It could be worse… (Continued)

I gripped my trekking pole in one hand and my yen in another and shuffled as unobtrusively as a blond, brightly dressed, down-clad, Oakley-wearing female could in the middle of a town of locals all dressed in blacks and browns. To the left and to the right mangy, flea bitten dogs eyed me conspicuously with saliva dripping from their jaws. A small tractor made its way down the road as one of the dogs dragged its lame and infected hind limbs over the road to avoid its path. A puppy ran through the raw sewage which lay in the ditch alongside a dirt sidewalk. Dust from the dry Tibetan plateau blew through the streets kicking up dust devils and leaving a trail of rubbish in its wake. I tried to remember the exact date of my last rabies shot...

Locals went about their daily business, sitting outside their shops and catching up on the latest Tingiri gossip. As I entered the local supermarket I breathed a sigh of relief to have made it unscathed and paid for my water as the shop owner brushed the dust off of the 1.5L bottle.
Our hotel was a far cry from the luxuries of Nylam. The ‘Tingiri Hilton’ offered two pit toilets (two rooms made of clay marked with a wooden door about waist-height; and, in each ’room’ two open pits next to each other so, if inclined, two people could share a rather ‘intimate’ moment). The holes in the ground dropped about 5-feet into a fly-infested abyss below which served as a playground for several stray dogs. Nothing was left to the imagination.

The hotel was white with a brightly painted façade and doors that opened up to the dusty ‘parking lot’. The rooms themselves were very basic - with a flea and dust infested mattress providing protection from the single steel-framed bed. The ceiling was made of brightly decorated plastic-tablecloth-like material which was ripped in places to reveal a roof of straw. I dusted off some crumbs, laid my sleeping bag out over the old lime green duvet on the bed and reached for the disinfectant hand cleaner. It was going to be a long two-days…

Unfortunately most of the team seems to be suffering from the same stomach bug that I suffered with in Kathmandu. Several days ago, while gripping the ‘porcelain throne’ in Kathmandu I thought that life could not get any worse. I now felt absolutely terrible for those forced to make use of the dismal pit toilets - the smell of which alone sent your stomach reeling. It was a combination of both the altitude gain, the change in diet (eg. steak and chips to rice, rice, rice, cabbage, rice, pickled beans, ‘mystery meat‘… suspiciously ‘mystery‘ because in spite of all of the diseased dogs wandering around, not a dead dog was in sight).

Whilst the conditions were far from ‘comfortable’ we all seemed to make the best of it with a sense of humor and Tingiri has become the butt of many jokes and comparisons. Hours of acclimatization are spent playing games to the effect of:

“Would you rather spend a month in prison or a week in Tingiri” or
“Would you rather pet a dog in Tingiri or drink water from a tap in Tingiri”.
“Would you rather have your tooth pulled without anesthetic or have it pulled by a dentist in Tingiri?”

Meals were basic and served in the ‘hotel restaurant’ where we were crammed around circular tables and left to rub our chopsticks together as a source of heat whilst we waited for yet another rice extravaganza.