Sweet Recovery
A chance encounter on a Himalayan trek leads to fortuitous community
The slate path meanders through a terraced apple orchard. A valley floor lies below, and this single, rock-strewn trail, inaccessible except by foot, has led us to the gate that marks the outer reaches of a village, Chimang. My thighs and calves are burning and my lower back is damp with sweat. It’s barely five thirty in the morning. I glance up. Dhaulagiri, the seventh-highest mountain in the world, drifts hazily in the distance, the backdrop for this hamlet nestled in the Himalaya. As I step over a gap in the pathway, I realize that I am walking over a small irrigation duct that waters the orchard; allegedly, these trees produce the tastiest apples in all of Nepal.
I clamber up a ladder hewn out of a single log and proceed past a lone cow. Wandering through this village of no more than a hundred people, I notice off to my left a small hut marked “Chimang’s Homestay.” My trekking partner and comrade in
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