navigating leaches Part 3

We are in the thick of Nepal’s monsoon season.  It really hit home when I was petting one of my favorite dogs in the village of Ghat.  I scratched his head, rubbed his back, and pulled on his ears.  He reacted with a shake of his thick black Tibetan mastiff mane.  A shake that shuddered through from his head to his back paws, throwing a spray of dust and something big and black that whizzed past my head in a gentle arc. 

I saw the object in flight out of the corner of my eye.  At first I thought a bird had dropped a good luck present from the sky. In Nepal it is a common belief that if you get hit by bird droppings it’s good luck.  I took a curious look toward the black blob only to realize that a leach had gorged itself to the size of a 3 inch slug, and as the dog shook, the leach heavy with blood, was to weighty to hang on. Welcome to the monsoon.

We flew in to the Mt Everest trail head and had started our walk toward Namche Bazaar.  Since it was going to take 4 days for the resilient structures to arrive in the porter’s village of Bung, 3 days by trail below us, we wanted to use the time to head North by foot. Our goal was to allocate a small percentage of the donations to a hard hit village called Khumjung and to Home Away from Home boarding school.  I had been coordinating with Urkin Sherpa who was creating a list of the people who needed aid the most. After completion of our round of aid in the area we would hop on a chartered helicopter to fly us to Bung because it would be impossible to cover the distance from Namche to Bung with the amount of time we had.  

I had never been to Nepal during the monsoon.  So far we have seen a total of three tourists.  I can understand why tourists do not come during this season.  I myself have heard a legion of leach stories and sheets of rain that continue for weeks and weeks.  The legendary horror stories of people waking up with a leach wiggling off their forehead like a small antenna, or the story of the guy waking up with a leach attached to his private part (true story told by my wife) screaming “oh my god, oh my god,”  play on my psyche.  We walk all day in the clouds.  

We are happy to be heading north toward Tibet and into the high country.  Here leaches do not dwell.  There is light rain and the gentle giant Himalaya dwell hidden above the cloud.  It is as if the great mountains have taken a vacation from putting on their show for the thousands of tourists who walk these trails in the spring and autumn season.  Maybe after some rejuevination they will lift their vail to share their grandeur and reopen their show.    

 Thats where we were at on July 10th.