The Manang Valley is the end of the line for the Annapurna Driving Circuit. Huge 7500 meter peaks surround the valley. I’d arrived muddy and short of hiking supplies on a sputtering motorcycle. The last twenty-five kilometers took four hours over jagged cliffs and through thick mud, resulting in me, showing up on the front porch of a teahouse begging for a place to sleep. At the end of a long, intense ride there there is nothing I want more than to flop onto a mattress, completely silent, and sleep until dawn. I banged on the door. It swung open with an man woman wearing a hand knitted beanie, answering:
“Full”
“I’ll sleep—“, I began, as the door slammed in my face. “—anywhere...”
Granted, I was not a sight for sore eyes. Caked in mud, knees bloody from dropping the bike—probably what the dogs were after—and Annapurna was a leading sector of tourism in Nepal. I’d been told lodging was easy and here I was stranded on a door step.
“Please.” I banged.
A voice could be heard through the door, “Go to the bar.”
The bar was across the street. This tiny village was no more than five structures. The only noise and light pouring onto the street was from the bar. There was a sandwich board advertising 2-for-1 happy hour, in the middle of the freaking Himalayas, and god knows how late the bar would be open. There were obviously patrons.
“Please!” I banged one more time.
“No!”
The New Buddha Lodge had brass urli silverware next to bottles of whiskey and a group of three young Dutch travelers —probably taking up the spare beds at the tea house—played cards. There were cigarette butts cascading out of two ash trays and a blonde man of probably twenty-two, who had a marker drawn on, spoke to me. He seemed to be the leader of this sorry group of trekkers, he asked, “Yah, my friend, join us for a drink.”
I didn’t have the energy nor the inclination so I replied, “Who works here?”
“Where are you traveling from, sit down, join us”
It was obviously a family home from the wedding photographs and a very prominently displayed photograph of their probable daughter in New York City. For these trekkers, I wanted nothing to do with him. Young, careless, unafraid of strangers—all the qualities I used to have.
Priya, the lodgings proprietor, in her ruffled dark hair, ran in speaking on a video call.
“Take off your boots” she told me, “I’m talking to my daughter in New York City.”
“You got any beds?”
“Boots off first,” she shot back.
Quickly, I shuffled them off avoiding any eye contact from the Dutch group, the last thing I wanted was to be drawn into conversation. I wanted to sneak out hiking in the morning, before they would wake up drier eyed and hungover.
“This way.” Priya waved me through the kitchen and then kicked open a door behind the bar. There were four pads on the floor and a bucket catching dripping water.
From the bar: “yah, we can be cuddle buddy’s”
Annapurna, the great Himalayan mountain range. Hunting down giants hidden in the hills, the stuff of Netflix documentaries and yeti myths, and not only was it not the Ritz-Carleton but I had a cuddle buddy. Welcome to Annapurna…However, my luck would change slightly. I hung my mud-soaked jeans and leather jacket behind the door—flopped onto the floor. I was done, caput, dead to the world, ready to drift off into a sweet abyss, and then that Dutch man barged in and said, “Come on, buy me a drink before we get all smoochy smoochy. We need a hiking member in the morning”.
To be continued, (maybe…)
