Travels

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If you look off in the distance on the far hill side, you'll see a path along the hill. We walked from down in the valley up the hill and across that path to get to where I'm standing. Whew!

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Every available spot is farmed, primarily with vegetables and rice. The terraced mountainsides are really beautiful.

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Well hello there! Friends we meet along the way. There is only one method of transportation up in the hills -- yep, the feets! If you're ill, hopefully you have someone who loves you enough to carry you down. (I'm not kidding.)

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More friends. This was a big festival day so many of the mountain people had walked to a village to locate someone who could bless them -- thus the red rice on the forehead -- it's a blessing.

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Our guide insisted we go to his house and meet his parents and his children. His father, pictured here, blessed us. Trying to get to their house, which was perched on the side of the mountain, was extremely difficult -- I very gracefully scooted into the front yard on my butt as I lost my footing coming down the mountainside and have cow dung on my pants to prove it! Does anyone know how to get that stuff out of your clothes?

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Much of the path has rocks laid as you go -- not sure it helps. There is absolutely no way you could find your way without a guide. Sometimes if you're going up, you divert off the path in a downward direction and sometimes going down, you divert up. Very confusing!

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Now we start down -- we have to get down to the lake and take a boat across. We were following a switchback path for a good bit of the way down, but I thought we'd never get down until all of a sudden we hit the part of the trail that's virtually straight down. Could not have managed without my stick!