Our 6 day, 80km, trek took us through Singalila National Park, following the border between India and Nepal for most of the way. We reached a height of 3636m.
We booked trekker's huts for most nights. They were the only accomodation along the route that we could find information about. However, after booking we read some bad reviews so were apprehensive about staying in them.
From Darjeeling we took a 2 hour jeep ride to the start of the trek, and then in a very cheating manner asked the driver to continue a further 3km and drop us at a monastery on top of a hill (a rocky jeep track follows the the path for the first 4 days). We missed out an incredibly steep climb up out of the valley. I felt sheepish to be whizzing passing other trekkers in comfort but also very thankful. However, the vehicle wasn't really up to the job - 3/4 of the way up the driver made the boys get out and walk. The girls got to stay seated apart from the really steep corners. Seeing as most of us were in weakened states from recurring dodgy tummies, it was probably a sensible thing to do on the first day as, even after our headstart, we still had 4 hours of climbing to face.
Leaving the valley behind we gained height and started walking through rhododendron forests, but the flowers were still in bud - it was 2 weeks before the start of the season. I felt sad that I might miss the spectacle of whole hillsides covered in vibrant flowers, but hoped that some might be out early. The scenery was immediately beautiful despite the haze - interlocking spurs of mountains getting successively lighter greeny-grey as they faded into the distance.
At lunchtime we reached the first of many border outposts. The path follows the Nepalese border and a few army men, stationed in tiny villages along the way, patrol it. It looks like a relaxing but lonely life. I got quite excited to be in Nepal (it's somewhere I've wanted to visit for a long time) and capered about at the 'welcome to Nepal' sign, got my photo taken and walked a little way down the road to make sure I was properly in the country!
The weather started out very hot, but after midday it got colder and colder. The last hour of walking was steeply uphill but arriving at the first trekker's hut we all began to shiver as soon as we stopped moving - and it was only 3pm. After putting on warm clothes we discovered small dorm rooms that were passable (I managed not to stay in the one with the broken window), a separate kitchen in an outhouse from which we ordered hot drinks and, in the yard, a beautiful cockerel and lots of hens and chicks fluffed up from the cold. Maybe the trekkers huts weren't going to be so bad after all. Then I went to the toilet. It was dark, dank, pungent and grimy with no running water or basin. It opened onto the main communal area so the smell was ever-present. Still, we settled down to reading, snoozing and playing games while we waited for dinner.
When we booked the trekker's huts we'd been shown a menu. As most menus do, it implied we would have choice. Ha ha ha. No. For the next 5 nights we ate the same food - rice, watery dahl, a small portion of vegetable curry and chapatis if we were lucky. Most of the meals didn't taste so bad actually, but it was the reptition that got to me. Breakfast was porridge, eggs and chapati. Lunch, when we stopped at tea houses, was noodle soup.
On the second day the route was up and down and again it got colder as it got later. Cloud moved over the ridges so fast it looked like smoke rising from a chimney. I was quite desperate to reach the village where we were staying as we approached in swirling mist. Mandy and I were walking past an eerily still and silent lake with black skeletal trees stumps sticking out when two little boys came running towards us, calling out excitedly. It was a great welcome and although they wanted chocolate, had streaming noses and tried to get into my rucksack, we made friends. They led us to the village and it made the whole thing seem less like a scene from 'American Werewolf in London'.
That evening we got excited when told there was a fire. Infact it was a large metal container into which embers from the cooking fire were tipped - but we were grateful for anything in that temperature. We huddled around, nursed cups of tasty ginger tea pepped up with whisky (three people in our group were carrying spirits and I thank them profusely for having that extra weight - it really made a difference in the evenings), and listened to a huge thunderstorm which lit up the cobbled streets, pounded rain onto the corrugated iron roofs and blew a howling wind that sounded like it was going to rip the building apart. We tried telling ghost stories, but I was the only one who knew any so that didn't last long!
On the third morning we woke up to see snow high up on the ridge that we would ascend to that day. Some fellow trekkers phoned friends who had already reached our next night's destination and we heard that they could see the mountains. Hurray! Now we just had to get there. The walking was all uphill and the altitude making me very breathless, so I was glad we had only 8km to cover. We saw huge vultures circling overhead - appropriate jokes were made. I walked alone for most of the day following a steep track with endless tight hairpins that hauled its way up to the ridge. There were some great messages for trekkers painted on the rocks, such as 'Slow but steady is best' and 'No sweet without sweat'. Our destination, Sandakphu, is the highest point of the route and has the best views of the mighty Kanchenjunga.
