Trek The Unknown

We Left Manang, it was Thursday morning. I had mixed feelings…after the unsuccessful previous day, I was a little disappointed from it, but on the other hand was anticipating to reach Throng La.

We Left at 8:55 in the morning and reached Yak Karka at 12:15 PM. walking from Manang to Yak Karka is easy. A little bit of an uphill trail but really not too bad. Towards Yak Karka there is an half an hour to an hour of almost straight walk, with no uphills or downhills. These are the times when we had our chance of really enjoy to views, without worrying about our next physical challenge.

We decided we will spend the night at Yak Karka. It was the beginning of November which is high season. We were afraid there won’t be any rooms left for all of us ( we were a group of 4 people). Eventually we found a guest house. It wasn’t even too hard.

Since we arrived early, it was only noon time I sat in the dinning room and learned some Chinese. I started talking to a 60 years old man from Canada. His name was wain. He said that it’s the toughest physical challenge he ever had. At some point he showed me his camera and said it’s not working, he thought he needs a new charger…I needed a few minutes to figure out that a remarkable button named “RESET” would solve the problem. He was very greatful!

I think this is the greatest magic in traveling. I love these encounters with people from all around the world. learning about their culture, home, work. It’s fascinating!

here’s some common pricing at Yak Karka:
2 Boiled eggs – 80 NR
Chapati (2 pieces) – 80 NR
Vegetable soup – 95 NR
double room – 150 NR

The next day we headed to Letdar. Letdar is just a few guest houses on the mountains. It’s not really a village. villagers from Manang built these Guest houses ( there are 4 of them, I think) for travelers. Letdar is very close to Yak Karka, 35 minutes walk…We took it easy and spent Friday and sauterday resting there.

Letdar is more expensive than Yak Karka since as you go higher all services are more expensive. just think that the food you are eating made the same way you did on the back of one of the many porters working in the area.

costs at Letdar:
2 Boiled eggs – 100 NR
chapati (2 pieces) – 100 NR
Veg spring roll – 180 NR
Spagetti with tomato souce – 190 NR
double room – 200 NR

I Think that it’s time to talk about something in my own country.
I haven’t been traveling for a while now so I decided I should take a day off all the work I have and go to do something for my spirit.

I’ll start from the beginning…
after Rabin, the left winged prime minister that was assacened by a jew in Israel, the Israeli society began to by very divided like. left and right, secular and religious jews…they were all in a great conflict.

After that a few movements in Israel were developed in order to bridge the problems in the Israeli society. One of these movements is Tzav Pius (meaning “directive appeasement”). It Aims to have a true dialog between different groups in Israeli society. By creating a dialog between very divided society the aim was to get us more unite.

I joint today one of thier projects for one day. This project was not generated by them but is supported by them. Thier aim is to walk large parts of the Israel trail together in order to get different people from different groups in Israel get to know each other.

The Israel Trail (Shvil Israel) goes all along the state of Israel. It’s not only a physical trail, but also a human trail. on each spot on that trail we have as Israeli and jewish people some kind of historical or significant event happened to us, which all of israelis are united around it.

Today was an amazing day for me meeting various people when walking on the trail. some people walk it from the begining to the end which takes around 2 months. some people just join a day or 2, like I did.

This project is also for the memorial of Avi. Avi was one of the soldiers that was killed almost 11 years ago when to Israeli helicopter crashed together at the north part of Israel. His parents are the initiators of this project. This is the 3rd year that this project is running.

they don’t have a website in English though….but if you still want to have a look:

http://www.avi-beshvil-israel.org.il/misgeret.php.

it’s in Hebrew

“you should go to an Indian movie. It’s really funny seeing the Indians watching it…” this is what my sister told me 7 years ago after she visited India. Since then she was not the only one telling me that.

After spending a few days in Delhi with a friend, I told him we are going to watch a movie tonight. “please tell me it will be in English…”. “maybe there will be subtitles” I said. “oh, great…”

Film was suppose to start at 21:30, so we had some time walking around Connaught Place in Delhi, seeing and window shopping at the most exclusive stores in the city.

