TUE, 27MAR2012Bahundanda (1310m) – Tal (1700m), 17km/ 390m

We walked through many beautiful terraced rice fields with old couples planting some of the terraces. The man would guide the two buffalo pulling a fancy wooden plough through the soil, while his wife would follow them carefully planting seeds. The soil is a rich sandy black and they flood the terraces as needed for the particular crop.

We met a friendly dog along the way who was very happy when I scratched his ears for 5min. So happy in fact, that he followed us for the next 5km!

 

We got stopped on the trail by a uniformed army guy, who forced us to retreat back up the trail because they were blasting rock on the other side of the river. We saw & heard the 5 charges going off from ~1/2-1km away. The first blast was huge and shook my chest, sending dust around us. When walking past later (almost opposite the blasting point), we saw the trail littered with granite shards up to 24 inches in diameter (probably thrown 1/2km across the river)!

I took off my gaiters & shoes at lunch (my Soloman trail runners) to air out my feet and found leech bites all over my left ankle under the gaiter…weird! I washed off lots of blood, but could not find the leech anywhere, nor did I have any idea where I could have picked it up…

That tiny spec is Patrick!

We had lunch at the Green Café, where a male owner cooked us the best dal-baht yet with a tomato pickle that we tasted for the rest of that day! It was a great meal!

We hiked a lot on the road today & were passed by jeeps frequently. Most of the jeeps seemed to be full of locals, but there were a few of them that had tourists. Both types of jeeps were full of grinning faces as they drove past us.

When we saw Tal in the distance, we passed another army installation (probably left over from the Maoist uprising) where we saw two arm y guys & a horse. The guy who wanted to mount the horse kept dancing in circles with it as the horse really did not want to be mounted. So much, that it hauled off & barely missed the dude with a double back hoof kick!

We got very tired toward the end of this day & our packs got more & more heavy. My shoulders & hips were very sore, swollen and tender to the touch when we got done for the day.

Wendy gave away about 4-5lbs of extra stuff that she decided to stop carrying. I decided to try and hold out longer. We way over packed (kind of easy to do when all you have is a 75L and 95L pack to take…)!

So far, this is not a wilderness trek. It’s more like walking through countryside. Not an hour or two goes by that we don’t walk through someone’s front yard. Today we also walked by fields of marijuana; it’s even marked on the map!

About an hour before Tal, our stop for the night, a soldier came down the path from the opposite direction and told us to stop where we were – there was going to be a blast. We took our packs off and waited. He continued up the trail. Just as we were about to put our packs back on and keep going, another soldier appeared from the same direction herding 3 annoyed German tourists along the path. They didn’t understand why they were being forced back up the path they had just come from by a belligerent soldier until we mentioned the blasting. The soldier motioned us to join the retreat. Each new squawk over his walkie-talkie resulted in further retreat. We finally stopped under a rock outcropping. We waited. Finally we heard something that sounded like an m-80. No big deal. Test-blast he informed us. A minute or two later, there was a tremendous blast and a huge chunk of the mountainside on the opposite side of the valley exploded into dust. We retreated further around the bend as dust rained down on us. This blast was followed by another blast that echoed through the valley.  I asked the solder ‘how many? Five. We waited. 3 more bone-jarring blasts and the sound of gravel showering the valley. We waited while the crews checked to make sure all the blasts had detonated. Forty minutes later, we were free to go. As we continued along the path, we saw rock that had landed on the trail for the next several kilometers. Some pieces were 20 to 24 inches in diameter, blown half a kilometer across the valley and landed on the path. The soldier may have saved our lives and limbs. I wonder if the injured man being carried down the mountain was a casualty of the blasting.

We arrived in Tal. As the sun set, we could see a forest fire on the mountain slopes behind Tal.

Tal was fairly crowded. Where did all the people come from? They weren’t on the trail with us!

By the end of the day, Patrick was aching and ready to lighten his pack, but he couldn’t decide what should go. I was glad to help. Turns out, he had four pairs of pants! He packs like a girl. I ditched 2 pairs of pants, a padlock, a spare pair of sunglasses, linen shirt, small binoculars, one of three carabiners, one t shirt, 2 pairs of socks, one of two books (ironically, titled "The Art of Choosing") and his economist magazine.