First day of trekking

Sunday, October 10th. Happy Birthday Vincent!

Woke up at 4 this morning thanks to a front desk wake-up call. Left around 5, got in the bus with 11 French mountaineers and headed to the smallest airport I've been to. Got a 20-passenger plane (crew included) and flew for 35 minutes into the mountains before landing at the even smaller airport of Jumla. Welcomed by tikkas and marigold garlands, I was in heaven (I know, again) all through our long, meandering walk with Indra to a picnic tarp in a darling field outside of a beautiful stone school building with blue window frames. Upon offing our shoes and sitting down, we were served none other than hot Tang. Hallelujah. We're surrounded by fields of millet, buckweat, and barley as we wait here for our other half in the crisp cool air and warm sun of 2000 meters. I just had the best apple I've ever eaten, and now I revel in how good and beautiful life is.
Once the rest of the group gets here, we hike along a big, beautiful mountain river, stopping every half hour for a quick rest. When we get to the village, Kumar, one of the kitchen crew members, throws grapes down from a trellised rooftop where Brett is helping a storekeeper reach the high bunches. We walk through the rest of Urthu's small bazaar and some fields to find that our campsite is right on the bank of the river. We drop our packs and dip our feet in the icy water. The mules who carried our kitchen and much of our gear, freed of their saddles, roll around goofily on their backs, grateful to be free of the load, even after such a short hike of just 2 hours. A troupe of small children from the village come out to play. We skip rocks. They far out-do us. We're served tea.
Austin and I wander downstream to an awesome bridge made of the two halves of a huge tree trunk. We ascend a set of steps on the other side and run into Dan dhai, our trip leader, who had just been setting up our homestays, and took us back up into Urthu to show us the three different beautiful stone and adobe houses where the six of us who chose to will be sleeping tonight. All had wonderful Aamaas who welcomed us in—and one of which sat us down and handed us some of the abundant local apples.
Back at the campsite, we're blessed with our second tikka of the day and single marigolds by a local women's group. We sing “Country Roads,” part of our prepared cultural presentation, to their supposed enjoyment.
Later that afternoon, we wandered back into Urthu as a group and gather on a rooftop, where most if not all of the area's 95 households were sitting and standing on one side. We sat on the other, and took turns presenting songs. We sang “Country Roads,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” and hymn 148 in a quartet. They presented two songs with dancers—one group of young girls and the other of older women—and then a light-hearted rendition of a traditional exorcism in which a young man flailed around crazily, made odd sounds, threw rice in the air, and danced around with a cowbell to the beat of a drum, in order to heal a victim (in this case, Brett, who giggled hilariously throughout) of a spirit. We all found it rather funny and so were glad when they all laughed too. We finished with a joint attempt at Resam Phiriri.
We eat dinner back by the river under a large dining tent, and then Austin, Lacey, Lulu, Amelia, Ana, and I follow Dan dhai back across the bridge to our homestays, where no one is there to greet us anymore, but we hope to see them in the morning. The sky is so dark, the stars are so bright, and the air is silent at 8:00 pm, except for the gentle rolling of the river and the incessant barking of a far off dog or two. This is trekking. We are trekking. Good night.