What a great night’s sleep! The cold air works wonders, evidently. Up and out to breakfast. Remember, our room is nice and warm from the space heater, but when we step outside of it, and then downstairs, the temperature drops by about 20 degrees. Wearing the down vest to breakfast (which was better than dinner) for sure.
It’s a lazy day. I have told the guide that we’re not really interested in riding the train, which he’s already bought tickets for. The fog/haze really limits the view, so sitting on a little open-air train belching black smoke into my face for a couple hours to see most of what I saw on the drive up is not appealing to me, and Matt is fine with that as well. We pack up our gear and start wandering up and down the streets, which seem like a maze, but somehow seem to actually lead right into one another. I realize that I am thrilled to NOT have a guide and driver. Independent touring, which is usually my style. One of the first things we experience is hearing some chanting coming up one of the long, steep set of stairs
that connect these streets built up the hillside. I look and it’s a procession of some kind with people carrying incense, statues of goddesses and bowls of flowers. I scramble to pull out the camera and watch as they approach a car and prepare to load everything into it. As they are doing so, and tying down the statues, I snap pictures and the gentleman next to me tells me that this is the goddess of knowledge and education. His wife minds the temple where the goddess “lives” and this is the day of the year when they take her to the river for immersion. They are smiling and the wife is blessing their cars and I am handed some of the candy that they are passing out. Way to be in it!
We continue our walk and register the variety of stalls, stands and goods laid out on blankets on the road that we have seen elsewhere.
We even walk in to check out one store, only to find there is an interior path/road with a whole line of stores that are kind of underground. You name it, we see it – just in tiny, specialized stores, with men hanging out yakking in front of most.
And again, we see that often the same types of stores are clustered together. We pass appliance stores that are about 8 feet wide and 15 feet deep,
electronic stores, toiletries, beauty supplies, children’s clothing, etc etc. We also pass a whole line of wooden stalls, which are mostly empty, and the dogs are taking advantage of that:
Here’s one with skinned, whole chickens and fish:
Being Sunday, I don’t think the regular market is open, but a couple of these have fresh fish being cut, so perhaps they will be filled on other days, or maybe vendors have gone elsewhere.
The usual fire-anywhere site of shopkeepers trying to keep warm:
Pictures of edibles that look interesting and I have no idea what they are:
And this is what you eat with it:
How spicy does this look?
Are these people related to sherpas?
The usual colorful fruit and everything else stands:
Can’t see too far out into the distance, in fact, can hardly see down the mountainside abodes due to fog, but here is something of a view:
As we are cruising around, we run into another statue/goddess being loaded into a hatchback, perhaps on her way to the river for a dip as well?
After walking for a couple of hours, checking out a few things here and there (an arcteryx jacket for $60!!!), we check out a couple of the places Matt got as recommendations for lunch. We decided on the Shangri-La, and sat down to order. Again, the Indian and Chinese menus. I decided to go Chinese – chili garlic noodles and sauteed green veggies (broccoli!) and Matt stayed the course with garlic naan (a staple), chicken tikka and his favorite black dal with cream and onions. I suffer another devastating defeat and food arrives. We can hardly see it for the steam coming off (remember, no heat, so we’re all eating in our full outerwear) and we dig in.
Mmmmm, those chili noodles are excellent, with lots of crunchy garlic and thin slices of some kind of pepper that makes me reach quickly for the water. We have over-ordered and no way we can finish. You know the end of this story, though. I drop out of the race after a while and Matt keeps it going all the way to the finish line.
Immediately he informs me a bad case of the “itis” is setting in (translation: food coma).
I snap a few pictures, we pay the incredible bill of about $10, then walk back to the hotel. But not before I indulge a little sweet tooth action and stop at a stand to buy a cookie:
Back home, we fall into bed. Matt immediately surrenders to the coma, and I watch a movie. He has no interest in going out again. We each have a 30-minute ($9) head massage schedule in about an hour, and it seems that that’s the only thing that will get him out of bed. While he’s being massaged, the woman knocks on our door to set up our fire for the evening.
We both enjoy our sessions, but the quality is almost the same as our previous massage. I tell him that I have no need for dinner and he concurs. We light the fire early today and both sit devouring our books until their conclusion. I lose another game, then we crawl into bed. He watches a movie on the iPad, but I go off to sleep.