My new favorite corner of the world

Tukuche was incredible!! We were surrounded by himals. I had a really great host family. They didn't have enough families for everyone to get their own, so Manisha and I lived together. I'm still a little confused as to who was in our family, even after we both did kinship charts for homework. At the very least, we had a baa, didi, and 3 bahinis.

Me, didi, Manisha, baa

Our didi was sassy and took us on a couple picnics in their apple orchard and had work for us to do. She goes to school in Kathmandu. Our baa was really hilarious and we had a really fun night interviewing him for a school project. He was the mayor for about 10 years. While we were there, he was running around to other villages with his political friends, trying to convince people to vote for his political party's candidate. Sometimes they'd all come home a wee bit raaksi laagyo (drunk). One night we got a lecture from some guy about the politics in Nepal which we understood about half of. Sometimes we didn't understand their Nepali - they speak really informally, so all the conjugations were different. They also speak Thakali and Gurung, but little English. After returning to Kathmandu, one of my friends uploaded a picture of me, didi, and my bahini, Ajita. Kanchan saw it and recognized Ajita! Small world.

Dhaulagiri at suntrise

Every morning we had language class. After that, we went home for lunch and hung out with our families. One day our didi had us carry potatoes down from their apple orchard (the potatoes grow in the ground under the apple trees). We did it the Nepali way - the bag hanging from our heads. It was painful, but I guess after awhile your neck muscles get strong and it would be more efficient.

Carrying down our potato sacks using the head strap. Niligiri in the background. I submitted this photo to our photo contest.

Piles of potatoes!

So many beans...

Another day, we sorted 100kg of beans for about 4 hours. Black beans in a pot, red beans back in the bag, and bad beans tossed on the floor. It was fun because it was mindless, but we chattered with our didi and bahini about so many things in Nepali: opinions on the caste system, dating, getting married, love marriages, inter-caste marriage, homosexuals, transgendered people, the upcoming elections, adoption, the village, and some differences between America and Nepal. It was so cool.

They are a drinking caste, so each night, we got to try about a shot of different alcohol: apple, chi chi (seabuckthorn...never heard of it before), uwa (oat), and Mustang coffee (spiked coffee). They always heated it up, dumped sugar in, and dried rice. The dried rice was good - really crunchy in the alcohol. The chichi alcohol was really strong and neither of us finished the small mug they gave us. My favorite was probs the uwa or the Mustang coffee. (Mustang is the region we were in)

One night we made about 200 momos. There were about 10-15 ish people living in the house (another family rents a room), so we were folding up momos for awhile. I got creative and made a yak, face, cat, dog, mickey mouse, and a duck momo. I was going really slow anyways, so making special shapes wasn't completely throwing a wrench in the gears.

My cat momo.

Tukuche is also known for its apples. I ate SO many apples, especially when we hiked up the hill to the apple farms and there were just fresh apples hanging out. The villagers don't really eat the apples. They sell whole apples in the village for ~80 Rs and sell them in Polkhara for ~160. The apples are made into brandy, juice, apple crumble, pie, and dried out. However, these are just for tourists. Our didi had never had apple crumble, so we made some for her. We were going to make a pie until we realized we needed an oven. Cinnamon is an uncommon spice here. We ground up sticks of cinnamon she found using a stone grind stone. It was cool to see whole cinnamon sticks turn into powder! On the last day, Manisha and I went to the Dutch bakery (there's a Dutch guy living there who speaks like 5 languages fluently, including English and Nepali) and asked him to deliver a real apple crumble to our family after we left.

So many apples...

View from the top of the hill: himals and apple orchards

South-ish view from the top of the hill. Apple orchards and more himals.

One of our picnics on the hill. Coffee, apple juice, and home made apple crumble.

There weren't any worm holes in the apples or bird bites. They said they don't use pesticides. I'm thinking because it's so windy all the time and a little chilly, bugs don't live up there. In fact, I didn't see a single spider. score. The only bugs I saw were flies and tons of caterpillars eating their cabbages in their garden. It was so chilly, my nose was running all the time. I was blowing my nose and my nose ring fell out. whoops. I couldn't get it back in, so I just re-pierced it when I got back. Didn't hurt too much.

Our family's garden was cool because they had potatoes, cabbage, radishes, carrots, and spices. They are pretty self sustainable! We even took hot showers because they have a solar panel.

1/2 Nepali Gothic in the garden. saag was used for din din mmmm

The last day, our didi dressed us up in traditional Sherpa and Thakali clothes. The Sherpa clothes were our didi's older brother's wife's wedding clothes, and the Thakali clothes were her didi's wedding clothes. The Thakali clothes had many layers. I tried putting my jacket on afterwards and I couldn't zip it up because the 5 layers of clothes around my waist made me gain 50 lbs. The Sherpa clothes were much thinner. We had a big photo shoot. Luckily Manisha has a good camera, so these are her pictures. My camera had weird exposure things going on.

Me in Thakali garb, Manisha in Sherpa clothes.

Still in Thakali clothes

Switched clothes, now I'm feeling the Sherpa vibes

Speaking of fat, I gained hella weight while in Tukuche. They fed us so much food all the time. One day, we made the mistake of telling our didi that one of our friend's family was feeding her a lot. The next day, we had a huge breakfast, lunch, 3 big snacks, and then dinner. We were dying.

I really miss Tukuche! It was so serene. No internet or phones or newspapers or throne toilets. Some of my friends are going back to the village for their research, so I'm going to give them a letter to give to my didi and baa.