I was up before dawn and on the trail just after sunrise as usual. I'd walked about 30 minutes when I realized I had forgotten my sunglasses. I hid my backpack behind a tree and walked back to the guesthouse. Sure enough, there they were, just sitting on the end table. It was still twilight so I didn't need them, so I hung them around my neck by the cord. When I returned to where my backpack was hidden I discovered that the sunglasses were no longer hanging around my neck.
I walked all the way back down to the guesthouse and back but couldn't find them. This time they were really lost. I had been hiking for two hours and covered the same stretch of trail five times. I had put in a half-day of hiking and gone exactly nowhere. In the space of an hour I had lost the same pair of sunglasses twice. Good ones, too.
The area I was hiking through is part of the Middle Hills region. These hills would be considered mountains in most countries. At this point I couldn't even see the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. The landscape was green, covered with rice terraces where people live and forests where they don't.
I wish I could have enjoyed it more. The weather was spectacular, the scenery was nice and I had the trail to myself for most of the day. On the other side of the hills was the road, on which most of the hikers were traveling by bus or jeep.
The ethical, financial, environmental, etc. effects of the road are debatable. The technical aspects are not. To build a road through the Himalayas would require a massive dedication of money and manpower. Think of the palm island of Dubai or the train to Tibet in China.
Here, however, they're just slowly hacking away at sections of the mountains with backhoes. Here they are trying to build another road through the valley where I was hiking.
A massive landslide has swept away a section of trail. Over the next two days I would have to walk across quite a few landslides. At times it was quite frightening.
As you walk along you'll see villages built in the craziest places. Look at the top of the center hill.
At some point in the past someone said, "Hey, this looks like a great place to start a village!" It's funny until you realize, "Oh shit, I probably have to walk up there..."
Nepal is slightly bigger than Florida and is home to almost 30 million people, or about one and a half times the population of Florida. It is the 41st most populous country. I have a hard time getting my head around this. Florida has big cities like Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.
Kathmandu is by far the largest city in Nepal, with about a million residents. The next biggest city, Pokhara, has less than 200,000. There are only 10 cities with more than 100,000 people. That means that the vast majority of the people, over 25 million, live in tiny mountain villages like these.
Finally I stumbled into the village of Jagat. My room provided a nice vantage point for watching traffic on the trail.
Most of the villages along the trail are like this, guesthouses and shops along a single path.
I took a nap, ate dinner, then went to bed, hoping Day 3 would be better.
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