Day 18 -Are you tired of Nescafe? We make coffee from real beans

Marpha

I discovered the "Marpha Restaurant" yesterday and promised to myself to come today for a coffee. The cake in the window looked very inviting and Sassi, the young woman baking, cooking, selling and owning the place, was very nice. Her English was also very good.

So today, after additional recommendations from Emily and Colin ("The chocolate cake is delicious and fresh. Don't miss it!") I went in and got ... hooked. The cake was indeed delicious and coffee, well, it finally tasted like coffee :-) Sassi was very nice and we also chatted a bit.
I returned in the afternoon to try the apple crumble cake, too. For the next few days I was going to have to deal with a huge dilemma: chocolate cake or apple crumble? The resolution was somewhat simple. Either one in the morning, the other in the afternoon.

The weather was bad. In the morning it was raining, then it continued drizzling for most of the day. My rest day was going to transform into a vacation indulging in coffee and homemade cakes.

I left for the Tibetan Refugee Camp alone in the rain, but ended up amidst kids going to school. About half a dozen boys and a little girl, all looking tiny but carrying big, worn-out schoolbags went along giggling, singing and laughing. Their school was actually in the refugee camp. Their walk to school takes them about an hour one way. After traversing the whole village and following the road to the end they need to cross the river over a wooden suspension bridge and walk for another 5 minutes traversing the Refugee Camp to reach the boarding school. For any Western child this would be an adventure, not just a walk. Here this is daily life. In rain, snow or fog. Sassi's daughter also goes there since the school offers boarding and English classes.

The Tibetan refugee Camp is a cluster of stone-houses lined up along 3 narrow stone-paved alleys. They all are painted white. Some have a little front yard where a cow or goat stands. A few old women are feeding some cows on the alley whereas some other women are doing laundry in the rain. It is a very hard life they have here. I do not really understand why they live here isolated, away from the village, although most of them work in the souvenir shops in Marpha.

The school is at the end of an alley, next to a tiny gompa. The gates are locked and the children are waiting patiently in front of it. Under the little porch of the gompa some girls are busy playing with a few stones which they throw like dices. It's wonderful to watch them.
Over the next minutes more and more children are coming. They wait patiently in the rain in front of the locked schoolgates. So far they have all more or less ignored me. It is only after I step under the porch and take out my camera that their curiosity wins and their attention focuses on me. I suddenly find myself surrounded and overwhelmed by giggling children asking for pictures. Ok, ok, I surrender. But, please, step back a little. They came so close that I can't even stand vertically anymore and I can't lean back any further.

It is the headmaster that "saves" me. He unlocks the gates to the schoolyard and the children flock in eagerly. The few children that keep standing around me need some repeated persuading calls till they finally go to their classes.

The Chhairo gompa is locked and there's nobody around to let me in. I ponder whether to continue in the rain, through puddles and over muddy areas towards the village of Chimang visible up on the hill and decide not to. So I return to Marpha and spend the afetrnoon reading and indulging in Sassi's cafe.

In Sassi's cafe I meet another German couple I have met before in Kagbeni - Gunhild and Johannes - and 2 German students who are here for 2 months of volunteer work. There is a collaboration between Marpha and their german University for the Apple drier project/factory and they are here for that. Given the huge apple harvest Marpha was confronted with a few problems in the past. The production of aple brandy led to alcoloism among young people, the lack of transportation did not allow for the apples to make it to other areas of Nepal and so new ways of using them were needed. And so the production of apple juice and apple cider and now dried apples was initiated.
The apples are delicious and the juice as well. I enjoy every day fresh apple juice and also eat many many apples.

All day long Pipi has spent inside doing nothing. Just the thought of that makes me go nuts.
- Would you like to read? I can give you my book. And if it rains tomorrow we're staying.
The scenery is supposed to be extremely beautiful over the next sections of the trek and so I don't want to miss the views. I don't really mind the rain, but missing the views, I can't accept that. Today the clouds have been heavy and grey looming over the valley. Except for a hint of ridges - powdered with snow! - in the morning there was no indication all day that we were in a deep valley and there were gigantic mountains around us.

After giving Pipi my new book I'm left without reading material and so I explore the options the village has to offer. That's when I run into Yann Martel's "Life of Pi". Great! I have a new book to read now. It may rain as much as it wants to.