Gone a-wandering...

First stop: J Village

there is only one guest house in this one horse town...

It was FREEZING!! Not to mention there was no heater, no geyser (aka no hot water), and the sink didn't work but there was a western toilet - not that you really want to sit on anything when it's that cold! Don't worry we made friends with the owner who "happened" to be the mayor of the town and he brought some hot water up for us. He asked us if we were nonveg and after we told him how much we liked vegetables he said ok! and ordered a chicken right there for us. We did see the block where the chicken said its goodbyes. As visions of that goat leg soup danced in our heads, we were pleasantly surprised when the chicken dish wasn't too bad. A little greasy but we weren't complaining. It was also interesting to learn that since it is a much higher altitude here and hence the weather is much colder, the people here all eat meat. go figure. After dinner the local god paraded through... which stopped long enough for Beki to take a picture which made me laugh.

The mayor took us on a tour of his town and then we had chai with his family. He took care of everything for us - including telling us that he hired a boy for us. (as a guide to trek up the mountain) We ended up very affectionately calling our "hired boy" - "Gazelle man" He was like running up the mountain! even when we were power walking as fast as we could before breaking into a run - we still couldn't keep up!

Below - the entrance to Shikari Devi - a temple

It's a rough place to hike around...

watch out for the monkeys though - they sound like mt lions! After about an hour of walking really really fast after "gazelle boy" he peaced out to go back to his home and told us to take this path up to the top of this mountain and go down.....

They also told us it would take 3 and a half hours total - yeah so 8 hours later we are wandering around in the "jungle" as they called it, in the rain and without gazelle boy, staring at about a million little paths. I pr*yed that it would stop raining and so it did! - it started hailing... I'm learning how to be specific.... but at least it was baby hail and it wasn't getting us soaked.SO PTL for baby hail!!

AND Just for the record...

we were never actually LOST. We had a GPS and knew EXACTLY where we were...

It was just getting to the actual destination part that might have been a little fuzzy...

Don't worry! these 2 ladies appeared out of nowhere and took us to their village and let us stay with them so the bears and mt lions didn't eat us LOL....

I am in the process of making a hat like the chic's in the middle... want one too?

Our new family that we will come back to visit... that is AFTER the snow!

Peace out! Waiting for the bus...