TUES, 03APR2012Muktinath (3800m) – Kagbeni (2800m)10km/ -1000m

We got a slow start this morning and only had medium hot water, so our coffee was not very good. And we were ~10min late to start out with Dani (Danika) & Chris… Stephan was off early on his own to get to Jomsom so that he could make it off the circuit in time to meet his girlfriend in Kathmandu.

We visited a monastery high on a little nub of a hill in the middle of Jhong. We wandered around a bit before getting bold & sticking our head inside the compound inside the door. There were many young boys (and a couple of little girls) doing basic chores. We paid 100rs entrance fee and an older boy showed us the prayer hall/Gompa. The paintings were much nicer than the Braka Gompa since they had not been repainted. Generally it was a bit more authentic feeling, but certainly not as old. We then climbed up onto the roof, thru sketchy doorways, up crazy ladders and into an AMAZING view!

The rest of the hike followed a path up and down through apple orchards. The trees had all been recently pruned & were starting to bud. There were cool stonewalls around each orchard and different security tricks to protect the fruit - from sharp sticks to thorns to an old band saw blade laid in concrete on the top of the wall. The tree trunks were also painted in bluish-white paint, maybe to prevent insects or disease or something, but who knows.

We passed through some fields coated in white salts of some kind, probably alkaline water deposits. We learned later from Dani that Chris actually tasted it and said it wasn’t salty – crazy yes, but those guys were our kind of travelers! There was a huge herd of goats wandering through the white soil – kind of beautiful, in a slightly creepy way!

We found the “Red House Lodge,” as recommended by the NATT guide and dropped off some laundry and our bags as soon as we checked in. It was a cool old house with many staircases, rooftops, and eating areas. We had a bit of lunch (not as quick as we hoped) and I got some awesome yak curry. It had whole spices in it & was totally worth the wait!

 We explored Kagbeni – after checking into the police point, we left Dani & Christian, who went to check on a nearby Mustang town. We founds lots of cool buildings, alleys and side paths with many old buildings. We found a little place called “The Green Café” that advertised Ily Coffee, so we gave it a shot. They had polished chrome tables and like three different espresso machines - it felt like we were in a different world. The woman struggled with the machine, but we finally got some espressos that were pretty good! The man of the house then came in and after discussions took the bad machine off the counter, said some words to his daughter, and was soon unwrapping a brand new espresso machine, telling us “this one is broken.” This is definitely a different place than the trail on the other side of the pass!

We returned to the returned for a dinner of yak sizzler, which was tasty but hard to cut with the dull butter knife and was very chewy (basically a steak). It filled me up so much that for once I couldn’t finish the momos we ordered!

We found a jeep depot/stage and watched the touts herding people into jeeps long enough to decide that it was not a comfortable way to travel. One of the jeep’s tires looked low on air and Wendy said that she could hear the leak. Yup, 10minutes later after we saw the river, we passed the same jeep 20m further up the road with a flat tire & everyone climbing out!

  

Today we walked from Muktinath to Kagbeni through several tiny, ancient villages. Trees were budding at the lower altitudes and rice seedlings were coming up. The stonework in these villages was more haphazard and less regular and precise than on the other side of the pass. We stopped for a half an hour at a monastery half way between Muktinath and Kagbeni. They served us hot sweet tea and we saw the prayer room with beautiful intricate paintings dating back more than 300 years.

Walking down to Kagbeni, the wind picked up and we walked as far from the edge of the cliff as possible. We saw a wild dog in some fields below us. Kagbeni is a beautiful old town built on a cliff overlooking a river, which was very low. There were lots of pilgrims here as well. The town is criss-crossed with a maze of tiny alleys paved with stones. Houses and animal stalls are stacked on top of each other several stories high. Just across the river is the closed kingdom of Mustang.

We stayed at the Red Door guest house. A bit like staying in an MC Esher drawing – a few stairs up, a few stairs down, inside then outside then inside again. In the middle was a small door (not red) and through the small door was a tiny prayer room dominated by the largest gilded Buddha statue I have ever seen. The house must have been built in bits and pieces around the statue because I saw no entry, window, or other opening that could have fit even the head of that statue. The owner said it is more than 300 years old. He managed to save and restore the 300 year old paintings from the walls when the walls started to crack. He had them mounted in the dining room. They were exquisite – intricate and expressive representations of many-headed Buddha, his consort, and protector gods. The colors were muted with time and age which made the whites of the eyes seem to glow.

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We splurged on a bottle of Australian red wine and were pleasantly surprised that it was drinkable. We also tried Mustang coffee – local rice wine mixed with instant coffee and topped with yak butter. Served hot. You don’t really need to try this twice.

The yak curry was phenomenal. We organized horses to go to Jomsom the next day.