Hillside Villages

I have hiked through many hillside villages over the past few days. Some on purpose, some on accident. It happened accidentally because unnoticed merges in a descending path become confusing forks when ascending the same path. Hard to imagine it gets better, but the villagers are friendliest group I have met in Nepal. Everyone says hello, 'namaste'. Mostly, it's due to their kind nature, but a personal theory is that they also want to see if you can breathe well enough to respond. Everyone works so hard just to sustain life. For starters, what I would consider a medium difficulty hike is their walk home, on stone paths and steep stone staircases built into the hillside. They live off the land harvesting their food and often carrying it up in baskets on their back or attached to their forehead by a band. Children entertain themselves on swings made of bamboo, by playing imaginary sword fighting with chickens and once, by stealing my cell phone to play a game on it.

I hiked through the Sarangkot hillside village to watch the sunset, a venture recommended by 'the bible'. The short 30-minute hike was rewarded with some of the most amazing view I have seen since the Everest flight. It was a relatively clear evening and the top of the Sarangkot village had 360-degree views of the hills and the Himalayas. There were many guest houses at the top and if one can handle trekking their pack up 30 minutes of stairs, I would highly recommend staying there. The village is full of families, there are few tourists and the guest houses are strategically placed to take advantage of the sunrise and/or sunset views.

Of course, I stayed too long at the top thinking how lucky I was to spend the next 8 days in the Himalayan villages, surrounded by the people and the mountains. I climbed back down in the dark. Because I had seen a snake on a previous hike, I thought that every noise I heard was another snake coming to get me. About half way down, a local passed me, stopped to ask where I was going, then led the way back down, saving me from fearing any more snakes.