Walking the countryside near Nagarkot

We'd planned on taking Sam with us to a bit of a "Spa" weekend in Nagarkot.  The village of Nagarkot has grown up around a series of hotels built on a ridge-line with views of the Himalayan mountain range (provided the weather cooperates).  Once sunrise has passed, and unless the mountains remain in view, there's not much left to do except enjoy the view with a drink or maybe sign up for a massage.  The guide said that there were some good hikes to local cities with interesting shrines, the closest being 2.5 hours one way.  A five hour walk seemed like a good idea to me and Sam and figured there would be plenty of time to relax when we came back so we started walking along the road that led us away from the centre of Nagarkot and to the other side of the ridge we were on.  Pretty soon the road was leading started snaking down towards the first hamlet on our way.

3 more switchbacks down the road, here's Sam

We saw these people carrying heavy loads on a short cut alongside the road. 

This last woman is trying to figure out how to make the last steep steps (she ended up running them).

The terracing of the hillsides for farming is really something up close

I couldn't see what she was harvesting, but the fields I saw up close (the ones that looked empty) had new shoots of corn growing in them.  The monsoons come in a month in a half, and we were told they start a second crop afterwards.

For technology failure reasons I'll explain later, I didn't take pictures when we first walked the road through the hamlet.  We walked about 20 minutes past it to near the bottom of the valley and realized that our 5 hour hike was likely to take 15 hours with all our stopping for photos and looking at the countryside.  As a result, we decided that we wanted to head back and take a closer look at the people and buildings we had just passed.

The first farm on the way back was well set for livestock and firewood.

Further on, a woman shooed her goats past us.

We stopped in at the Refreshment Restaurant (Now I remember the name of the hamlet: Katiike).  For some reason the Nepalis usually hyphenate the word welcome.

Sam got a chance to use her Nepali chatting with the owner while we relaxed and had a beer

He had some great chickens

I'll end this entry with Sam and I still in Katiike.  I'll have more pictures and a story in the next entry.