Saturday 04/03/17

This morning after eating breakfast (porridge for Ben and eggs for myself) and saying goodbye to our new Israeli friends, we set out for another beautiful day of trekking!

About 4 miles before Chame, we saw a Jeep of 5 Nepali guys in the back of and 4 passengers (comfortably?) in the car.  They said they were going to Besishahar, and asked if we wanted a ride; said the guys in the back and one passenger in the Jeep were getting out at Chame.  We decided to get a ride with them for Rs.2000 ($19.30).

There was an excavator in the middle of the path that was moving big rocks boulders out of the way, so we had to wait a little over an hour for it to finish.  It was pretty cool watching it move them out of the way, they were huge!  Ben was poking fun at the driver of the excavator, saying he was doing it incorrectly and that he could do a better job (he works construction at home).

Excavator with a freshly rooted boulder.

[Throughout our trip, whenever people asked where we were from we'd tell them, "we're from America!" or sometimes we'd say we're from The Netherlands or another European country so people wouldn't think we're "rich Americans" and charge us more, hahaha.
After the America question, people would usually ask what part/state we’re from.  We knew most people weren't familiar with US geography and wouldn't know where Utah was so we'd say we're from California, followed by them saying, "ah, Venice Beach?!" or "Hollywood!?".  I showed a few people a picture of my family in front of the Hollywood sign a few months before and they loved it.
When we said we were from Utah, people would ask where it was so we'd say, “um, it’s about a 5.5 hour drive north of Las Vegas?" and they’d say something like, "Vegas?  Nice, I love that place!" ...Even though we figured they probably didn't really know where Vegas was, just knew what it was.]

What the Jeep and permit check stations looked like.

Our riding companions were a couple from Argentina and a man who had altitude sickness and a sprained ankle.  We told the couple we're from America they said that they were too, hahaha!
We told them we're from Utah and they said they knew where that was, and their friend actually works in Salt Lake City!

Pulled over to the side of the road for these cows to pass.

Cows

During most of the ride, I laid in the bed of the jeep, which kind of sucked.  The same as the ride up, I bounced all over.  I kind of laid on my backpack, but wasn't very good padding.  After a few hours of losing my mind a bit, we got a flat tire!  No one could come fix the tire until the next day, so we had to stay the night in a village called Syange, which was a bummer because we were expecting to be home that night.

We understand that these things happen but we all weren't expecting this and were low on money.  During dinner, Benny, the Argentinians, and I all this decided that we weren’t going to give the driver the full original amount we had agreed on before, because of our situation.