Day three in Nepal. Night spent in Besi Shahar, en route to Annapurna Circuit.

We stay in Best View Hotel. I turn on the light in my room. There is a spider on the wall three inches in diameter. I stare at it and curse. The bed sheet (there are no linens) has four or five dots of blood. I check for bedbugs. The pillow has no pillowcase and is slate gray.

The temple music from across the street has a fantastic beat and the voices are beautiful. But they chant deep into the night. I worry about rest and beginning the trek exhausted. I toss and turn and keep opening my eyes and studying the wall. There is a smear over my head where the spider was cornered and killed. I drape a tee shirt on the pillow but as I toss I lay my head on the filthy pillow. I eventually snag an hour of sleep here and an hour there. Finally at four-thirty I give up and begin my day.

The bathroom is ceramic tile floor, ceiling, and walls. There is a hole in the floor with indications as to where to place my feet. I’ve been this route before, in other such places, and wonder at having delivered myself here again. I step outside to catch my breath after the toilet and in the distance are mountains, big mountains and the morning light is pink on their slopes. At my feet is collected waste: broken bikes, toilet seats, cans, paper, wood, and endless pounds of plastic. There is no trash removal in this place and garbage is collected then burned. Remains of burnt metal and melted plastic from former fires lay here and there, dotting the landscape off into the foothills.

Besi Shahar is the end of the road, literally. From Kathmandu we spent six hours on the bus, then two hours in hired car to get here. The road comes to an end two miles out of town and the trail picks up. We will put on our packs in an hour and get going, to the end of the road, away from this post-apocalptic peek at civilization, with as much speed as we can muster. We have to get to the moutains soon.

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Posted from Cambre, Nepal, May 9, 2012