Mera Peak day 5 – The Iranians know how to party
The beds were solid, like sleeping on a plank of wood. I guess that's because we were sleeping on a plank of wood. I don't think I moved at all for around 4 hours. The pillow was like a concrete slab. I woke up a few times through the night, I heard Jane get up and go to the loo, and I heard Martin peeing into a bottle in the room next to me - as the plywood walls are thinner than paper.
We were all up before our 6:30am wake up call, it was so noisy with people walking around with their boots on that it was impossible not to! In my bleary state this morning my right foot nearly slipped down the massive hole of the short drop because the wood was so slippery, probably due to all the wee over it!
This is Jane, excited about going to visit the short drop:
For breakfast this morning I ate porridge. I don't really like porridge that much but I couldn't face anything else. I'm just not a breakfast person. I jazzed it up with some jam but couldn't eat it all. Thankfully all the people that were feeling dodgy yesterday are feeling better today.
We set off around 8:45am, ready for 3 hours of downhill, which really wasn't downhill. There were parts that were down but there was a significant amount of up!
We reached the pass and then the path went down, steep down. And steep up. And steep down. And steep up. We rounded a corner and got our first view of Mera peak. We sat for a while and stared up at where we were headed. It seems so close and yet so far away.
We carried on down to the tea house and hung around and waited for the others to catch up, half an hour more and we made it to another tea house where we had tea and noodle soup. While we were there a group of Iranians came along. They were on the way down having just summited Mera. All of them made it - so cool. It was nice to hear a success story.
We chatted to them about what it was like, I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not! They all looked pretty battered. They had tea and handed around their food - dried figs and nuts - then they stared on the beer, who can blame them! Then something magical happened, they got out some kind of tambourine and the older man - who had been very sedate until now - burst into song. They all got up and started dancing. It's moments like these that are so magical and make the trip so special.
We had to move on so we left them partying.
The afternoon was up down up down - just like they said. After around an hour we got to the river and had another half an hour break. I led on a rock and I think I had a little snooze. Once the other had caught up we moved on. The trail was quite intense, lots of very steep up and very steep rocky down. But we made it to Kothe in about an hour. It's a huge village, huge compared to the previous villages anyway, something I wasn't expecting!
We got there around 4pm. We bought out of date Sprite - Chets got a deal - and out of date Twix bars, because they were less out of date than the Mars bars.
The lodge we stayed in was really fancy, they are doing a lot of building here. We had a wander around the village and saw loads of cute children and friendly people. The toilet was amazing. It was still a hole in the ground but there was a chute underneath that you 'flushed' with a bit of water, gone and the next person doesn't have to see it. And, depending on what you produce, it can just roll down the chute on its own!
I have a job now, I write all the dinner orders and breakfast orders. I quite like having a job, it's a bit of a novelty having not worked for a while!
We sat in the lodge with the stove burning and chatted, we had lemon tea and biscuits. Dinner came and the garlic soup was something else. There was so much garlic in it that my mouth was on fire! There must have been a whole bulb of garlic in it, maybe 2!
I had fried momos and then chips. I was too full up for the chips but I forced others to help me eat them. Paul, being significantly taller than the entire population of Nepal, helped to do some DIY by putting nails into the roof to hang up a light.
I feel like there is quite a large expectation on me to be super fit, the fittest, and at the front of the pack all the time. Well, I am near the front. Chets, Martin T and Stuart are always a couple of minutes in front of me. Not too far away! We spend a lot of time waiting about, it's so unusual for me to have so much time to spare, I still can't get used to it.