This is What we Came Here For

Nicks Kunga Lodge and Italian Restaurant, where all the food tastes exactly the same.  Girls from the Totarani School.

The climbing wall at the Mountain Center, where they are perfecting bureaucratic officiousness; one guy gives you the rules, and explains that the rope is ten years old and will probably break, looks up the prices, makes you write a waiver.  Another guy brings the rope. When you are done, a third guy, in  room stacked with papers in books, looks up the prices again and writes the receipt.  We were the only ones there, and I expect were the only ones there the entire week.  The monkeys watched us climb.

  This is what we came here for, to sing primary songs in Llomos croissant bakery, upstairs,  under the lonely landscapes of  Tibet and the faces of people left behind.

 Goodbye Hotel Manu Vinot. It looks rather grand, but we stay there because it is close to Mahi, and we are the only guests ever.

This is what we came here for, to walk all afternoon in the humid heat, past lots of Indian tourists, past Triund, over the hill, and around the mountain and see the moon rise above the place called 'snowline'.

This is what we came here for,  to see the children lined up for lunch at the Totorani School, and teach them songs.  The teachers think we are a fine diversion.