Trek Day 2
We wake up pretty early on day two of the trek. After the night on the wooden floor, I'm slightly worse for wear, but ready to go! Ugh, but not for long. We keep walking, and walking and walking. Which would be okay, but we are walking up and down mountains and the terrain is tough at spots. I almost fall down at times, and then I do fall down at times, and then at times I wish I just would fall down. Then there are times that I I think about is me ending up flying down the mountain just like in Romancing the Stone, but I probably wouldn't laugh at the end. The paths are so steep that going downhill causes my legs to ache and is almost as bad as going up. The only thing worse than going downhill is going uphill and it's plenty worse. Somehow the flat stretches are almost nonexistant. We've been promised an elephant ride and are told that it will be in the morning. While I have qualms about taking the elephant ride, I'm now dreaming of the moment where some poor elephant will have the opportunity to carry my weight up and down this mountain. Finally I hear a bell in the distance, and in my mind I'm already on the elephant. Then up along a ridge we see a lone vilager. Unfortunately for us, she's just shooting birds with a slingshot and there are no elephants in sight. The morning hike ends 3 1/2 hours after it starts.
There would be no elephants on this first day. We did stop by a stream and bathed alongside the falls. In all this second day, we hiked (a long hard hike) for approx 5 1/2 hours. We finally got to our hut for the night. It appeared on the top of a mountain. This time instead of by the falls we slept in a White Karan village of 40 people (all one family). This is Jovi's village. The White Karen are so called because the unmarried women of the tribe wear white tunics. While they are Karen, they are separate from the Karen who wear brass rings around their necks.
I'm not sure you could get a whole lot more villagey than this. The settlement just got solar power and running water (a large water tank - brought up by pipes from the river at the base of the mountain) last year. At nighttime one hut turned on a tv on their porch and many villagers gathered to watch.
Again we slept in a bamboo hut on a wooden floor. This night I'm not that certain that I haven't been bitten. (Luckily?) I believe I was only bitten by fleas!
(the photo above is of an Akha (another tribe) village, but looks very similar to where we stayed.
2 comments:
I think it's interesting that the White Karen village is known by its women....unmarried at that. Have you been able to get a sense of the social structure among the Karen?
I don't know a whole lot about their social structure. It does seem at first blush to be male dominated. The men don't have any interesting dress, so I guess they focused on the women's dress.
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