Hiking

At the risk of raising everyone’s false hopes that I am starting to blog more often, I have to write about my hike today while the experience is still fresh. I left the dirty dishes and the wet, dirty clothes for tomorrow morning. Tonight, I will DOCUMENT MY EXPERIENCE. (shout out to Brooke ;) )

If I have ever hiked in my life, it was today. Today is a national holiday, which means no school for me. A friend, Ugyen, planned a hike to a “nearby” monastery with her class of 34 8^th grade students and invited me along. I was really excited because I see the monastery everyday and have been meaning to visit, but have never made the time. So this was the perfect way to spend my holiday.

Ugyen has done this hike before and knew we needed to start early. We met at 5:45am and started out on our journey around 6:00am. The plan was to hike down to the river in the valley, cross at the bridge, hike up the other side to the monastery, and then make our way down to a nunnery at the end of the hill. After visiting the nunnery, we would follow the trail back to the bridge and follow the trail back up to Thinleygang.

6:00am start, ready to go. 

The first 1-2 hours were great. Although a little sleepy from the early wake-up call, spirits were high and everyone was exited to reach the monastery and have tea. Even while climbing the steep hill and feeling the burn in our lungs and thighs, we were happy. This is what we expected; we were mentally prepared for this.

Up, up, up we went.

Finally, we reached the monastery around 10:00am. Because of the holiday today, the monks had prepared tea and juice for the visitors. Everyone took their turn prostrating themselves, making offerings, and saying their prayers. After 45 minutes at the monastery, we hit the road again. This time our path led strait down just for a few minuets before turning left and becoming a relatively flat trail.

For anyone who doesn’t know, this past summer my job involved leading teenagers on service trips. As a trip leader, we are trained in risk management. Today, this hike involved taking the students out of the safety of the hostel and on a hike into the forest. So, already, I could hear Jim’s (my boss's) voice in my head telling me about group management and how to be safe. Our group split up into many small groups on the way from the monastery to the nunnery and that was the first time (albeit not the last) on this hike when I began to seriously doubt how safe we were being. In the end, this leg of our journey took about 3 hours. We had small groups of eighth graders wandering the forest alone heading in a general direction.

It was about two hours from the monastery when my small group of students and I realized that we were definitely lost. I had to assume that Ugyen was with all of the other students on the right path. Where we went wrong, no one seems to know. But what I do know is we ended up in a village on the wrong side of the hill and had gone way out of our way.

Not the nunnery, but there are worse places to be lost :)

Fine, that was fine at the time. I figured we would walk a little bit, find the path again and be to the nunnery in no time. Boy was I wrong. Not long after that I got a call from Ugyen saying that she had also lost the trail and that she was with only two students.

One sentiment that I’ve become very familiar with since being in Bhutan is “but what to do?”. The people here use it when the situation is unfavorable, or they are struggling a lot with something. They are using it in a way that signifies: well this sucks, but we can’t do anything about it so oh well. That is exactly what we said when we discovered that our once solid, single group had broken up and, most likely, everyone else was also lost. What to do but continue on.

Eventually we found a road that a couple of the students were familiar with and they knew that we could follow it in the right direction. After 30 minutes of walking on this road, a pickup truck drove by with about 10 of our students standing in the back hooting and hollering. They stopped farther down the road and my companions and I also jumped in. By that time it was 1:00pm and all of our legs desperately needed a rest and our bodies needed food.

Eventually, our entire group made it to the nunnery, although no one made it without getting lost first. But the good news is that we had made it! The worst part of the day surely was over.

Group picture, but don't look for me- I am the "official photographer."

We visited the temple, ate lunch, rested our bodies before continuing our hike back home. When we set out from the nunnery, we could see the path that we were meant to take, and headed that way. I was bringing up the caboose and assumed everything was going fine until some girls ahead of me stopped to rest and we discovered that the front half of our group had gone ahead and we were now separated again.

Well, no matter. I am trying to do my job as the caboose and if Ugyen let some kids go ahead, she knows better than I do. So my smaller group and I kept trudging along. Eventually, we found ourselves walking along the side of a little water canal. About an hour out from the nunnery the boys in the front stopped, yelled to the back that there was “no way” (as in there is no path, no way to go through). Well we couldn’t go down the hill, next to us was a dangerous drop off and we couldn’t exactly go up the hill due to cliffs. When I got closer, I saw what the boys were talking about. The water canal that we had been following bridged a deep valley with a little water bridge. So we were lost again. I’m not sure whose idea it was, (probably one of the boys) but all of a sudden students were taking shoes off to wade their way across the bridge. There were about four students on the far side when a girl who had crossed began screaming bloody murder. With my heart racing I started yelling over to her to try to see what was wrong. Thank goodness it was only leeches. From that point forward, every 10-15 minuets one of the girls would start screaming from finding leeches on their ankles and legs. I’ve never had a leech on me before, and I never knew how strong their grip is! Or how they wiggle their way up your leg! They truly are disgusting creatures.

So after forging the water bridge, we put on wet socks and shoes and continued. The leeches continued to plague us, and we still were not sure if the other half of the students were safe. But, what to do? Another hour closer to home and again boys in the front were calling back, “No way, no way”.

This time it turned out to be a fallen tree. I assumed this would be easier to get through than the water bridge, but was soon proven wrong. The tree was slippery! And too big to completely straddle while using feet to anchor ourselves to the ground. So with a lot of help, and the acceptance that our feet would land in the leech-infested water on the other side, we became true tree-huggers.

Following, following, following the water canal we continued until we reached the river at the bottom of the valley. At this point, our once sunny sky had become dark and threatening. This was not the bridge we meant to cross, but due to the big rocks blocking our way, we had no choice but to wade across here. This is when it started raining. I made it about half way, jumping from rock to rock, before accepting my wet fate. Of course I’m too ambitious to give up that easily, so I made a jump for another rock that was mostly submerged in water, slipped, and fell right to the bottom of the river. Of course all of the students were very concerned for me and came running through the water to help me. I was fine, until I heard thunder and saw lightening.

Once again, those RLT instincts kicked in and I started yelling for everyone to get out of the water. But then this only made people try to move faster, resulting on them sipping on rocks and falling down deeper into the river. If I hadn’t been concerned for their safety, I would have laughed for a long time over that.

Thankfully, we all made it out on the other side of the river. Wet, but alive. Now we had to find a trail that would lead us back to the road. Eventually we did, and climbed back up toward our town. The rain never stopped and by the time I made it home I was very cold. I arrived home at exactly 6:15 pm. making this a 12-hour hike. The hike finished with my friend saying, “I hope you are not unhappy. It is very likely we will have a fever tomorrow”.

Nerve-racking and exhausting, but still the best hike that I’ve ever been on. I’m not sure that I’ve laughed so much in one day since being here.

On a final note, as I lay in bed writing this, I discovered a bloody ankle and a dead leech stuck to me. And that is AFTER taking a shower.