Arriving in the mid afternoon, patches of snow were still on the ground. We shunned the drafty trekker's hut, and instead stayed in a private lodge. We had cosy looking rooms (even if they were actually feezing), a friendly, informative host and got to sit in the warmer kitchen where the family hung out and cooked (and we hung out and played dice and card games). Gazing longingly in the direction of the view, our host pointed out tantalising patches of Kanchenjunga that were appearing as the clouds shifted. He even reckoned we could see Everest briefly, 160km away, but it just looked like cloud to me. He was not the first and certainly not the last person to predict it would be clear the following morning.
The storm raged again that night but unlike the day before when it was calm in the morning we awoke to gusts of wind and cloud being blown through the village. This was our longest day - 21km along the ridge with supposedly great views - therefore it was the most exposed section too. The weather was not going our way. The sun came out a little as we set off and the track undulated past dark pine trees with moss hanging from their limbs. As we got higher we started to see more rhododendrons in bloom - I took too many photos. We passed placid yaks, gangs of goats and locals driving loaded ponies. As the cloud came back the scenery started to look more and more surreal. The pine trees higher up were mostly dead and their eerie silhouettes appeared out of the mist.
Our chosen lunch spot turned out to be an abandoned hut on a windswept freezing cloud-swirled hill. I tried to shelter behind it and shoved down some snacks but got so cold as soon as I stopped walking. Mandy and I walked the last third of the day alone, battling against the wind on the exposed sections, stumbling down the stony descents and sweating and panting up the hills, always seeing nothing ahead but more cloud and the path disappearing around another corner. I estimated we had about 2km left to walk when it started to hail. I faffed about getting my waterproof poncho on and Mandy got wet waiting for me, only for us to walk another 50m before arriving at that night's only accomodation option - the desolute, disintergrating trekker's hut at Phalut.
Phalut has already become legendary. I found it hard to notice that I was actually out of the hail and cloud. The broken windows let in the rain, all the doors were open and banging in the wind and, I'm not making this up, cloud was swirling around the room! I was so reluctant to accept that this was were we had to stay that night that I didn't take off my rucksack or poncho for 10 minutes. The living area was one big dormitory with dozens of beds crammed around the edges. Everything about the place was damp, decaying and squalid. Thinking a hot drink might help I asked the nearest Indian for tea, only to be told that he was in the army - not a member of kitchen staff. Maybe the camouflage gear should have given it away! I felt so embarassed. It turned out that the border outpost guards here live in a room in the hut. We finally got provided with a 'fire' and hot drinks and sat huddled around to discuss our lot. There was mumblings of 'I thought this was meant to be a holiday' and a lot of disbelieving looks. I felt pretty shocked but decided that because we were all in the same boat I couldn't feel too sorry for myself.
Exploring our prison camp we soon found our way around. On the other side of the dormitory was 'the cloud room' an empty gloomy windowless room, with floorboards that felt like they were going to give way and a big brick placed over a hole where they had. This was the room from which clouds came to fill the main room when the door was open. After negotiating the cloud room there was a corridor that had piles of rubbish against the walls and whole windows missing with ineffectual flapping tarpaulins replacing them. To the left was the kitchen. I will leave that to your imagination. To the right the corridor opened out into a stable (really!) in which stood a shivering, soaking horse. It's whinnying sounded a bit like a woman screaming. Near the distressed horse were four doors that appeared to be toilets. However, on closer inspection only one was usable. Of the others, one was just an empty concrete cell with a dead chicken on the ground, one was a squat toilet but had an oar covered in human excrement in it, and the other was locked - god know what horrors were inside that one. Basically, the place had all the elements of your average nightmare.
Back in the main room we began to feel like we were in a film. As we were sitting, wrapped in blankets, in a tight circle around the embers, a jeep pulled up and out jumped 12 men who trooped into the hut. Many were army guys but some were smartly dressed and one carried a briefcase which he placed on the table. They all gathered around the briefcase and started talking and gesticulating wildly. We really felt that we musn't get eye contact or look in their direction incase we saw something we shouldn't. Perhaps we would unwittingly witness some gangland/military deal, here in an isolated hut in the middle of a hailstorm. Then we heard measurements being discussed (most Indians use English for numbers) - '1.22m', '4.6m'. My mind boggled! We later found out they were agreeing planning permission to build some barracks here so the soldiers don't have to sleep in the trekker's hut anymore - we were almost disappointed at how mundane it actually turned out to be!
