We have picked out a town on the map called Beni, so that is what we used as our destination along the way. The locals were always willing to help point us in the right direction when the road presented us with a fork. Winding up and down these mountains and along the valley was amazing. While my parents have always been strict against me being on anything with two wheel and a motor, my grandfather used to be big into motorcycles. After these past couple days of riding, I can see why they oppose it and he enjoyed them. Gripping the clutch and shifting the gears as we blow past a local bus or come almost to a complete halt as we made our ascent and descent through the mountains was an experience that I feel everyone should enjoy. Being able to not have to see the countryside through an sort of window is the only way to travel and simply having to pull off the road to capture any picture we wanted to was priceless; after that we were able to ratchet up through the gears and make it back to normal traffic speed. As we were driving through the mountains, at each turn I kept saying out loud, "this is so amazing." The steep mountains were scarcely scattered with small groups of houses tucked away in the hillside and covered in foliage or either displayed a huge flat rock face as though it was straight out of the movie Jurassic Park.
Along our journey, we came across many small thriving villages, filled with tractors, animals, school children, and loads of pedestrians roaming the roads, while older people carried huge bags of random goods, strapped to their heads, on their back into and out of town; everything from wood to rice. When we were in a town, we took the time to ask around for gas stations and made sure we were headed the right way. We eventually stumbled upon a gas station where we were able to fill our supplies with gas to last us to Jomsom and back.
The bikers back in Pokhara told us that Beni was an amazing town worth staying in; this place is a dump. As we were riding through the town, I kept thinking to myself, "where are we? It looks like we are on another planet." A local then confirmed that THIS is Benni. There are no roads, just hilly paths littered with sharp rocks and hills to match. My friend and I both came to the conclusion, there was no way in hell we were going to stay here.
With time to spare, we pushed on to see if we could make it to Tatopani before we lost the sun to the steep surrounding mountains. The road to Tatopani from Beni was the worst thing I have ever experienced, including my days offloading and hunting back in the states. The steep wavy roads were carved by rain runoff and large and small rocks. As soon as you would think that it couldn't get any worse, it did. We were really pushing our simple motorcycles to the limit on roads that are ruled by off road motorcycles and huge trucks, both of which made us ever more weary of the drive. At one point, as I attempted to shift down, I accidentally shifted into neutral and lost control of the bike. Due to the steep incline, the front brake wasn't doing justice. As I had to stand up to take control of the bike as best I could, I was unable to reach the back brake. The bike fell over and I broke a small foot rest off the side of the bike, luckily that was all.
We eventually came to a small village, comprising of about ten houses. We made our usually stop to speak with the locals and ask how far the next sign of civilization would be. During our stop, we could see a dark storm tumbling over the mountain tops. We decided that we should stay the night here, take shelter from the storm, and get ready for tomorrow's adventure. We spoke to a couple of the locals and they all gathered to help find a solution to my broken bike. Just shows how incredibly nice these people are. Just as we got all our gear unloaded and our bikes parked in shelter, a huge storm came through the area. This may sound weird, but the storm produced the biggest rain drops I have ever seen and was accompanied with some lite hail. With this thick rain and hard hail bouncing off the tin roof, my friend and I both looked at each other and said, "this is awesome." It may not seem like something really cool, but it was just something about being stranded in some village that isn't even on the map with a good friend that truly made this an adventure. Its not about your destination, but the journey along the way.
After the rain subsided, we began to speak with our guesthouse hosts. Since they, and most others in the village, spoke very little english, we relied on our travel book to carry on extremely basic conversations. "Hungry" "Food?" "Chicken?" and a whacking motion as if we were cutting the head off a chicken. Soon after, our guesthouse host cooked us an amazing meal, which started off with us watching them cut the head of the chicken we would eat that night; talk about fresh. They understood something I assume! Our meal was as close to authentic cooking as it gets. The only time it has gotten as close is when I have killed deer back in the states and then cooked some of it that night for dinner; it doesn't get much better than living off the land.
The rest of the night was spent exploring the village and planning out our next move, hoping that the roads will not be as fierce to allow for a quicker travel.
No comments:
Post a Comment