” used by Becca in addressing her host mother). 

Gurung village of Bhujung

Our first full day of trekking brought us to the vertical village of Bhujung, which is situated high on a mountainside overlooking a vast river valley terraced with rice fields, with remote peaks of the Annapurna range looming in the distance. At dinner that night, we sat in a dark room on a dirt floor, the walls and ceiling blackened with soot. Smoke swirled above our heads as the Didī cooked for us over a small fire, while babbling about playfully in her native tongue with my Peace Corps companions. As I was the only person who didn’t speak Nepali, I had to try and pick up hints as to what they were laughing about, which usually ended up being me. The Didī had decided I was to be called “English” due to my linguistic limitations and would acknowledge me not with a “he” or a “him” but with pronouns equivalent to “it” or “that” as if I was some sort of rodent. I was told she also poked fun at each of my mispronunciations of Nepali places. She had to have been in her 60’s at least, and though I could tell that she was quite the character, she was at heart a genuine and caring host. As we sat and watched her prepare dinner, we sipped on glasses of rakshi; a warm, clear Nepali liqueur served in a tall glass with floating grains of toasted rice.

Emily and our Didi in Bhujung

I learned from the PC folks that I had been eating dal bhat all wrong. I consumed the soup and rice dish with a fork and spoon, dismissing the traditional practice of eating with one’s fingers as too messy and inefficient. But the PC gang insisted that the most authentic way to experience it was to eat as the locals did - pouring the lentil soup over the bed of rice, and then using your fingers to mix the meal into small, greasy clumps of deliciousness that you lifted to your face and flicked into your mouth with your thumb. You essentially played with your food as you chewed, blending the various elements of the dish so that each bite had the exact proportion of flavors that you desired. The Didī had added an ingredient to the dal bhat that I had not yet tried: fried water buffalo jerky - which was incredible. This was the first time since dinner at the Wakeel’s on my third night in Delhi that I felt so intimately connected to another culture.

Nathan and our Didi in Pasagaun

Our third day was given to reaching the village of Pasagaun. We took frequent breaks: exploring water mills, admiring rhododendron trees (one of which Becca climbed), and engaging the locals with whom we crossed paths. We spent the night in a homestay in Pasagaun, and as I was still struggling with a lingering cold I had picked up the week prior, I learned the following morning that I had managed to snore for the entire night, keeping my bunkmates Nathan and Chris up all night. I imagine that might have had something to do with why we elected to pass on the hike to Begnas the next morning, opting for a scenic yet exhausting journey on a local bus instead.

Becca of the Rhododendrons

We spent our fourth night in the serene lake village of Begnas, after which I parted ways with Becca and the Peace Corps crew, concluding one of the most unique and meaningful travel experiences I have had to date. The Peace Corps has actually had a profound impact on my family. My uncle had served in the Philippines, where he met a Filipino woman who would become his wife of twenty-plus years and counting (coincidentally, it was they who had hosted me in Minneapolis before my flight out to Asia). While serving in the Peace Corps has enticed me in recent years, I still find it difficult to imagine devoting two years of my life to living and serving in a third world country. I count myself fortunate to have been able to spend four days with five of these brave individuals and play a role in a short chapter of their experiences in Nepal (granted this was part of their leave time). Each one of them inspired me in one way or another, and I’m grateful to Becca, Chris, Emily, Hannah, and Nathan for including me in their trek of the Gurung Heritage Trail, putting up with my irritating cold symptoms each step of the way, and for quite possibly saving my life once or twice over the course of our brief adventure.

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This is the final post from my Asia trip of this past winter. Two days after leaving Begnas, I flew from Kathmandu to Delhi, where after a long layover I went back home. Though I took a break from posting updates, I pushed myself to finish this one since I am less than a week out from my next trip. Be sure to subscribe to the newsletter to follow along with this next one. Thanks for reading.

Cheers!

At the Ambrosia Guest House in Begnas. Left to Right: Nathan, Hannah, Emily, Me, Becca, Chris (Behind Emily is the daughter of the young couple who hosted us)

Sunset at Begnas