So, after the bus accident and weeks of sickness, it is hard to imagine that our month here in Nepal could possibly get any crazier. But it did. Here is the recap of our hiking to the villages in the mountains of Nepal experience.
Sunday:
5:15pm-Our bus pulls to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and we are told to get off the bus. We get off the bus in the pouring rain and we are handed our soaking wet bags (because they were on top of the bus). We were told to look for a rock with a cross and Bible verse on it. Thankfully, it was right there. However, the church was not. We look for a green building and see it up the hill. There is not a path to get to the church…only a stream. So we head out across the rocks in the stream. All is going well until Jenny slips on a rock and wipes out in the stream. She laughs hysterically until I help her up and we all make it up to the church.
6:00pm-We sit down with our guide (who at this time does not know he is our guide…lots of confusion going on) to do a Bible study. The lights go out so we put our headlamps on and read the Bible in the dark. The lights come back on and a goat comes into the church where it is promptly shooed out. I will take this time to discuss the door and bathroom situations. First of all, the church didn't really have a door. It was just metal bars. The bathroom was basically a shed over the river with a hole in the floor. The pastor prays for our hike and begins his prayer with "oh dear God please help us." What kind of a hike are we going on?
7:00pm-We eat dinner that the pastor's wife had prepared and then Ricky (our guide) asks me to sing so he can record it. I sing a song for him and then Kate and I sing Seek Ye First as a round and then the Nepalese people in the room sing that same song in their language. It is really awesome. Ricky teaches Jenny and I how to play the bongo and then Jenny and make trumpet noises with our mouths and hands and then proceed to bust out in random children's gossip songs.
9:30pm-We are all setting down for bed and journaling time when Sarah suddenly goes, "Oh. My. Gosh. Oh. My. Gosh. Is that a…? Oh. My. Gosh. That is the biggest bug I have seen in my life! There is a grasshopper the size of my left hand (no exaggeration) right by Sarah's sleeping bag. Katie immediately jumps up and begins taking pictures. Then Katie decides that it would be a great idea to poke the grasshopper with a pen. So it jumps about three feet into my sleeping bag liner. We all jump around, screaming, and Kate, who is still in her sleeping bag, has no choice but to get up, still in her sleeping bag and potato sack race to the alter of the church. At this point, Sarah gets brave and scoops the grasshopper up in my sleeping bag liner and throw it out the door, where it promptly flys right back in. More screaming ensues. Katie tries to catch it in a sitting stool. This does not work. Sarah scoops it up in my sleeping bag liner again and throw it back outside, slams the door and says, "I'm locking this so you won't come back in." I point out that locking the door won't matter since it isn't a real door. We go to bed.
Monday:
6:30am-We are asleep. Seven of the church women come in and immediately start playing the bongos and worshipping loudly. We do not know what to do.
9:30am-We leave for our hike to a village. Originally, we had planned on going 25km (about 15 miles). We go through a village and over a suspension bridge and all is well. We begin hiking the mountain. It is steep ascension the whole way. We soon realize that 15 miles is a tall order. So Ricky says we do not have to hike 15 miles, only 9…how nice.
2:00pm-We stop for lunch in a random village. We find ourselves sitting in a mudhut, with a portion of rice on our plates large enough to feed a family of four.
6:00pm-After 8 and 1/2 hours and four mountains, we finally arrive at the village we will be staying at for the night. We are put up in a "hotel," aka wooden shack. We are all too tall to fit in the room but the six of us crawl into our five beds (you do the math), and fall asleep for the night.
Tuesday:
8:00am-More hiking..still ascending. We arrive at 2000 meters (1/4 of the height of Mt. Everest). It is beautiful. We are above the clouds.
11:00am-Ricky wants to show us some important historical places. We hike some more. Ricky shows us a lake. Actually, it look more like it just rained a lot in one spot.
12:00pm-Ricky wants to show us ruins of ancient buildings. Cool! Jules and Jenny decide to go back to the village. Katie, Kate, Sarah, and myself go with Ricky. We end up trekking through a jungle. A real live jungle with monkeys swinging from the trees. Ricky has us walk on the side where the moss is so we don't get our shoes muddy. I jokingly say, "a little mud never hurt anyone. God made dirt and dirt don't hurt." As soon as I say this, I slip and fall in the mud and get stuck in the mud. Ricky is so upset and worried about me. I am laughing hysterically because I am stuck in the mud, in a jungle, on top of a mountain, in Nepal. What else is there to do but laugh. We leave the jungle and Ricky says, "here, historical ruins." We are in a field and it looks like someone tried to play a giant game of pick-up sticks. That's right. We miss ministry because of this. It is all worth is, however, because on our way back to the village we see a shepard herding goats and there are some adorable baby goats. Ricky says, do you want to hold them? Uh, yeah we do.
2:30pm-We begin hiking towards the village Ricky grew up in. We stop on a mountain to rest and Ricky pulls out a laptop computer. That's an unusual thing to bring while hiking. Then a cow comes out of nowhere from over cliff. Note to self, cows are surprisingly effiecient mountain climbers. We soon see a cow being slaughtered on the side of the road. Now I know…the cow was just hiding to escape her fate.
6:00pm-We arrive at RIcky's village and are greeted by little girls who give us flower necklaces. We also are given tea and cookies and meet the two most important men in the village. The entire village watches us drink our tea. We are taken to our "hotel" aka school classroom, complete with skeleton.
9:00pm-The children in the village throw us a bonfire and do traditional Nepalese dancing. We join in the dancing too. It was so wonderful and a huge blessing to us.
Wednesday:
6:00am-We are supposed to leave to hike to the bus. We do not leave.
7:15am-We leave on our hike. The last bus leaves at 10:00am and the hike is about 3 hrs. It doesn't look good.
9:45am-We run like crazy people to catch the bus. We sit on the bus and breathe a digh of relief. Then the bus begins to move. We are being jerked and flung around like ragdolls do to being on a rocky, muddy mountain. We all look at each other in bewilderment. Jules says, "Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse…" We all burst into laughter. Two and a half hours of whiplash later, we arrive at the side of the road. We start walking. Ricky tells us we have to take another bus. We wait and wait for another bus. They are all full.
1:00pm-A bus comes. It is also full. We are all super exhausted. Ricky says, "do you want to ride on top?" Kate pauses, then says, "YES." We all climb on top. While we are getting on top of the bus, a really nice car pulls up and some white peopl get out with their nice cameras and start taking pictures of us…nice. Sidenote: While on top of the bus, a Nepalese teenager crawls on top of the bus, sits next to me, coughs in my face, then starts singing "Baby" by Justin Bieber. Only on the World Race.
2:30pm-We arrive back at the church and collapse on the front lawn. This is real life people!
