Where is Letang? A good question! At first I mixed it with Langtang (north east from Kathmandu) and I was a bit disappointed as I was thinking that the further away from Kathmandu I would be the more I could experience the  »real » Nepal. I don’t know what is the  »real » Nepal, I was not expecting anything but I wanted to travel there. And I don’t say that Kathmandu is fake or lost its culture, I’m just not a city person and not a good tourist either. So, when I knew that Letang (and not Langtang) was near the Indian border, far east Nepal,  »somewhere here » told me Belinda, pointing a blank area on my guide’s map, I started to be really excited.
The bus was standing in front of us with its  »Deluxe » inscription but before we go we had time for a last snack bought from the street seller. Happy to have some foreign customers he gave us many more spicy fried balls that I asked for and that my stomach could contain! No worries, food is a culture I don’t have problem at all to discover and to enjoy!
It’s time to go and it took us many hours to reach the border of Kathmandu Valley, finally leaving the never-ending noisy and colorful buzzing of the city. There was a time when a lake was standing there a friend told me while I was giving a last look to the capital…
The road turned behind the hill and the landscape changed completely, almost shocking! Green, green everywhere, ever green, my eyes couldn’t stop looking around, craving for this new places I could see, for this simplicity and purity of this wilderness. It’s where I’m feeling alive, where I have to be, where I have to go, Nepal I’m coming! The sun is going down and I tried to capture as much as I could during the day time ; but night time had its charm too. Sometimes you could guess the shapes of the mountains around, lightly drawn by the moon aura. And crossing the villages, the small houses looked like theater stages where daily life was happening but that your eyes couldn’t catch because of the speed of the bus. Indian music was loud in the bus but matched perfectly with traveling on this bumpy jumpy roads and with my joy to discover this country. I fell asleep but my eyes kept continuing to open at some time, wanting to know more about what is outside and where we are. Finally the light came up again, the music stopped and after a last ride through the mystic jungle we arrived in Letang, place of all our adventures. Thirteen hours trip, a mix between being tired and excited, we just needed a first tea to start this first day and a bit longer to realize : here we are!
The local friends are welcoming and they guided us to go to the guesthouse, on the way people looked at us with surprising eyes and smiles, who are they? Who are we? Tourist? Travelers? Helpers? Probably a bit of lots of things or nothing of it. Anyway let’s choose  »neighbour » because we are going to stay here for a while and we are going to know you.
Still now, I don’t exactly know where is Letang but it doesn’t matter anymore because here we are far from the use of street names, maps and direction boards ; here you can only be close to people, you smile, you laugh making big gestures to describe what you want, you take your time and you go for it! Namaste Letang!