Nepal four

i miss "tong garden" peanuts so much that it hurts. they are the most amazing peanuts in the world and are easily accessible through out eastern asia. central asia does not offer this brand instead they are distributing a crop of peanuts that taste like curry bile. the food in the mountain villages is acceptable for the first five or six days and then it becomes absolutely repulsive. potatoes, rice, and noodles all made with exact same ingredients and cooked in the exact same way. if you have a weak stomach or do not enjoy references to bodily movements please skip the next three or four sentences. i remained very positive about the cuisine until the lord of food poisoning invaded my stomach and started firing rockets and missiles of vomit and poop from the inside of my body all over the bathroom floor, walls, and ceiling. the "bathrooms" in this region do not have toilets, they are merely key holes in the floor that require the balance of a gymnast to squat over and the accuracy of a well trained sniper. when you are exporting rapidly from both ends, balance and accuracy can be very difficult. nearly impossible. soup and lemon tea for the next few days which provide about one hour of energy which mathematically could not compete with the daily six to eight hours of walking up hill. i have been having vivid dreams of ledo's pizza. this is going to be a blog post that is generally negative, next i will talk about the altitude sickness and the symptoms in which i experienced. being so weak due to the nepali vegetable enchilada epidemic, as we started to get higher and higher my body started to feel the toll. we reached 4400 meters (about 12,000 feet) and my head started pounding. it felt like my brain was trying to escape from my eyes, ears, and mouth. nausea, dry vomiting, hallucination, loss of appetite... check. we had to descent a few hundred meters. walking backwards was very depressing, every step felt like ten thousand people laughing right in my face while i was naked and it was very cold and rainy. i felt much better the next day so we went back up to face the beast. thorong pass is almost 5500 meters which is about two thousand feet higher than the top of the highest point in the intercontinental states (mt. renier...sp?). that is higher than doc gooden and darryl strawberry after the 1986 world series victory over the red sox (sorry bill buckner). we woke up 3am, so we could start the ascent. exercise in the morning has never really been my thing. after about five hours of slow walking in freezing cold and breathing in thin air, we made it. what an amazing feeling. i really felt like i had reached my everest, all spontaneous defecation and vomit forgotten.