Day Bike Trek

Journal entry 8/15/2008:
I woke up this morning to Ba's chanting at 5:00 a.m. How does he stand to get up that early? (The Monkey Temple Marching Band was only in the background this time)I really want to sneak a peak and see what accompanies his grunting and shunting, but I am too scared! (And tired :) P and I were somewhat groggy, but I was amped for my bike ride with Emma later in the morning. We left for the children's home around 7:45 a.m. and hung out and played hangman with the kids. We are trying to help them as much as possible with their English, while at the same time picking up on more Nepali. When the language barrier takes its toll, I try and interact with them in a universal lanuage: "High fives (although they didn't really know what this was at first), 'Miss Mary Mac-mac-mac', airplane, tickle monster"- you know the usual. This always seems to get them smiling and wanting more interaction and gives us all a break in the challenges of real communication.
I only had time to eat two apples and a mini-banana for breakfast, which I was fearful would not be enough energy for a 4-5 hour bike ride. I was hoping I had a chance to eat some oats (per Max's advice:), but there was zero chance of that if I wanted to make our 10:30 departure time. I live about a 30-35 minute walk to Thamel, and I was already speed walking fearful of my potential tardiness.

We left for our trek in the middle of Thamel. That was a little crazy to say the least. Dodging cars, people, motorcycles and more people for the first 20 minutes definitely challenged our technical ability on two wheels. We then headed North, and out of Kathmandu. The streets began to become less and less busy and we immediately felt it easier to breathe! More greenery appeared that we had only seen from afar- in the hilltop region. That was really nice. We stopped for tea (typical) about one hour into the ride. This little tea shop was really cute and it was literally a shack filled with only bare essentials in the middle of no-where. Apparently, our guide Padam, is some semi-pro cyclist in Nepal and met a few cycling buddies at this stop. One of them rode with us the rest of the way for part of his training. We kept going North, and stopped for lunch in Thoka. Our off-roading was difficult and draining. Emma and I kept compimenting our decision to do this trek. It was such a good way for us to see some beautiful sights and get some hard core exercise in. We were back in Thamel by 3 p.m. and I made it back to placement in time for physio session in the afternoon.
I can't wait to come back here and go for 2 or 3 day trek with Max!

Hope you can see the pics above.

Love,
J