First published Sept 13, 2005 at www.travelblog.org/bloggers/gypsygal

This is moi, exhausted but still smiling,as I trekked my way up to Nangi

Nangi Village, Nepal — We arrived in Nangi village at 7 pm. It took us 12 hours to walk (and climb rocky hills) from our guesthouse in Beni to reach the hillside village of Nangi. The trek usually takes 7 hours, but I was really slow. Plus we took a lot of breaks – lunch breaks, snack breaks, tea breaks, wait-a-minute-I-have-a migraine-breaks, im-sooo-tired-i-need-to-drink-water-breaks.

I really didn’t mind. This is why I preferred to trek on my own – I was able to do everything my way. What I cared about was I wanted to reach Nangi village before it gets dark-this was a rural village, don’t expect any street lamps (there weren’t any. Not in Nangi, not in any of the neighboring villages).

One of the first things that Kulu taught me to do is to breathe through my nose, not through my mouth when climbing the steep hills (She heard me panting like a dog). She said breathing through the mouth would hurt my chest, making it more difficult for me to climb. Why was it I kept on forgetting what I learned from my yoga classes? (and Goddess knows I’ve done numerous asanas with various teachers in Singapore, KL, Manila and Bali).

I was on top of one of Nepal's hill when I took this photo. It's just sooo beautiful!!!!

“Breathing is everything,“ Shilpa, my yoga teacher in KL, said in one of the yoga classes I attended. According to Shilpa, a slim and fair Malaysian Tamil who looks a decade younger than her 40 years, it’s improper breathing that causes sickness. (Later, she talked to me and said that I am shallow breather. Which is true, I tend to breathe in and out through my chest, and not through the diapraghm.)

Which is why, the whole time I was trekking, I tried to do the deep, longer ujayi breathe. I rolled my tounge, inhaled a mouthful of air and tried to push that air to my diapraghm, before exhling everthing, gradually, squeezing my diapraghm.

You’d think that since this is just a hill, and not a mountain, a newbie trekker like me wouldn’t have any problems. Yeah, right. Climbing some thousands of steps towards the top of a hill was a struggle, notwithstanding my ujayi bhreathing. Kulu and Maita helped by carrying my bags, and the only thing that I ended up carrying was my digicam which can fit in my pocket. One of the villagers offered me a cane made out of a branch from a guava tree – it functioned like a portable banister – I have to push one end of the stick against the ground, and then walk. It helped in balancing.

This is called the Round House – home for volunteers and teachers at Himanchal High School

It was very exhausting climb, but I survived and I enjoyed it. I savored the cool breeze while sitting on top of the hill, eating banana and apple. I sipped a cup of warm black tea on top of a big rock, while looking at big black cows grazing at the valley carpeted by grass and flowers and pinetrees. I said Namaste to villagers, who can barely speak English, but smiled at me nonetheless. I looked at the sky, and the eagles flying, soaring, free.

I liked it that I discovered some things that I never know. There’s this flower called bogi – which looks like a cross between baby’s breathe and a daisty. I asked Kulu if the cows or the buffaloes eat those flowers. She said no. They’re poisonous. So I said what’s the use of these flowers.They seem useless. Kulu said that her mother told her once that if bogi grows in a certain piece of land, then that land’s not good for plantring grain. And I was just amazed knowing that whatever grows or lives in this world, God/Goddess put it there for a purpose.

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I stayed in the Round House – a two storey circular house made of mud clay and pinewood, and is used as a voluneter house and as a hostel for teachers who teach at the Himanchal High School – the school offers primary, secondary and intermediate education to the residents of Nangi and surrounding villages. The school was built in 1956 via funds donated by the retired Gurkha soldiers.