Day 234: Final Descent

The final day was the most physically difficult for, since it was almost entirely downhill. The persistent impact on my knees makes them really sore after awhile, and while I can relieve it a bit by changing how I walk that usually leads to other parts of my legs getting destroyed. It was also one of my favourite days in terms of scenery. We got a last final look back at the mountains in the morning, but throughout the day we passed through little farming villages spread over the extensive terracing I'd been appreciating from afar on earlier days, and we just got a much closer look at the culture.

The end of my trek coincided with the beginning of the Tihar Festival (the Nepalese version of Dipawali), and from a child's point of view it seemed to be something of a cultural equivelant to halloween. At each village along the mountain as we climbed down groups of children would block the path and dance and sing a festival song and try to get you to give them money to let you pass. At first it was cute and fun, and the amount of money they wanted was like giving them 10 cents, and apparently they'd use it to buy things for a festival picnic. The problem was that there were a lot more villages and children blockades then I had small bills, and I wasn't going to start giving away all my real money. We had to start coming up with different strategies to sneak around them or let others blunder into them then sneak by while the kids were distracted. Sometimes there was nothing to do but to plough through with little kids hanging off your arms and dragging along behind you until they eventually gave up and went for easier targets.

Eventually we got back to town and caught the bus back to Pokhara. My legs were feeling pretty bad at this point, and by the time I'd moved my bags to my new hostel I was pretty exhausted. I had only booked a single night and was planning to take the bus to Kathmandu in the morning, but that plan was thrown into jeopardy when after having a nap I discovered I threw up anything I ate or drank. I'm not sure if it was caused by dehydration, or by some of the tea I had along the way not getting boiled properly, or just the accumulation of multiple days of bad hygine, but I went to bed feeling pretty terrible.