Emily and Felix in Village, originally uploaded by Subcontinental Drift.
First, we’d like to wish Mrs. Rose and Mrs. Viglietta a happy Mother’s Day. And, let it be known, our doing so was in no way influenced or prompted by a message from Mr. Rose. No, not in the least.
We’ve been incommunicado for the better part of a week, but for good reason. We were in the middle of nowhere. We left Luang Prabang on a slow boat up the Nam Ou. Eight hours later we arrived in a small village. We stayed the night and the next day caught another boat, going one more hour north, to the village of Muong Ngoi.
The next day we began our self-guided trek with our companion from Vienna, Felix. The trek was broken up into two days, with an overnight in the village you see before you. This photo was taken in the morning, as we were leaving.
We arrived at the village at about 6PM, and were welcomed warmly. They even killed a chicken for us (we saw it being hauled into the hut next to ours). We dined by candlelight with what seemed like half the village peering in from the darkness. Kind of eerie, very humbling.
One thing about villages — they’re quiet. Because it’s so quiet, however, you can hear just about everything. Wildlife is a given, but what we didn’t expect was all the wretching and haucking of lugies (sp?). On top of that, they get up really really early in Laos — like 5AM!
The early rise helped us get on our way at a decent hour. We hiked over hill and. . . well, i guess there aren’t any dales in Laos, but you get the picture. The scenery was absolutely spectacular. And we realized that slash-and-burn farming has one benefit — better vantage points.
We arrived at the last village on our route and considered various hair-brained ideas for traversing the river back to our starting point. After deciding that neither rock climbing nor the “fireman drill” were for us, we opted to charter a boat back. All in all, it was a rewarding journey.
We’re leaving tonight for Thailand. We’ll have a week there before we fly to Calcutta.
