Pame Bazar

Suraksha has her hair combed by Maya in the dining room and I came up too early for I am ready to go to Pokhara.  Eyes itch constantly, overcast valleys, who’s  your brother, who’s  your sister, auntie, cousin, who’s not related on this mountain?  Rice and vegetables at 9am.  A small pot of black coffee and sugar and a handful  of dry mangos. 

I have moved relentlessy since the summer of 2009 and I forget the settled ones have roots, long and complicated, twisting in either wind, coming together .  And I gave up trying to keep track of all the connections in this family, if he is your brother, ok, you have many sisters, you are lucky, and this family is, quite fortunate, to have so many. 

 

We hike down the mountain, a taxi is not waiting for us, no problem, it’s all in the name of exercise.  We head to Pame Bazar, a community when Pewa lake gives way to rice fields, to pay a visit to Maya’s sister and cousins settled a 30 minute trek from the road, up into the jungle.  A fine  glass of lassi, a cup of chai, fresh pineapple her cousin cut down from his garden, sliced up with the sickle and served deliciously wet.  Her cousin also cut out a baby bamboo shoot and sliced that thing up, there had to be at least 6 kilos of shavings.  Maya’s sister served us a plate of curry potatoes and slightly sweetened corn bread meal and wow, I’m full, ready for a smoke.  We carried out the backpack full of bamboo and four pineapples, along with a few cucumbers and another bumpy green vegetable with a rather pungent flavor. 

We stop at a restaurant on a causeway with rice fields on either side for a fish snack and beer , a taxi we called to pick us up came, and in the back a young man with a very sick child, the child’s head in his lap.  He is in no rush to go anywhere and Maya says let’s go and we see and run for the  bus and good timing for us, but where  you find the poorest and the terribly ill on roads that loosen every bone and make you need to pee a lot faster,  into the city center for food, eye drops, candles, trail mix and on and on.  Back up to Sarangkot by 7:30pm, the taxi driver drops us off at the elementary school and we climb up the  last 20 minutes in the dark.  Today it’s time to race up, with the the bag of baby bamboo on my back, time to get in some better  shape. Trekking seasons starts in two months.