At 21:15 we arrived back at the movie theater. The film started 5 minutes later (have you ever been to any show that starts AHEAD of time?

Our pick was “Om, Shanti, Om”, a romantic Bollywood film. But we were more excited about watching the people watching the film and not the film itself, so the particular film didn’t really matter…

The film started and we found ourselves looking at the screen more than looking at the people who were just too quiet, which was pretty disappointing, the film was wonderful! colorful, interesting, but in Hindi…

Fortunately, there are many words in English got into the Hindi language, so from time to time the actors spoke some English words which helped us tracking what’s going on on the screen. the crowd…was still silent…

Then there were some whistlings and we started to get excited! Beautiful Hindi women were singing and dancing on the screen. This almost empty theater with almost only men sitting at, still looked very sad compared to what we heard suppose to be.

But we kept enjoying the movie which wasn’t very complicated to understand even though we speak only 1 word in Hindi (which is Namaste, surprisingly).

When the film ended we tried to figure out why we enjoyed the action on the screen and why there was no action in the crowd.

we thought that the fact that we went to a romantic film and not an action one didn’t help the crowd to “rave”.

in conclusion, the movie was great, but the crowd didn’t play it’s role. we still had great time!

comment for your stories on a Bollywood movie experience! thanks

“Ni shuo han yu ma?” (“do you speak Chinese?”) These were my 1st few Chinese words speaking to a a Chinese girl since I left china. I was very excited to be able to understand her answer: “Dangran, wo shi zhong guo ren!” (of course, I’m Chinese!). We then moved back to English, because it’s just easier….

I told her I haven’t met any Chinese people traveling before her. She said it might be because I can’t tell the difference between them ,Korean and Japanese travelers. She is defiantly right, but still I can tell which language they are speaking. I heard only Japanese (or that might was Korean, but defiantly not Chinese).

Another reason I didn’t expect to find Chinese travelers was this: When I was in China, my hosts told me that the way the Chinese people are traveling is by large groups of people and sitting on the bus for a few hours, seeing the place, taking some pictures and going back home…

also, I heard from my hosts it’s sometimes very hard to go on your own to travel with no group and they have to give some kind of a deposit in order to get out of the country.

I met this girl In Pushkar, India. This is not the sightseeing-through-a-bus-window kind of place. also, she was traveling by herself…

My point is that this encounter with that girl maybe shows about the changes the Chinese society is going through in terms of the way they travel. Chinese people starting to travel in a way that western nations are traveling. Of course she was only one Chinese girl, but this might be marking the beginning of a phenomena (or maybe they were really many Chinese travelers around me, I just didn’t pay attention too ).

what’s your opinion? I’d like to hear your view especially If you are Chinese….

Trips are great! I just love it. These make you encounter with very interesting people , that otherwise you would have never met.

I already mentioned a few here on the blog, and here come another one.

Eric, Is an Israeli, he is 62. Try to ask Eric where his home is and he will say: “nowhere” ,and he really means that!

Eric is originally from Israel but I met him randomly here in the Thamel in Kathmandu. His card says he is a traveler and a photographer. He has been traveling for 5 years already with some very short brakes in Israel. He spent all those 5 years in the far east( around 15th time in Nepal already).

I had a chat with him about his life and where he is about to go next. He is thinking of going to south America for a few years and then go to Africa. Since I’ve been to both places already I recommended him to go 1st to Africa and then go to south America. When being to Ethiopia I’ve seen more things which are changing and disappearing , so it’s much more urgent to go there, the sooner the better. South America is amazing but can wait for a while. He said he will consider that. I was happy I can contribute from my experience even to the experienced ones!

Eric gives a service for free to whoever is interested. He is sending his photos by email, few photos in each email. if you want to can email him and get it too: eneemann@hotmail.com

Eric, hope to meet you on some distance places in the future again.