Slept in a bit today, which I feel like we deserve after waking up at 4am in the freezing cold yesterday. After breakfast, we bid farewell to Pete and John, who went straight to Marpha today, instead of detouring to Kagbeni like us. It was only a 2.5 hour walk, which was most a gentle downward slope. The scenery was amazing as it has been the past few days. Descending out of the snow, the landscape is mostly desert here. But if you read my posts on Ladakh, you know I think this type of desert mountainscape is one of the most beautiful in the world. The last stretch was pretty steep down, but we were soon at Hotel Shangri-La. The place really lives up to its name as it’s the most relaxing and my favorite place so far. Relatively nice rooms, great dining room (which if you haven’t noticed yet, is where everyone spends the majority of their time), and good food. Kagbeni is the Mustang district, which is split into Upper and Lower Mustang. We’re right on the border between the two, right now. In fact, we cannot go north into Upper Mustang unless we purchase 700 USD permits. The reason is that Upper Mustang is a restricted area and the Nepali government wants to preserve the area by keeping tourism down. We learned that Upper Mustang actually has its own king, although its still part of Nepal. Nonetheless, I’m happy to actually be in Mustang at all. I’ve heard and read about it before and I never thought I’d ever come here. Its such a remote and isolated place, the descriptions of the lost kingdom deep in the Himalaya sound almost mythical.

            One last interesting note about this place is that its run by a wife who’s married to two brothers. Our guides explained that the practice of marrying two brothers is actually a really old Nepali custom that’s still practiced sometimes in the really rural areas. From an anthropological standpoint, its explained as a way to increase survival chances in this inhospitable environment. Any children born are the older brother’s children. Seems like a strange custom (even to our guides), but it definitely shows how remote we are. The other thing that we laughed about all night was one of the ladies that works here is always nursing her baby and walking around. When she was nursing him when we arrived, I thought maybe we just caught her at a bad time, but she walked around and did her duties at the hotel with her sweater constantly pulled up to nurse the kid. The funniest thing was when she approached another group’s table, with one hand holding the baby hanging off her breast and the other hand on her hip, and said, “What you want order?” We laughed all night at that as we imitated her. Food notes: yak cheese is reallllly good Chyang, the local beer is not so good. Its like a thin yogurty drink made from rice. I’ll stick to the rakshi.   

  

            So yesterday we only walked a few hours to Kagbeni.  The downhill wasn’t so bad as the day before, but I could definitely feel the stiffness in my thighs, knees and shins from the descent the day before.  Even my toes were a bit sore last night when I stretched them out.  Happily the lodge we’re in turned out to be pretty nice.  You can see in the wood panels, stone floors, and overall construction of the place that more money and thought went into the construction of the building.  Its not composed of crookedly placed plywood boards like many of the other places we’ve stayed.  I like that this hotel is all enclosed—no outside corridors.  For the first time since Manang, the pipes didn’t freeze at night and our room was finally warmer (being at a lower altitude helps).  Happily the food here was good, with the apple momos (think fried potsticker filled with apples and cinnamon) and veg thukpa (fresh noodle soup) being very satisfying.