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A Day In A Mountain Inn
“Good Morning….”
Every morning you are awakened by a knock on your bedroom door. “Good morning! Bed tea. Milk and sugar?”, as a member of the crew hands you a cup of chai. Ahhhh. Time to open the curtains on your bedroom window and see what the view is like this morning. Next, it’s off to a hearty breakfast. The cooking crew always likes to spoil us. There’s porridge, muesli, and toasted Sherpa bread with jam. Then there’s either pancakes & bacon, or omelets, or French toast, plus tea, cocoa, milk.
 Lodges usually have traditional Tibetan-style main room, with cushioned benches running around the sides, and dinner-tables-for-two, which look like school desks. A wood stove in the middle of the common room keeps things warm. It’s very much a family ambience. The walls have framed pictures of relatives, and photos of famous mountaineers who have stayed there. Sir Ed Hilary smiles down from the walls of almost every lodge. The wall cabinets are filled with colorful Tibetan blankets of traditional design. After breakfast, our Sherpa crew makes sure we have clean water in our water bottles, and gathers our packs and duffle bags. They load them on the yak train which will carry them to the next lodge. John describes the day’s hike, and the sights you’ll see along the trail.
Then you start off, carrying your day pack with water, camera, sunscreen, chocolate, sun hat. Be sure to grab an extra toasted chipati (Sherpa bread) from the breakfast table, and stash it in your daypack. It’s a great trail snack, but if you’re like most travelers, you’ll wind up feeding it to one of the Tibetan ponies that are pastured in the villages you’ll walk through.
Afternoon At The Lodge
When you reach the next lodge there’s tea and snacks, or lunch waiting. Time to unpack and grab a shower.
Afternoons are usually free to nap or explore the village. It’s fun to check out the small family tea shops, and try favorites like riki kur—crispy potato pancakes.
On non-hiking day, we have afternoon tea at our lodge, with sweet biscuits, and sandwiches. The lodges are not large, and often our group will fill the inn, so it’s just us—like a private country house. The lodge owner will also sell goodies like ginger tea, chocolate, biscuits and other munchies.
We usually have our daily evening meeting just before dinner, which lets us catch up and talk about what we saw. This is more than just a time when we review the day, and check on the itinerary for tomorrow. This is when the John guides the group in some eyes-closed inner exercises. It’s an opportunity to explore things we may have experienced at a temple, such as releasing karma, or becoming aware of guardian spirits.
Dinner Time
 Dinner always starts with soup. Then there’s a variety of comfort foods (mac & cheese, spaghetti), and also local favorites such as noodle dishes and rice & lentils. Sometimes we’ll have a dinner that is the authentic Sherpa food of the region, as pictured to the right.After dinner we unpack our duffle bag of goodies --Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuits, Mad-Libs, Parcheesi, playing cards, and checkers. People write letters, or catch up on their journals. You might look through your camera’s daily video file and show off your pictures of a trailside Lophophorus—Nepal’s national bird; peacock-like, with a bright blue body and a golden tail.
You have a shared room—you and another traveler in our group. We like to match up roommates with shared interests, although you can also have a single room. There’s no closet, but lots of hooks on the walls to hang up your gear. If the afternoon’s trail went through a huge field of wildflowers-- blossoming rhododendron is everywhere-- you may have some them sitting in a water glass, by the window. Although the main room is heated, the bedrooms are unheated. That’s why the hot “bed tea” brought to your door every morning, is really appreciated.
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