3rd try from Jenna

Sorry to be bad about communication. I have tried to post two times and both times I spent over an hour and then lost what I had worked on. Frustration, time, power outages and slow internet have kept me away from the computers. I am fine and doing well. It is hot here, but our guest house garden provides shady spots for rest. We have been going non stop.... the monkey temple, the cremation temple, the potters square, shopping in the markets, dinner with friends and a beautiful day trek to Nagercot-- the mountain top site where we can see Everist and several other giant peeks. Unfortunattely the clouds were so thick that the mountains were hiding. luckly we will see the big mtns when we head out west tomorrow.

I am struck this time by the street kids-- i see a new problem I have not really encountered here before. The young boys spend their days sniffing STRONG glue out of paper bags. They are almost delerious as they wonder the streets. I talked to our friend who is a gem dealer and he told me about picking these kids up off the stoop in fromt of his store and noticing their dry, almost scaley skin and their brittle bones. He told me about all the organizations which collect $ to help these kids, and how it hardly ever makes it to the street kids. Then he told me about an Amreican woman and her organization who does really great work to help. Apparently she feeds them all one good meal a week, some times she pickes them up and takes them to a place where they can get haircuts and sometimes to a place to get a bate. I want to find out more about her and the organization.

Our flight tomorrow morining will take us even further awaty from the city, computers and the chaos of KTM. We will spend a few days in Pokara, the lake city where we will canoe thru terraced lands and trees teeming with monkeys, we will visit a cave, and a tibetan refugee camp-- we can expect jungle temperature there (100 degrees)and we will probably run into monsoon rains. Next we fly to Jomsom where the festival was held and where Tsampa lives. After a few days, we will meet our porters and our favorite guide Naryan, and we will start our trek to Lo. We already have worries about monsoon rains at the end of the trek, so we have a plan B which gives us time to do the extra 4 day walk out of the mtns if our plane can't fly-- this is what we had to do last time and I was actually glad for the extra trek. That part of the trek takes us back thru the low land jungles-- where the rest of the trek is in the high mtns and in view of snowy peaks.

I worry about the changes I will see as we head to the west. I have heard that there are now roads on most of the Annapurna Circut. In 2007, Jomsom village had a tractor, and a car and a few mororcycles now has traffic passing by---Cars and maybe even busses. It used to be that cars were disassembles, flown in and reassembled, and that they were only used in Jomsom and the boardering villages-- rivers flowing down from the mtn tops prevented further travel. Now cars can drive all the way from Beni to the holy site of Muktinath in about 2 days-- when we trekked, it was about an 8 day walk. Luckly, Lo, the remote region we will travel to does not have roads YET, but I suspect we will see more evidence of the roads to come!!!

Today we took bags of clothes to a monistary for nuns-- they were thrilled. We were invited in for a cup of tea, and thanks to Jane we were served YACK BUTTER tea rather than sweet milk chai. She thought it would be funny to request the salty, thick, butter tea so our new comers Ashely and Mika could try it. Though we all had to choke the stuff down, Jane was the only who was served a second cup before she could stop them, so in the end her plan back fired. Jason, Sherrie and Tom, we tosted you with this tea!!!! After tea we were given a tour of the main temple room, the nuns blessed our journey with a singing and paryer, then they beleest Ashley, Mika ande Jane's malas. It was a beautiful monistart right next to the Monkey twemple build over 125 years ago. There are 125 nuns at this monistary and the youngest is 7 years old. It was great to be able to deliver about 17 pairs of shoes, dozens of tooth brushes, clothes, (jeans, shirts, and coats). The nuns will make sure the goods get to the people that need them. We have already been invited back for a vegetarian lunch after our trek. I will make sure to order a POT of Yak butter tea for Jane.

I have not given myself time to edit. I want to post before i lose this... forgive my errors.