Sauraha is a hard working town that is still hanging on to 1980. I saw rolls of Kodak film still for sale in a local shop. The boxes had faded and the film may well be useless; even if you found a way to get it developed.
After a day of taking in the Elephant Breeding Center we stopped for a honey tasting followed by a progressive dinner.
With little time allocated to staying in the area we hopped from one restaurant to another.
Sampling the various local delicacies we quickly lost track of time. It was getting close to 8pm and there hadn’t been any momos yet.
My taste buds awoke to the thought of fried apple momos with local honey.
It sounded a much better combination than fried apple momos with tomato ketchup.
This was the first introduction I had to sweet momos in Thamel a little over a week earlier.
We stopped in a small restaurant on the way back towards our hotel. The young girl confirmed that they do serve apple momos.
We took a seat and the menu looked amazing. There were names of dishes we hadn’t seen yet. Maybe there was room for one more main course?
As we enjoyed our Tass (spiced goat with rice) the young girl and her brother were getting lessons in math and English from a tutor.
They looked like this was a rare treat and lapped it up. So much so that when we ordered our apple momos they never came out.
It was going on 10pm and we had been patiently waiting for 90 minutes. No momos arrived so we paid the bill, including the cost of the momos.
The young girl waved and thanked us as we stood up and indicated the money was on the table.
We made our way or the door and into the dark. Waking back using our mobile phone to light the way we looked for a taxi. No such luck at this time of night.
Then from behind us we heard a voice calling out, “Hey! You didn’t have your momos!”
The girl had followed us down the street on her bike. We told her not to worry and that it was OK.
“No no, come back. You must have them.”
We explained that it was getting late and that we were going back to our hotel. No taxis in the area meant we had to walk.
“That’s OK, you can stay with us.” She very kindly offered.
We declined as our bed was not that far away. She rode back off into the night and we pushed on.
We had only walked a couple more minutes along the road when a bus pulled over and the driver insisted we boarded.
We had no idea where this bus was going. The driver asked for the name of our hotel and told us he was going past there. Again he insisted we get on.
I asked why he wanted us to board when we were so close. It was then that we found out that wild elephants come through the area at night and have been known to destroy buildings and kill people.
I saw little sense in asking any more questions. Happily we boarded and were taken to the front gate of our hotel.
