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Under Construction — This post is a work in progress. Thoughts, structure, and content may change.

Day 3 / 15 : Jagat to Deng

date: 12 / 5

Today we started early at 7. We had out breakfast at 6:30. Breakfast for me was muesli and milk. It was a horrible choice. I had acidity as soon as I started walking.

Today's trail was fun. Initially we walked on the road that is being built and then we crossed onto the other side of the valley . Today we kept crossing multiple bridges.

The first village we crossed today was Philim which is an extremely pretty village. We stopped for something to drink and had tea/hot lkn juice. It was refreshing. The photographer of the group (Hassan) managed to delete some pictures and he decided to buy a new SD card for his camera at Philim. It was extremely lucky that we found a shop selling electronics and other good. Hopefully he will be able to recover the pictures from the other card, as he has some really good pictures of me.

After this we were headed to Eklebhatti-chisapani. This was a very comfortable walk which took us around 45 mins. It was beautiful. The sun was not too bright and it was windy. At the lunch place we had to wait for about an hour to get food as it was a very crowded place and we had ordered in the end.

After lunch we still had about 11km to cover and the main part of today's hike was still about to begin. The walk till the next village called "Nyak Phedi". The route till this section was also very okay-ish !

After nyak-phedi we had the most spicy section of the trail till a place called pewa. This section was very sketchy with lots of exposed slopes and a very large boulder section. This was extremely fun. Especially compared to the roads we were walking on.

After Pewa the trail was again easy. We did go through a very humid forest section. Soon we reached our destination Dyang.

At dyang the tea-house is stellar. The owner mr. Chandra grows all the vegetables locally and is very enthusiastic about sharing his love for the food and the mountains with others. He used to be a mountain guide in Ladakh. The establishment they run here is a family-run business with his sister, wife, daughters and sons pitching all helping out. The food here is amazing. We even have wifi and electricity.

I spent sometime hanging out with our guide and he took me to the kitchen to talk to a few folks. When I said that I'm from Kolkata, one person started naming random places from Kolkata. Turns out he had visited Kolkata for 3 weeks 12 hears back. What are the odds.
Our guide Jangbu and I shared a cup of the local liquor rakshi. We had it warm upon the suggestion of Jangbu. Mr. Chandra even offered some fresh Kimchi (he makes his own kimchi) as it goes well with the rakshi. This Rakshi was more potent than the one I had in Machhakhola. Mr. Chandra was very proud and told.me that he made it himself (it's a local drink, I'm not surprised).

I met another person Mr. Sujan who is 30 year old and is a trained charterd accountant, but he choose to become a guide in Nepal because he plans to visit all the trekking routes in Nepal before getting a job as a CA. Turns out there is a proper process to get a license to be a guide in Nepal. You have to clear a 35 day course with lots of theory and exams and field training. He said that he has been on the Annapurna side too. We were speaking about Sherpas and the climbing culture in Nepal when he said something that I found interesting. Turns out that not everyone can get a license to become a high altitude guide (the ones that operate in the everest region). Apparently only a certain caste / community is given these permits. Ofcourse there is no direct ruke as such, but I'm sure caste and politics and connections within the industry plays a very important part. His friend says "Sherpa parvat me, rai, gurung pahad me" indicating that there is a well-established system at play here. I need to read up on this.

All this is happening while I'm sipping on my cup of rakshi. Jongbu is busy video calling his family. He decides to point his phone towards me and I introduces the wife and daughters to me. They were as embarrassed as I. 🤣🤣

Anyway, the rakshi was hitting me and I needed water too. My teammates didn't approve of me drinking.
With this I took their leave, called my mother, noted the expenditure on the budget excel sheet and decided to shut down for the night.

Status
Time is 21;30
Battery is charged.
No wifi in the room
Feet hurts, but that's why we're here.