Lo Manthang was much quieter with the festival over. Most of the foreigners had left and the locals were sleeping off their hangovers.

Being in no rush, we planned our trip so we could spend two more days exploring the valleys that stretched northward toward Tibet. Today we chose the northeast valley where the monastic village of Garphu is located.

We hired horses for the trip, even though we could have walked. I hate to admit it, but despite all my years of rough and ready tours, this was the first time I had ridden a horse. This one was easy: he was well-behaved, knew the route and rarely went faster than an easy walk. Nepali horses are smaller than American horses, so this also reduced the difficulties of mounting, dismounting, and saddle discomfort. He did, however, drop to his knees and dump me on the ground once in apparent protest over my weight.

Garphu is quite a population center, with more than a thousand people spread out over several villages. The only high school in Mustang is located here, so children from Lo Manthang either need to make the two-hour walk or live at the boarding school.

It has been a population center since prehistoric days, judging from the large number of cave dwellings in the cliffs above. We were able to visit one of these, which had five levels of rooms hollowed out of the sandstone. The 150-centimeter (5 foot) ceilings were a problem for me but probably not the local inhabitants. On the way out we bumped into the crown prince, who was also on the same excursion.

We then visited two small monasteries on the opposing hill, ate our sack lunches and returned to Lo Manthang.

In the late afternoon, I checked my email on the one satellite link in town. Good thing, because there was a question I had to answer from the travel agent in New York who was working on our visas for our planned trip to Uzbekistan in the fall. More on that in another blog entry about Delhi already posted.

Just to be sure, I resolved to call the agent when she came in to work. 9am New York time is 6:45pm in Nepal (the silly 15 minutes are a political statement to show that they are not the same as India, which in turn needs to be 30 minutes different from Pakistan).

Telephone calls can be very fustrating in Nepal. Although almost every store offers ISD (international) phones at about $1.40 per minute, they cannot always get a landline connection. This particular evening it was impossible. Finally, the man of the house came home at 8:30, an hour and a half later then he had promised, and he let me use the few remaining minutes on his cell phone. Fortunately, I was able to reach the agent and confirm everything was now ok.