The passing clouds obscure the 6000-meter snow-tipped peaks towering over the Langtang Valley, but the 5000-meter ragged summits cut through the mist with each parting of the clouds.

The tea house serves a good cup of yak butter tea. I’m not liking the salty brew, but it does provide warmth and nourishment. Dorzee our guide is inside the teahouse speaking with a female Sherpa guide and an Austrian woman fluent in Tuchin in Tibetan. I can only speak English, French, and German. I learned a little Bahasa Indonesian in Biak, Bali, and Sumatra. No Thai, Sherpa or Nepali.

Dorzee has been kind enough to translate for us.

He emerges from the tea house and bids good-bye, “Chag-po nang.”

We proceed up the steep trail passing head-high prayer walls.

Garz-bo is steep in Tibetan.

I’m sure like the Eskimos they have other words for steep.

I have three.

Steep, very steep, and very fucking steep.

English is my only usable language in this valley other than hand signals, which I use whenever I treat people for cuts, festering wounds, and encrusted eyes. My thermometer amazing them, since I have to put in in their mouth. I usually stick out my tongue to show that I am not a demon. The last of my patients at this rest stop are watching me wash my sox. All these young boys and girls are all barefoot.

They waved good-bye, as we like every foreigner passing their village head higher to Kyangjin at the head of the valley.

We pass head-high prayer walls erected by faithful Buddhists. The porters mutter prayers and Dorzee says, “They not say these prayers. No one read Tibetan. Not read English. Only lamas read walls. No one here read. No one go school. Not have schools. Before we have many walls. Now not many. Everything not same. No grass, no yaks, no money, no carving.”

Something was not right in the mountains. The monsoons came at a different time and the snows were always late. For some reason every year was warmer.

A platoon of Nepali soldiers pass us on the trail. The sergeant talks with Dorzee, while the patrol hikes forward. After the sergeant’s departure, he says, “Still have trouble in Kathmandu> Most time never see soldiers up here. Government want to tell Sherpas they are in charge. They come and they go. They never stay.”

The villagers are Sherpa, Tibetan or Gurkha. They live on the other side of time. Far from the world below. Once the monsoons come the trekking season will be over and the porters will return the shoes and warm clothing to the Kathmandu agencies, then return to up mountain. The villages will retreat into the security of a past lost to the now.

The poverty increases every step forward. Life goes on as it has for millenia. Everyone is uneducated, illiterate, unwashed, malnourished, sick, wear rags, but they always have a smile for us. especially when I give a pen and paper or a postcard of Bali or Thailand to the children. So little will make them happy. I also have sweets. Several Lonely Planet backpackers have ventured reproached me for distributing these candies to the locals. They give no one nothing. Lance tells me to ignore them.

After the next tea stop the porters light cigarettes, swing the packs onto their backs. The loads are getting less and their pace is twice ours. All for $5/day.

Thankfully they are getting all that money, unless they lose it in cards.

The sun is setting over the high rim of Himalayas. It is a little colder than before and Lance and I have decide to sleep in the tea house. Still cold, but it’s out of the wind. We have run out of whiskey. Dice and I have switched to the milky millet beer. Tongba, which we drink around a blazing fire. Three cups and I’m feeling okay, glad to not humping on the trail and breathing easier at this altitude.

The porters are playing ‘Jhyap’, a take and discard card game whose which you play from the three best hands. Money is being waged by everyone. I have no interest n losing money and retire to my room. I am out cold at 8pm.

LATER

Dorge won 70 RPs. Labarai won even more from the porters and villagers. 200 Rupees. About three days of trekking wages and the losers have been losers all the way up the trail. None of them have the sneakers I bought them, but they still have cigarettes

I’ve worked hard, but not like the porters.

Working at the diamond exchange I never break a sweat. The heaviest thing I lift is a pencil or paper. I don’t want to work. I want to travel all the time, but I need money.

I wish I could sell my noVel NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Maybe I’ll be lucky in Paris, London, and New York. Maybe I’ll be able to sherry it to Monty. It really doesn’t matter. I’m four days away from civilization.