Nepal - sunrise, sunset

The next day I was legit sore but I think looser. We woke up at 4 in the morning to take a cab up to the town of Sarangkot to watch the sun rise over the town and mountains. As this is a pretty popular outing, N and I made sure to pay attention to what our driver looked like and note his license plates. We walked up about ten flights of stairs to a cement viewing platform that became increasingly crowded as the sun came up. There was even a barefoot white man dancing along to the dulcet tunes of a digiridoo. It was just one of those moments. I was torn between wishing that I was the only one there to experience the light diffusing over the snowcapped Annapurna range in silence and enjoying the fact that I was having this experience with the chatty riot of people from all over the world whom I had never met before and would likely never encounter again.

We walked back down the stairs, somehow coming out in a different spot, and saw our driver. N doubted my recollection of his face as his license plate was not the same. Turns out this car had different front and back license plates. The driver thought it was funny that we checked but I thought we came across as a smidge racist -- all these Nepali look alike!

Then we returned to the hotel for breakfast. N and I both ordered fruit salad and cereal (mine with yogurt and N's with hot milk because she's weird) and juice and tea and eggs and potatoes and pancakes. Turns out I have no idea how to eat a soft-boiled egg from an egg cup. WHY did no one teach me that skill?

Our vacation planner had recommended a nap and then catching the sunset at the Peace Pagoda, a Buddhist shrine on a hill above the city. I would have been down with such a fitting close to the day but we wanted to hike the hill and a sunset hike did not seem wise. So we skipped the nap and set right out for the shrine. We hired a woman to row us across the lake. She gave us an hour and a half before she would head back without us. After about forty minutes we were worried that our timetable would not match the boatwoman's so N wanted to ask a woman coming back down the mountain how much farther it was. She asked this woman (in Korean), "Do you speak Korean?" and this woman answered (in Korean), "No I'm Chinese." And then she said in English that it was five minutes to the top. It was linguistically confusing but we pressed on.

We did our three rounds of the stupa, ate a granola bar, and headed back down the hill. On the boat ride back, our oarswoman started singing. I think she was trying to drown out N's annoying tuneless humming but whatever her motivation, it added flare to the trip.

For further flare we ate lunch at a Korean restaurant. N has a rule not to eat Korean food while travelling but the owner was a friend of a friend so I sat awkwardly drinking free tea while they chatted away. The restaurant was called Nattssul which evidently means "day drinking" so I was all about it.

Then we napped. Suitably groggy, for dinner we wandered to a restaurant that had a stage and a traditional Nepali dance show. We didn't really last long. Tomorrow: we do nothing and  N leaves.