Next stop - Toktok and Karma's teahouse

Today is a pretty bad day. It started with lineups for the toilet and sink in the teahouse. Although it was cute that the children from last night spent the night, it was difficult to get some bathroom time.

Rick is not feeling well today. Some sort of stomach ailment. He had a bad headache in the night so he had a Diamox, this morning he feels sick to his stomach. Karma is trying to get him to eat but he's not up to eating anything. We set out on the trek not sure what to expect. We go very slowly...Rick can only handle a bit of travel at a time. The cameras are stowed away in our backpacks for the whole day—further confirmation that all is not well.

We stop for a couple of hours at lunch (we usually only stop for an hour). Rick again refuses to eat but lies down inside the restaurant on the benches and falls asleep for the couple of hours. The timing is actually perfect because it starts to rain off and on over the next hour and half.

Karma and I start to talk about a "Horse on Hire" (the Nepalese way of saying "horse for rent"). We are determined that if Rick can't make it to the next teahouse, we're getting him on a horse.

Luckily Rick is able to handle the next 2 hours of trekking (many of which are uphill in the hot sun) We pause a lot and take a lot of water breaks, but we finally make it to Karma's teahouse.

Rick goes right to bed and Karma and I discuss what's for dinner. Karma suggested a variety of things and we finally settle on tomato soup and plain rice for Rick and Dal Bhat for me.

His wife makes salted, butter tea and popcorn for snacks at around 4:30 pm.

Dinner ended up being EVERYTHING that Karma had suggested... tomato soup, hot chips, lentil soup, dhal bhat, butter tea and regular tea....way too much food.

Poor Rick had all this food put down in front of him, most of which he couldn't eat.

We ate what we could and then excused ourselves to go to bed. I`m starting to feel a bit under the weather but it may be due to the amount of food.

Getting to the toilet is the last hurdle before bedtime. It`s an outside toilet (nothing unusual in these parts) however its around the side of the house, up a hill with some very steep and uneven steps to cross. I kept thinking about the fact that Karma told us his pet dog was killed by a tiger just 6 months ago. When we go to the loo, we keep the flashlights moving to make sure the tiger is not about.