Susie told me she’d originally given two dogs to the ani-haru—“but I think they let him out and he ran away,” she says about Gunga’s brother. I ask Chenzom about it and gather from her emphatic monologue that the other dog fought so much that they gave him away, and he’s now living happily with a man and a friendly tiger. I look forward to telling Susie that Gunga’s brother is alive and well, but a conversation with Lama’s brother Pujong, whose English is very good, reveals that the dog was in fact given to the neighbor, but subsequently eaten by a leopard.

Today, watering and hoeing Pujong’s vegetable garden with Diki Kunzum and Palsung. I asked them if they’d been working like this since they were small. Palsung said, “Every day. Not work, our mother—” She makes slapping motion, laughs. “You every day school. You lucky.” She says in her next life she’d like to be one of the touristpeople—“nun only Muktinath, Kathmandu. Touristpeople many many trekking. I like same same touristpeople.” She asked me if I'd like to be a nun. I said I would for a short while, but not whole life. Palsung, suddenly serious: “This not possible. Nun whole life, not short time.”

“I happy, I cry. I unhappy, I laugh,” Palsung teases. Something about her seems an embodiment of crazy wisdom. She has an absurd tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and is often deadly serious in the middle of her joke. I tell her that when I first came to Muktinath I thought ani-haru were like Superman. She says, “Superman strong, but mind slow. Nuns also mind slow.” I say no, they know 3 languages, they’re not slow at all. She says, “We broken Nepali and Tibetan.” But their Mustang language is not broken, I tell her, and she asks rhetorically, “You English broken? We Mustang not broken, same same. All other broken.”

We are finished hoeing. Diki goes to help Pujung in the other part of the garden. Palsung makes four furrows, drops seeds into holes. “You say you like nun with lips, inside heart no like. I say I no like with lips, inside heart like,” she confides.

Knowing I’ll have this large quiet room in Pujung’s house, to be alone for an hour or two at the end of the day, frees me to engage actively with the ani-haru during the day—I no longer feel the need to “escape” their shouting and squabbles and chaotic activities, and can appreciate their vitality and enthusiasm more fully.