7 Oct - Orientation and a Close Shave

A comfortable night, short lie in and disgracefully large breakfast at Santa's, and it was time to walk back to Pedong. My over-enthusiasm for some contours, matched only by Sarah's determination, meant that Santa had drafted in his brother to act as guide for our ambitious route.

Setting off in the blazing sun, leaving behind grinning faces and cheery waves, we followed Santa's brother and his friend as they silently yomped uphill, each with a roll of corrugated iron on their shoulders. Up and up we climbed, with an ever improving view North into Sikkim and West to where the big peaks were obscured by haze and growing clouds. A short break,
dropping off the iron, and Santa's still taciturn brother motioned for us to follow. Dropping us at the bottom of a steep flight of stone steps which led up into the undergrowth, gesticulating, and totally over-complicating the route in stunted NepEnglish, he turned and left us to it. If that hike was anything like what we have to look forward to in the Annapurna region in December, then there's some serious training to be done!

Safely home, washed, and three shy faces peered round the corner of the corridor.

"They want to see you" grinned Sarah, tacit in their plan for the fate of my beard. "Sir, Monday not good. My father says now." What could i do? Resistance against these charming 8 year olds was futile, especially when egged on by the wife. Dragged, in metaphor at least, up the street, I was virtually shoved in the barber's chair.

Cut-throat rasor, lashings of shave foam, an extraordinary head-cum-face rub which shook my brain and felt like I was going to see my skin spin around my skull, and the girls squealed with delight: "Sir, you are looking so nice, so handsome (an adjective that Sarah had only taught them the day before) Like your wedding picture.". What could I say? They'd seen GB without in some of our pictures, they'd enjoyed the fact that the barber played along with my plan for an amusing gradual reduction from scraggy beard to goatee to moustache for their entertainment, and all for the equivalent of about 30p. You try entertaining kids any other way for that cheap.

Musing, as the barber moisturised and talced me, on the fact that Sarah and I now understood a bit more about the orientation of our temporary home, I opened my mouth to pick out a stray shawn hair. Quick as a flash, and my finger was pushed away as the barber, clearly keen to have completed his task properly, shoved his fingers into my mouth. Only in India. Urgh!

Photos: apologies for no amusing beard removal shots!

Butter wouldn't melt...

Views above Baranumbra on our route back.