Around this time Mandy let in a one-eyed drenched dog that was hanging around the hut. We later found out that his name was Denny. He was with us for the next 3 nights, and despite being a big smelly was a lovely tempered dog. All the places we stayed at knew him - he hooks up with a group of trekkers and walks the circuit before moving on to find a new group.
It was time to pull together and prove that we had the character to get through this. What followed was, amazingly, the most memorable and fun night of the trek. It was helped in no small way by:
a) Music provided by DJ Simon (a selection of his best songs including the words summer, sun or sunshine, and anything by the beach boys - the Sloop John B lyric 'I want to go home' was much appreciated)
b) The offer to buy local rum from the kitchen staff. They must do a roaring trade in it. There is really no alternative if you want to keep sane. It was essential in helping to warm and cheer us up. However, by the third bottle, perhaps it wasn't so medicinal any more...
Once the rum was flowing we were joined by 'Major Chambhu' who has been posted here for 2 years. He kept refering to socialism and we were a bit confused at first, before we realised he meant socialising - he was very lonely, poor chap. Anyway, he was great entertainment and after dinner played traditional drums for us (getting some amazing bendy sounds out of them) and sang, while some of the other soldiers demostrated punjabi dancing which threw great shadows up the walls in the flickering candlelight. Some of the group were already in bed and trying to sleep through the noise, and around this time I decided to call it a night too. As I retired, Mandy and Sarah were forcing more rum on the Major and things were getting quite lively. With earplugs in, I got to sleep, blissfully unaware of how the rest of the evening panned out!
On waking, Mandy's first words were 'I think something bad happened last night'. Only Matt was able to recall the entire sequence of events, but highlights were: Sarah and Mandy did quite a lot of dancing, Sarah missed her chair and fell over, Mandy somehow got candlewax all down her trousers, the major tried to get Sarah to pee in the dead chicken room, the soldiers wouldn't leave until Matt virtually pushed them out of the door, the major nicked our last half a bottle of rum and Mandy deposited her dinner in little piles in the cloud room, the toilet and the bin. What a splendid evening!
After forcing down thin grey gruel that called itself porridge, we set off. Luckily this day's walking was all downhill through very beautiful lush bamboo forest to the village of Ghorkey. At that night's accomodation we read in the guest book a description of Phalut as 'Mordor with alcohol'. How appropriate. Ghorkey is a small farming community on the border of Sikkim and has been described as a little Switzerland in the Himalayas. The guest house/farm we stayed in comprised of neat, ordered chalets, huts, kitchen, outhouses and animal sheds clustered on a steep hillside where potatoes and beans are grown on the tiny patches of land created by terracing. The family were so friendly - it was bliss after the night before.
On the last day, we had quite a long walk through more terraced valleys and small villages. We set off late which was not a good idea, because every day previously the clouds had gathered through the day and it had rained in the afternoon. After lunch Mandy and I fell quite far behind everyone else and ominous clouds were gathering overhead. We had 1.5 to 2 hours walking left. We picked up the pace (although did stop to take photos in a lovely village where the swiss-style houses had fantastic displays of flowerpots and windowboxes, a hen clucked along followed by no less than 12 chicks, and wild orchids cascaded from mossy tree trunks) and the sky darkened. Throughout the rest of the walk we kept feeling spots of rain, hearing thunder and seeing lightning over the ridge next to us. We walked a bit faster. Nearing our destination the rain started to come down more consistently and we were virtually running, but somehow, by the skin of our teeth, we made it and sprinted into the hotel just as the heavens opened and hail pelted down. Phew! We celebrated with beers, delicious pasta dishes and apple pie. A meal has never tasted so good.
The next day we make the long winding bumpy jeep journey back to Darjeeling. Sarah and I went to complain about the state of the trekker's huts (we ended up not staying in 3 that we had paid for because there were much nicer, cheaper places in the same village). We didn't really expect to get any money back, but we did an excellent good cop, bad cop act (I was the good cop, of course!) and got a full refund for the nights we had not stayed. Result! I think it was Sarah saying the magic words 'We're going to write to Lonely Planet' that swung it for us. That night we all went to Joey's and met up with 3 other trekkers who had been in Phalut the night before us. We swapped Major Shambhu stories!
So, for 12 consecutive days in the area, we got no proper mountain views. Postcard sales went up in town.
In the morning, Flic, Alex, Celia, Didier, Matt and I left Sarah, Simon and Mandy behind, shivered in the cold air for the last time, and set off back down to mountains towards the Indian plains which are rapidly heating up as summer and the monsoon approaches. Our destination, Varanasi, is a sweltering 40 degrees.
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