Pokhara, Nepal
Trip Start
Oct 20, 2008
1
9
15
Trip End
Oct 20, 2009
Pokhara,
Nepal
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
At around 10:30pm after driving along pitch-black winding mountain roads a bank of dotted lights like stars on the land swung into view. Pokhara was a world away from India and the bright, colourful streets shone like to gold to us. With all the cheery red faces, restaurants, bars and mountain views, however, we couldn't get ski resort out of our heads. It was Christmas Eve and keen to sit outside with a chilled, unmasked beer we sat in a local shack eatery and started talking with Tanka, the owner, about our hotel's trekking plan for us
rock 'face'
. It was clear he had extensive experience of the mountains having been a porter for 15 years although his stoutly paunch suggested he hadn't seen them recently. Unable to resist his friendly smile, keenness to return to the mountains and shy demeanor we accepted an offer for 16 days trekking around Mount Annapurna (at half of what the hotel were asking) and an invitation to join his family for Christmas Day dinner (Hindu style). Christmas Day arrived and the mainly Hindu Pokhara had pulled out some of the stops with their version of Christmas - multiple Santa's on motorbikes, children singing Hindu love songs whilst clinging on to the back of pick-up trucks and open oil drum fires outside the lodges and bars. Apart from a calculator, which brought the great joy that only statistics can bring, my other present was an hour's tandem paragliding with a Brazilian woman over the town (although it has to be said the Brazilian pilot was simply a bonus on arrival). Watching the earth sail beneath my flailing legs against the backdrop of Phewa Lake around Pokhara and the distant snowy peaks to the north was very peaceful - my kind of extreme sport - and we flew around with the eagles lifting and swooping in and out of air thermals for around an hour before touching down without incident.
The next few days we were able to relax in the British-summer style winter days and buy some warm winter gear for the mountains
xmas eve
. On the morning of the 28th December we set off at 1900m starting the first steep ascent. It would take us the first 5 days to reach our first destination of Annapurna Base Camp at 4200m and no amount of words or pictures could ever do these days justice really. Awesome is an overused and misplaced word these days but the sight of these giant glaciated pyramid peaks rising so far into the sky that you looked at them very much like you'd talk to a very tall man, was just that. We walked through humble villages terraced onto the mountainsides, sweeping green valleys and willow-the-wisp woods haunted by cloud but the mountains shining brightly, ever present, in the distance above and beyond. We paced over streams of crystal clear water, white river rapids and rickety Indiana Jones style bridges between deep gorges. Don't think Fiona appreciated my gentle rocking although Tanka's 'heavy foot' on these bridges had us both grabbing for the sides. On NYE (day 4) we walked upto 3740m, the effects of altitude sickness beginning to kick in. In the day we had walked in silence through prime avalanche country listening for the roar of snow above the V-shaped valley walls and followed the fast flowing river up, the oxygen thinning out and each step heavy and laboured. I had a headache but i dismissed it as over the previous few days i had spent much of my time whacking my head against Nepal's ridiculously small door frames. In the afternoon heavy cloud chased us through the valley and as a blizzard whipped the mountains, reminding us of their power, we sought sanctuary at Macchpuche Base Camp before our New Year's Day ascent to Annapurna Base Camp (4200m). By 4pm, as the weather worsened outside, a jolly group gathered : Us Brits in our trainers, 4 Italians decked head-to-foot in North Face gear checking altitude meters and inexcusably refusing the rum, a serene middle-aged Swiss couple and 3 Korean students who were almost inconsolable at not being able to make the top for NYE of which one had the most enormous face i've ever seen
festive spirit
.We huddled round the large table with a kerosene fire roaring underneath playing international paper games: Battleships (Italy), Town River Tree (UK), Nepali chess (Nepal), Yahtzee (Switzerland) and a non-sensical numbers game called Baseball (Korea). Playing chess with the highly random Tanka my head was becoming increasingly tight and 2 hours later the sides of my head felt like it was in a vice and the crown under a steam train, the Italians taking up most of the scarce oxygen. Plied with vile garlic soup to thin the blood it was mooted that if i was actually sick we may have to descend in the dark blizzard to the previous village 2 hours walk away. Thinking the walk to be more dangerous than the choppy waves of nausea i tried to sleep. In bed, New Year's Eve, 7pm.
