Into the Wild!

We’d been on the road for 2 hours already and had barely cleared Kathmandu’s city limits.  The problem, of course, was that the road simply wasn’t wide enough to contain the huffing, puffing scores of colourfully decorated busses that ply the route between Besi Sahar and the capital.  Then there was the terrain.  In Nepal there are only two directions you can travel – up and down.  There is, it would seem, no left or right.

Traffic congestion outside Kathmandu

In places, the road soared high upon verdant hillsides, giving sweeping views of raging rivers and dizzying switchbacks.  In others, it flanked those same milky, glacier-fed rivers giving us close up views of churning, grade 5 rapids and quaint villages.

We stopped at a kiosk to buy refreshments and bumped into Prem, on his way to paint a school with a team of Australian school kid volunteers.  “Now do you understand?” was all he could say.  A little further on, we paused to pick up the third of our porters, a man named Kisna who wore the colourful Fez of the Nepalese people.  His size made me doubt he could manage 1 bag, let alone two.  Like many locals, Kisna was given to noisily clearing his throat and profuse spitting.  He whiled away the next few hours showcasing these remarkable throat-dredging abilities, utterly oblivious to how it might sound to the rest of us. 

By lunchtime we had reached Besi Sahar.  In the distance rose Manaslu, the mountain that just two days ago had so vengefully snuffed out the lives of 11 people.  Rising from the green valleys it would, under normal circumstances, have been a beautiful sight.  Now however, it felt as though we were visiting the scene of a crime.  As Mallory said when he first beheld Everest – “it was a prodigious white fang – an excrescence from the jaw of the world”.

Besi Sahar was where the tar ended and where most trekkers begin the circuit.  We however would continue by jeep to the settlement at Sangye, about 40 kilometers hence.  I looked at the progress we had made and felt sure that we’d be there within the hour.

I was wrong.  Had I studied the map closely and asked a few more pointed questions as to the meaning of “jeepable gravel road” I might have resigned myself to the bone-jarring afternoon instead of trying to resist it.  The meaning of the words was threefold.  In the case of higher elevations, the term denoted places where someone had blasted their way upriver with a seemingly endless supply of dynamite.  In lower lying areas it meant a place where a bulldozer had performed a token duty before breathing its last and being overrun by the rampant vegetation.  “Jeepable gravel road” also denoted the fact that for about every 200 metres covered, one is required to forge some raging torrent or conversely, to get a thorough drenching from some fantastical waterfall cascading off the hills above.  In short, the road was little more than a pitch of jagged scar tissue upon which forward motion was at best, only theoretically possible.

A tractor loses its load on the road to Syange

It was getting dark when Sangye hove into view and while I breathed a sigh of relief, I felt desperately sorry for the drivers who had to return to Kathmandu that same night.  The town itself seemed to be a major logistical supply hub for the eastern end of the circuit.  Because very few vehicles venture further up the road (at least for now) the main street was a bustling muddle of 4x4s and donkeys – the latter upon whose backs most material is moved to the villages higher up.

We checked into a rickety, moldy two-storey structure called “The Waterfall Hotel”, so named because of its proximity to a towering and utterly impressive 200 metre high cascade.  The spray was so intense that there was to be little or no photographic record of Sangye.  The hotel itself was bursting at the seams with Israeli trekkers though in spite of its capacity, had only 2 showers and 2 toilets.  Getting clean and doing the other thing would be an interesting process, I thought.  After a welcome supper, we fell asleep – or at least into a fitful doze – serenaded by the throaty roar of both river and waterfall.

Farmland near the town of Bhulbhule

I woke early, went downstairs and sat beneath a thatch gazebo with my diary.  In the pre-dawn darkness I contemplated the trip ahead and felt a little daunted by it.  But when the sun came up, the village sprung to life and I quickly put these worries behind me.  As we set off up the trail, we were forced to give way to a donkey train consisting of 28 beasts, burdened variously with gas canisters, Coca- Cola and mineral water.  One of the great threats to the ecology of the circuit is discarded plastic bottles.  As such the authorities are at great pains to dissuade trekkers from buying these and to either treat their own water or purchase filtered water from designated stations.  But people are selfish and if there’s a buyer, there’s a seller.  The campaign seems to have gained little traction, a disaster in the making because very little by way of recycling is possible in those isolated places.  For the most part, empties are tossed into pits and burned.  On a long enough time-line I see this becoming a major ecological issue, if it hasn’t become one already.

Donkeys set out on the long road to Tal

For the next few days as we moved slowly upwards, we would see little or none of the conventional Himalayan splendor that one sees in coffee table books.  Our path instead would lead us up an ever-constricting complex of spectacular gorges that hem in the Marsyangdi River.  The primary colour would be green, punctuated liberally by wispy ribbons of some of the most beautiful waterfalls I have ever set eyes upon.  We would pass through charming hamlets with exotic names, admire exquisite butterflies, gaze across centuries-old rice terraces, sail high over raging rivers on swaying suspension bridges, tread delicately across crystal clear streams and ascend vertiginous, lung sapping footpaths (there are two particularly steep climbs – one after Chamje and one at Danakyu – forewarned is forearmed).  We experienced first-hand Nepal’s status as one of the world’s most water-rich countries.  In fact the whole place – particularly with the lingering Monsoon – was akin to a giant, sodden squeegee from whose pores water seeped and flowed incessantly, particularly in the places where the gradient was most pronounced.

On one day, I got chatting with an Israeli trekker called Martan who was walking with his sister, father and girlfriend.  He had just finished 4 years in the military and was now travelling as a way to celebrate his liberty.  The family was passionate about coffee and would stop at least twice a day to brew up on a small gas stove.  Once the brew was ready, an invitation was issued to whoever was passing by and a small circle of coffee lovers would form.  It was a great way to meet people and I joined in on one memorable occasion atop a beautiful hillside overlooking the river.

Afternoon caffeine fix - Tal District

Entrance to Tal Village - the river is fed by Glacial Melt, ideal for dealing with sore legs

At the end of the second day, we were forced to overnight in a place called Koto.  We’d been aiming for Chame but were simply too exhausted to walk the last few kilometres.  Martin’s knee was swollen to nearly twice its usual size and the ladies were pretty worked too.  We spent the next hour lancing blisters and applying methylate, massaging swollen ankles and letting the life return to weary limbs.  But perhaps the best therapy came from the very hills that had doled out such punishment.  As I emerged from the shower, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the most awe-inspiring vista.  In the foreground, was an apple orchard whose trees bore a rich harvest of juicy red fruit.  High above it, the sun’s last rays had caught the summits of Annapurna II, (7937 metres), Annapurna IV (7525 metres) and the Lamjung Himal (6983 metres).  An hour later, a full moon rose gracefully above the peaks and the mountains pulsated incandescently in the ghostly light.  It was my first real view of the Himalaya I had travelled so far to see.  

That view will remain with me forever.

Annapurna II and the Lamjung Himal at dusk