Today's stop is Chame, another Tibetan village, which is larger and not as nice as Bagarchap. I am sitting on a small concrete monument (yes, concrete) to I don't know what (it's all Devanagri to me) watching the sun go down on the Manaslu range, which is now south of us.

Today has been a day marked by more massive mountain ranges coming into, and disappearing from, view than ever before. We are now at 8900 feet. My doom and gloom predictions of cold are not too real. To be sure it was chilly in the morning, but it warmed up as we made our way into the sunny areas. It has been quite pleasant all day, but now that the sun has vanished behind the neighboring hills I've had to put on a sweater.

It is quite amazing how many major mountains we can see at a time.During our hike we had views of three different mountain ranges: Manaslu (26,630), Lamjung Himal (22,740), and Annapurna II (26,041) and to the north a series of ridges that eventually peaks at 22,746. I hope that I got some interesting shots of these peaks as they came into view.

Today was the first day that we've had a relatively short hike: three hours by the book. We were done by early afternoon with lots of photo stops. So we had a chance to "hang around" town. Across the river from the town are some "warm" springs, which we examined, but didn't bathe in (to keep our feet tough). Besides, bathing is for wimps (see yesterday's bathing episode).

This is a growing, happening town. It has fairly well stocked stores, a police station, and even a bank that claims to change foreign currency. Progress marches on.

At the western entrance to the town there is a huge amount of very modern construction. They appear to be starting a large power plant here. The town already has electricity, and unsightly power wires blocking the views of the mountains. There are a bunch of new buildings being constructed to exacting western standards. Brad said that he saw a guy with tape measures and pencil. The buildings are made from rocks that are more finely hewn than in the older houses. And between the stones, mortar. I don't believe we've seen that in the hills before. Generally they plaster over the insides of the walls with a thick layer of clay (the floors too) to block the cracks between the stones. I have seen quite a few Nepali women applying a fresh layer of clay to floors and outdoor trim, so it is probably done in lieu of the American penchant for waxing floors.

With all our spare time here we have amused ourselves by entertaining the locals. I was sitting by the hotel finishing my noodle soup when I saw Brad in the middle of a large group of Nepali adults and children. I couldn't figure out what they were looking at so I went over to investigate. It turned out that Brad's camera was the center of attention. He had his camera set up on the tripod (mini-tripod) with the high-powered zoom focused on Manaslu. The locals were taking turns looking at the mountains through his camera. After they had all had their turns, Brad finally got to take his picture and the crowd gradually dispersed.

A bit later we were sitting outside (shivering) with our maps and magnetic chess set. One of the locals wandered over and pointed tothe chess set. I gestured to Brad to show it to him, especially the magnetism. It was clear that he had never seen magnets before. A woman joined us and she quickly discovered that the bottoms of the pieces attracted each other. They spent several minutes gleefully playing with the pieces. We discussed the name of the knight (Ghoda = horse), then I remembered that many places here have pictures of the King and Queen, so I told him the names of those pieces which he repeated perfectly.

Next he pointed to the map. Brad and I pointed to and named the villages along the trail, the rivers, and the mountain peaks, which he immediately understood. By contrast the taxi drivers in Kathmandu had no comprehension of the maps we showed them. We spent ten or fifteen minutes showing him all the villages from Dumre to Pokhara, which he seemed to know well. Enough fun and games, almost time toeat.

A quick run outside reveals a brilliant star-lit night. It is somewhat eerie because nearly half the northern sky is blocked by a ridge. In the dark it is simply a jagged line where the stars stop.Staring up was dizzying because the mountain ridge creates a false horizon directly above. Good night.