Temperatures fell at night to around -16 degrees, the cold, stone walls and naked bars in the rooms punishment after the day's pleasures. Keeping warm at night was a full time job - rapid changes into all thermals, fleeces, woolly socks and gloves inside our sleeping bags became efficient races. Also, having to drink a lot of fluids in the day walking the twice nightly trips to the outside 'hole' toilet became the single most painfully annoying aspect of our existence. Waiting until the last possible moment to leave the warmth of the sleeping bag at some ungodly hour I'd jump out of the bag - find the torch - find my shoes - open the squeaking door - wake Fiona (now also bursting) - walk in the snow and try (this time) not to slip on the icy, stinky toilet - walk back wide awake and try and get warm again knowing I'd be up again before long.
The early morning was clear, the only light in our shaded position the pink fire-glow on 2 cones above us
christmas Day
. Feeling a little better in the morning and having another gallon of garlic soup for breakfast we decided that having come this far we would climb the 2 hours up to Base Camp. As the sun rose we followed the trail left by the eager Italians in 2-foot of snow. Turning into a valley bathed in sunlight the whipped folds of snow glistened like diamonds all around as we crunched and creaked in the fresh snow. Base Camp was set in the bottom of a stunning bowl of about 6 gleaming, mammoth mountains now only a further 4000m above us in the brilliant blue sky (they seem closer after walking 5 days up to them). It was the pinnacle of the first part to the trek and whirling round to take in the indescribably peaceful 360-degree view we didn't really know how to leave.We spent the next few days on the way down and crossing west to another area where the scenery changed and unfolded dramatically before us, the mountains being so sheer in size and slope as to house wildly different climates within days walks of each other. The treacherous forest trails covered in ice and snow that were dank and foreboding in the low ethereal cloud became a winter wonderland in the bright welcoming sunshine. The white slid gradually back into the lush green valleys of waterfalls and circling eagles and then over through North American style pines, wide, windy valleys and over to the arid desert steppes of the Mustang region
paragliding
. Great stuff with or without ipods.By this time Tanka was being extremely sarcastic and highly entertaining, his tone somewhere between Yoda and Mr Miyagi. Between ridiculous impressions of peacocks & American tourists and sweating profusely, Tanka did us proud and took us to local houses for lunches & snacks and made a point of relaxing at viewpoints rather than simply haunting the tourist lodges, himself happy to be back in the mountains. Away from his family he got "a little bit drunkle" every night but on one fateful night after joining him drinking some local, lethal moonshine things changed. He had been quiet all day and after polishing off most of the large beer bottle of fermented millet he started saying he wanted to return to Ghasa (the previous village we'd stayed in) to "study" the widow owner. Getting a straight answer was difficult at the best of times with Tanka but when pressed he said he thought that she had killed her husband and wanted to study her motives as his own wife had tried to kill him three times! Tricky to react to such a statement really but i thought it best left and stopped pressing - arranged marriage problems not being a forte. Of course, Fiona admirably ploughed on regardless. Apparently (for those soap fans desperate to know), his wife was in love with another man and as Tanka had lost a lot of money helping the poor and taken a loan she thought getting rid of him would eliminate the debt and unlock the forbidden love
muktinath hindu temple
. Wanting to stand up clapping shouting "there's your movie!" he followed it up by saying he was dead inside and only lived his life for others now. Cue awkward silence. Fi did well to try and talk some calm sense into him but he was straying into difficult waters and he wasn't really listening to us anyway. Bidding him a swift goodnight and an English, cure-all slap on the back we scuttled off to the bedroom to let off a large sigh (and race into our sleeping bags).In the morning an embarrassed but smiling Tanka shuffled about complaining about the strength of the "brandy"(?) and how my hangover was funny but nothing more was said or raised on the subject and we still had 7 days left! Within a couple of days (perhaps unrelatedly) his habits like crushing snoring, the sloppy slurpy eating and his indecisive plundering, all forgiven when he was hilarious, became deeply annoying. The comedy character in our travelly dream world had become a real person with all the fears and frailties and coupled with 16 days in each other's pockets we had to learn a swift lesson in patience.
