This is one of my favorite pictures because it captures the steepness of the countryside through which we hiked.  In the foreground you can see a woman gather leaves and shrubs which will be fed to animals in her village.  In the background you can see the layers upon layers of terraced hillside on which millet or wheat or rice is grown.  During the winter (December) the land is left dormant as the ground is hard (no rain).

2nd night camp across the valley from Lespar at our camp near Chwai. It was very cold, but above freezing.  The condensation in the tents got them all wet.  Here we are trying to dry the tents by standing them on end facing the rising sun.  It made for an unusal site.  The brown tent in front is the cooking tent where our meals were prepared.  The large blue tent is where we sat to eat dinner and breakfast.

Porters do the hard work.  The porters carried their own body weight in bags.  They would carry one or two of our bags and then their own.  One porter with whom I talked was named Ren-tzing.  He was 35 (looked older) and had three children he was putting through private school (public schools are not very good I was told).  The porter job was considered a good job although hard work.  Although we Westerners tried to lift one half the load the porters carried using the headstrap, we could not.  This only comes through years of training muscles to take on this kind of load.  In any case, the porters all had a great attitude and were friendly.  We helped them by talking to them in English as that is the language of commerce.

Day 2 - Near Lespar on the way to Nanje