Today we wake up to a tremor that shakes the staircase and our little attic room, and I’m reminded of Nepal’s earthquake history, but it’s short lived and a late breakfast of chappati, omelette for some and copious amounts of tea fuel us for the day ahead.
It’s a shorter stretch planned today as we want to ease the kids into it. Quite a bit of muddy uphill and a few bridges to keep it interesting. A tea house stop at 1.5km to go takes us out of the light rain and gives the kids a chance to build up to the home stretch.
Ominous sounds of thunder start up and we push forward, it just turns to hail briefly as we make it to our destination: The Himalayan Cheese Factory, Ringmu. Set up by the Swiss in the 50s, we finally found the tea house of our base camp dreams. A cosy fire in the main room, with bedrooms off it and even a western toilet and hot shower available for 200rs, sold. We’re wowed by the snowy mountains rising up all around. Kunsang our host’s little boy is excited for company and new toys. He proves to be a handful and a half but great fun.
A lazy afternoon is spent warming up, writing journals, drinking tea and putting drones in the air. Our lunch stretches so late we decide on apple pie for dinner. Spirits are high up in these incredible mountains. We’ve been disconnected for a few days so the stress of the regular world (namely Covid) has all but dropped away and we are excited for what’s to come. Unlike our 1500km Camino this time we intend the youngest boys will walk the entire thing. Ambitious but doable with no fixed agenda we think. We hope.
About 10pm just as we’re all ready to head to bed, reality invades our blissful mountain bubble. Our host mentions family working in Kathmandu are needing to make their way back to Ringmu before transport links shut down. Through a language barrier we dig deeper and uncover that Nepal, while still maintaining their zero cases of Covid has just decided to shut down all long distance transport within Nepal and including international flights; effective in 48 hours. In shock and confusion we talk it through as it hits home that we have not escaped it up here as we naively had hoped, it’s bigger than we’ve realised.
