KTM to some random village

I woke up to a chick on my chest. Its father was greeting the sun noisily. It wasn't quite six-thirty am, but I felt fantastic. Greg and I had headed out from Kathmandu the night before to a town called Chisapani (well, that was our destination) hiking through the Shivapuri NP. The walk up was very pleasant, the green, green foliage, hunting at the high frequency of monsoon rains, parting only long enough to show corners of terraced hillsides and small, quiet dare I say peaceful army bases. the Napali army is said to be the best in the world ( they dont have a word for retreat in Nepali apparently). Yet other studies tell us that they are the happiest people on earth. Many a costumed soldier with a big friendlyt smile would bring us a stool if we we spotted sitting the on the muddy ground. The trails were also armed with leeches, which are now my least favorite creature on earth, beating out the baboons that guard cape point in SA. Even the way to remove them is unpleasant. They get a good storng grip on you, so many people use salt, which causes them to drop off of your skin, and explode. Gross. Greg patiently peeled of a number of them off of my legs and feet after many panicked shrieks while I turned away, making sounds of disgust and then needed a good hands-hung-limply-wrist-shake-dance before continuing on. We had yak cheese and Isreali chocoalte and watched poor sweet goats being led to the slaughter for the upcoming Dasain festival in KTM (side note, have you ever heard a goat sneeze? It has to power to make you all vegetarians. ) We soon discovered why Nepali innocence and generosity has its rare but quite detrimental downfalls. Everyone with whom we spoke verified our position in relation to our destination agree unaimously that yes, Chisapani is that way. What we could never get them to see eye to eye on was how long such a journey would take us. Five kilometers jumped to fifteen as easily as one and a half hours fell to twenty minutes. We walked for an eternity, and as night began to darken our path, we realized that we had not seen another person in over two hours. Not a good sign. The Nepali also dont seem too fond of roadside signs. However, I could not pile the blame exclusively on the eager-to-please Nepali for finding ourselves lost in the pitch black in the pouring rain with the leeches without a roof. Chisapani was not to be located on our brand-spanking new Kathmandu Falley trial map, but we, curiously, bought it anyways. Greg saw some dim lights in the distance, and after leaving me to watch the bags, flashlights focused out into the darkness waiting for dangerous, what, butterflies? he had located our heros for the evening. A small Nepalese family made up of a mother, son and grandfather, set out a rattan basically oversized door mat as our mattress, pillows hard as sacks of millet (entirely possible) and blankets we had used in Jaisalmer during our camel safari, but I passed out in seconds and slept like a baby on their rainy porch. I could hardly be angry with the rooster when I saw the sun rising up over the great snowy Himalayas, clouds settled between each mountain.