Trekking, Day 2, Khare to Ulleri – Up at half seven, a quick tea, then we were off. For the first part of the morning, we followed the paved road. Evidently, the Chinese come down and build a new section of the road every year, so their trucks can bring Chinese goods over the border. Hence, all the locals refer to it as the Chinese road. We followed the road, then veared off towards Lumli at 1585 meters.
Wandered through this village that clings to the side of the mountain and made our way to Chandrakot at 1550 meters for our next tea break. From there, it was a steep climb down into the valley where we followed the river along, finally arriving at Birenthani at 1065 meters. Birenthani is a cool little town with sidewalk cafes, but it touched too touristy for my taste. We sat there and had breakfast and while we were there, we found Som, one of Ram’s friends from Pokhara. Som was guiding an older British woman, Helen and a 32-year-old Swedish woman, Maurita.
As Ram and Som chatted together, I started talking to Maurita and Helen. Since we were all going in the same direction, I ended up walking with the other two ladies. Maurita was a really cool hip girl, but Helen was a decrepit old typical English grandmother who complained all the time. The good thing was that she could not keep up with my pace and Maurita preferred walking with me, so the old mother as Ram and Som called her was always miles behind. We walked uphill all afternoon, rather steep at times before reaching Tirkhedungha at 1525 meters.
Lunch and rest, then we started the hell climb up to Ulleri at the top of the hill, 500 meters, straight up climbing stairs. Two hours later, we reached Ulleri 2070 meters where we got a bed at another of those lodges with the creaky floors and the stairs like those in Holland. This place actually had a dining room for people to sit in with a row of windows facing the valley we just climbed out of. Ulleri has a lot of character and it stuck up on the side of the hill balanced precariously up there, plus the Nepalese Military can be seen walking up the mountain through Ulleri on route to the high-altitude military camp up in Jomsom. We ate dinner by candlelight and we drank peppercorn, yes pepper tea tasted like milk, pepper, and sugar and Ram and Som sang some Nepalese songs to us before we retired to bed.