The landscape of the Lower Mustang is incredible — arid brown hills divided up by glacier fed rivers lined with crops and old settlements and surrounded by steep, snow-capped peaks. We took it slow on the hike up to Muktinath because we were ascending from 9,000 feet to 12,500 feet after being at a mere 2,500 feet 24 hours earlier. Thakur set a particularly slow pace, and Kirsten and I found it a little too slow compared to what we’re used to, but we enjoyed the casual pace and soaked in the scenery as we walked past farms and stopped occasionally to look out at old ruins across the valley or watch women make Tibetan scarves on their looms.
With about 500 feet to go, Kirsten and I decided to go on ahead, so we asked Thakur what lodge he wanted to stay at. Kirsten was still fighting her cold, so it was particularly rough on her, so we went at a brisk but not uncomfortable pace and made it to Muktinath about half an hour ahead of Joseph & Thakur. However, the extra effort we expended took its toll, and while Thakur felt fine when he arrived, we both were pretty exhausted. Our room in Muktinath at the North Pole was a little rougher than in Kagbeni. Muktinath is the first village below Thorung La, the 17,000 foot pass that trekkers doing the complete Annapurna Circuit most cross. Apparently we didn’t beat all the traffic coming down from Thorung La because we ended up in a room right next to the smelly common bathroom.After checking into our room, we took a walk up to Muktinath Temple, and passed several souvenir stands where the women proprietors had learned a funny phrase: “Look, look. No buy, just look. Very cheap. Evening prices!” We came back from the temple, and met up again with Joseph & Thakur and checked out the new Tibetan Buddhist temple behind our lodge. We hung out there for a while and admired the colorful structure. The sky was a deep blue all around with the exception of a solitary dark cloud right behind the temple.
There is power all the way up here, indeed we walked next to power lines most of the way to Muktinath, but there was a typical blackout at dinner time even up here. We had a nice dinner and chatted with the server who was very friendly and hard-working. Kirsten had her favorite meal so far, a delicious fried rice dish. The next morning we started the long walk down to Marpha. On the way through Jarkot we bought a bunch of scarves for souvenirs. Interestingly, the lower we got the mroe expensive they got. They were offering them for NR 100 near Muktinath Temple last night (the “evening price”), but we got them for 200 at one stand, and had to bargain hard to get them down to 225 at the next one. Still, at about $3, that’s still quite a deal.
The trail down deviated from the road for a short stretch and wound through some rocky cliffs, before descending back down to the road between Kagbeni and Jomsom. It was pretty cold, so we wore the new scarves. We reached Eckle-Bhat between Jomsom and Kagbeni around noon and had lunch. While we waited for them to cook our dal bat, a small boy came up to the table and started playing with our cameras. I flipped out the view-finder on my camera so he could watch his face in the monitor as he took the pictures. He figured out how to use the camera pretty quickly, which was kind of amazing. While we were eating, the wind picked up considerably and the tea hosue was a comfy refuge. When at last we headed back out, it was really howling, blowing plumes of dust and sand across the river bed.
We went down the street to check out the next lodge that Thakur recommended, the Mount Villa, and they had just one double with a bathroom. We decided to take it, even though it was just okay. It was nice to have an attached bathroom, but the toilet seat was broken and you had to turn on the leaky water supply to fill the tank every time you flushed. They also had a triple room, which we thought Joseph & Thakur could take if they wanted to stay at the same lodge as us. We took back one of the keys to the Paradise and kept the other set so Joseph was sure to have a room. We left a note for them, then walked around the village. Marpha is another village with a quaint medieval feel like Kagbeni. It had narrow flagstone streets. Under the flagstones water was running through the town.Joseph and Thakur showed up about an hour after we did, but Joseph decided to find another place with a private bathroom. Thakur didn’t want to stay in the triple room at our lodge because guides get reduced rates on food and lodging if they stay in the guides’ room instead of a tourist room. We had to eat separately from them because the lodges charge really low rates on the room but make all their money on the food, so they expect you to eat your meals there if you stay there.
At dinner, we met a “trustafarian,” as Kirsten referred to him, from Santa Monica who is living in India teaching enlightenment or something. He was pretty amusing — at one point he talking about how little he brought for the trek, just a few clothes and his guitar, and how it’s so amazing how simply you can live if you just let go, then five minutes later he was talking about how great it was to have movies on his Ipod to keep him entertained during downtime on the trek. Earlier, at Joseph and Thakur’s lodge, we met another interesting person – a woman from New York who lives in Bangkok who was heading into the Mustang and seemed a little ill-prepared, but made up for it with her abundantly cynical view of world politics.
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