Over the last 5 days of the trek we walked on desolate desert clays cracking under the extremes in temperature, found a fossil by smashing specific rocks on the dry bed of an ancient river that maybe once fed green vegetation, bathed in a hot spring and narrowly avoided "YakDonalds" in a medieval desert town near the border with Tibet in the mysterious Mustang Kingdom region of Nepal (the upper parts only allow 500 tourist per year asking $1000 for the permit)
human cannonball
. Things were getting pretty grubby too. With only really 2 hot showers in 16 days and not the largest wardrobe to choose from we had become what the Nepali's call "mountainous" and my beard, now home to a chaffinch called Sid, a blue-eared Kingfisher and the threatened Slinder Billed Babbler, needed urgent work.On the last day we had to get a 2 hour bus off the mountain along the deeply rutted dust bowl of a mountain track. The ugly intervention of man was creeping into the mountain village and crudely constructed roads cut out of the young volatile mountains broke our hearts a little, not having seen a vehicle in 2 weeks. Feeling like stones in a portable rock crusher we could only find seats at the back of the Lilliput bus and with my knees crushed up against the metal seat in front the rollarcoaster from hell roared in a choking cloud of dust. Being jolted on every inch of road off our seats (and plundering back down again) the beating seemed endless. Nothing could be worse than this surely. In answer to my prayers my stomach & bowels (which had been squirmy for a couple of days) started to gripe and loosen. I tried to wedge myself above the seat hanging by the handrails to avoid (for want of a better expression) my arse being pounded like a pneumatic drill and things loosening beyond control. Eventually shouting to Tanka at the front, off his face on paan (chewing tobacco spices), i asked him quickly to go and ask them to stop the bus....quickly
desert landscapes of Jomsom
. Can we stop the whole bus please the westerner needs to shit himself! Great.Over the next 2 weeks, now back in Pokhara, we growled about on an old style Yamaha Enticer motorbike with mustache handlebars for a couple of days, i continued to thwack my head on low beams and went on another 5 day trek to the Mustang region with Tanka who wanted to show us the real Nepal and not just the perceived tourist trek of Annapurna. With our tempers even again (the mountains do funny things to you we decided) we agreed.
On the second day Tanka got hideously lost and we trailed the mountains in torchlight until we found the village of Siklis. Having not seen a soul for a couple of days the least things we expected to find at 1750m was a drunk, Irish painter and decorator sat round a camp fire. This was 50 year old Ciaran who had been coming to his beloved mountains for 12 years but over the next 2 days did not move more than a metre away from his glass of fermented millet relaying stories of his IRA mother and father in the 50's and struggles of various people's armies around the world. At one point a local was aimlessly strumming his out-of-tune guitar to one of Ciaran's tales of woe round the camp fire in a bizarrely discordant violin moment.
Without any lodges on this trek we had to rely on the generosity of people to give us a bed for the night
paragliding feet
. We stayed in Hom's home, a native Gurung and long-standing friend of Ciaran. On the second night, having climbed and lazed about watching distant avalanches at a beautiful viewpoint with Fiona in the day, Hom had organised about 20 people from the village to come to his home and perform an Amatoli (traditional music and dance). We were welcomed warmly as guests and watched and listened as the men sang and played merrily and the women, in full swing, twirled and swirled around. Obviously we were made to get up and dance and suitably embarrass ourselves. Ciaran lurched about 'on stage' like an 'auld' lush but nothing other than non-judgmental smiles surrounded him. At one point he accepted more Rakshi wine by stuttering through "Does the Pope shit in the woods?" and was basically a disgrace but having him there just added to the unreal scene.Leaving the next morning we walked for 5 hours and landed in TangTing (another Gurung village). After accepting some unbelievable pumpkin soup, dug up in front of us, the cook invited us to stay at his parent's house and to take us the next day to walk up to his favourite place. In the dark, smoothly clayed floor of his mum's kitchen, we sat round the wood fire sunken into the floor as she deftly cooked an entire meal of flavoured veg, potatoes, rice, cabbage, dal & tea on one stand over the fire! Despite neither speaking English (nor us Gurung) we had an enjoyable time with them and by the next morning they were dressing us in traditional Gurung dress, giving us Hindu/Buddhist blessing (the religion being blend of the two) & trying in vain to teach us the Oriental-sounding Gurung language
phewa lake Pokhara
. The walk the next day through steep jungle at a hectic pace was tough with no trail to follow but rewarding. Tanka, now more Jabba the Hut than Yoda in his sainsbury's orange shirt, struggled, eventually reaching the summit looking like a mountain of Vaseline. The viewpoint at 3200m was probably the best we'd seen, viewing 15 of the powerfully peaceful giant mountains (all between 6000m & 8300m). We stayed at the top for a couple of hours and after the son and his mate cooked us lunch round an open fire we descended back to TangTing with its stair-cased stepped farms and cattle dragging ancient wood ploughs.
Before our 36 hour bus(!!?) back to Delhi on 2nd Feb we relaxed in our peaceful lodge gardens only leaving for a day's white water rafting and the odd meal.
We only based ourselves in Pokhara (avoiding the highly polluted Kathmandu and other "Indian style" towns) so my views may be obscured by those rose tints but Nepal must be visited once. It is, quite simply, very good for you inside and out.
As always fi's pictures (which do things far better justice than mine) should be up soon (small backlog of 9000 sunset photos from India to sort first) http://flickr.com/photos/fiona236a
