Monday 1 February 2016

I meet the others at Pilgrams hotel. Padmyer (Som’s sister) is our guide and Arneil is Chloe’s porter. We get a taxi to the entrance to the national park and start walking to chisubani. It’s all up hill for the first half and I tire of carrying my pack. We break at a monastery on the way. The monks are chanting and drumming. Arneil takes me inside and I get offered yak butter tea by I very young monk. It’s salty and creamy. On the trail we break again at a Hindu site in the middle of no where. There is a small cave there where a Hindu ‘witch doctor’ (padmayer’s description) is blessing someone. We get offered to have the spot in the forehead and we accept. I took photos but was told by her not to! She was a striking looking young woman colorfully dressed.
I struggle on and eventually we get to chisubani. The small village on top of the range is a mess, destroyed by the quake. It was popular to travelers so there were many hotels there. The community is quickly rebuilding and we get to stay comfortably. One of the multistory hotels collapsed intact, windows unbroken. But six people died here. 4 doctors and two workers were underneath the building having a meeting when the building simply dropped on them. If they were upstairs they would have survived. Of all the skills to be lost that day, medical professionals would have to be the most missed. It’s freezing here.