Cold Play, Charades, and sick neighbors

Day 7 of trekking: Part-two

During our four-hour hike down 4,000 unforgivingly steep stairs, I was struck by how different our surroundings were from where we had started. In Kagbeni and Muktinath, there was seldom a tree sprouting from the sterile, wind-scorched earth. Here, the land was bursting with life, from bountiful fruit trees, to lush rhododendron. Monkeys frolicked in the greenery and we found waterfalls at every corner. But melancholy was already setting in. Tomorrow was our last day.
After checking into our teahouse in Jili, a nondescript village of a half-dozen buildings, surrounded by terraced farms, we ordered our last teahouse meal: fresh tomato soup and Tibetan bread. A fellow traveler whipped out an Ipod loaded with David Gray, Van Morrison, and Cold Play (the first Western music I had heard in three weeks)adding to the mellow vibe.
Tired of playing cards, we tried to liven things up with a group game of charades. We laughed until our cheeks hurt.It would have been another perfect night, but for the sound of violent wretching that shook our plywood box of a room at 2 a.m.
After hours of it, I grew genuinely worried about our neighbor. I slipped my boots on and knocked on the room next door where the solo European guy was staying, offering him an anti-nausea suppository. Oops. Wrong room.
A feeble women's voice whispered, "yes. Please come in," from the next door over, and inside I found the two Dutch dentists we'd been hanging out with earlier. They'd spent a week volunteering at a dental camp in southern Nepal, looking forward to their four-day trek as a just reward. It was over.
The next day, dehydrated and weak from food poisoning, they'd head down to recover in a hotel in Pokhara. Knock on wood, I told myself. I've gone this whole trip without getting sick.
I spoke too soon.