After being turned back from our initial destination of the A.B.C. (Annapurna Base Camp) due to five feet of snow, I was feeling a little disappointment, but perhaps bit more frustration; it was a little hard to believe that snow was the reason, given we hadn't seen so much as a snowflake in our four days of trekking and during the day we were sweating and walking along in short-sleeves. But I suppose that means I was asking for it, because during our stay in Gandruk, we were plastered by a mighty hailstorm. So mighty, in fact, that the cold front blanketed most of the country, and for the first time in 63 years, a thin layer of snow covered the streets of Kathmandu.
We didn't see that, of course, as we were dozens of kilometres away in the northern mountains, but word spread like wildfire about the freak weather in the city. Conversations abounded and the weather was on everyone's tongues. In fact, it was so extraordinary that people stopped talking about politics for at least a day.
I'm certainly no expert about the political situation in Nepal, but in the days to follow we would come to learn much about the current state of affairs in the country, and just how frustrating it must be for the people that live in Nepal. By way of setting the stage, Nepal is home to some sixty-three separate ethnic groups, each with their own language, culture, and specific interests. The government in Nepal is viewed with unified distrust and contempt, owing to the high level of corruption and scandal. There is a royal family in Nepal, but a couple of years ago the prince took a machine-gun and slaughtered them, in a Hamlet-style bloodbath that rocked the country to its core. The line of succession was maintained, with a relative of the king assuming the throne, but given the high popularity of the former monarch, he's got very big shoes to fill.
Nepal occupies a piece of shaky terrain between two world powers: India and China. The only thing separating these two countries is the Himalaya mountain range. It's very difficult to ship goods in from China over the mountains (there are only a few mountain passes for road traffic, and they're subject to weather) so the majority of trade is done with India, to the south. However, Nepal is on the short end of the trading stick, having to import the large majority of its consumer goods from India, including its main import, petrol. There are no oil wells in Nepal, at least not yet, so if Nepal wants its gas, it has to come calling to India. And when India wants something from Nepal, it only has to hold its export contracts hostage.
And right now, one of the things that India (an officially all-Hindu country) wants, is some autonomy for citizens in the southern Nepal region known as the Tarai. These folks emigrated northwards from India, intermingled with the Nepali locals, and brought much of the local economy with them (ie., buying or building factories to make goods that are shipped back to India, all at a lower cost because the Nepali rupee has a much lower value than the Indian rupee). They have never been considered Nepali citizens, which is obviously a bit disconcerting for them, and they've been tending to riots lately to force the issue. They've also set up roadblocks on the small number of arterial roads leading to Kathmandu, blocking the flow of petrol from India. This tends to get their voices heard. Citizenship has now been made available to a wide variety of traditionally non-Nepali ethnic groups, in addition to the Tarai (one of the interesting things we would see during our trek was large picnics organized by small communities to help people fill out the paperwork). Even with this major concession by the government, riots, rotating strikes and roadblocks still continued while we were there, not just by one group but by many. People have figured out that the government is pretty much powerless to do anything but give in, and so many different groups are vying for local power, or at least, the appearance of doing something for their communities so they can gain support for the upcoming election.
The government is caught in a very difficult position; while it seems they'd love to send in the troops to restore law and order, dozens of human rights groups, and more importantly, international donors, are looking over their shoulder to make sure they treat everyone in a humane fashion. In a previous riot, force was used, and some Tarai citizens were injured and killed; the government was forced to pay large sums to their families.
So, the election, then. This is another hot-button issue that was on everyone's lips while we were there. If you read or watched anything about Nepal in the last couple of years, it was about the civil unrest brought about in the country by a political group inspired by Chairman Mao of China (hence, the Maoists). These folks have figured out that their government isn't really doing much for them, so why not have a revolution, Les Miserables style. Their guerilla fighters essentially hung out in the mountains and made life miserable for the government, gaining local support. They made life a bit miserable for trekking tourists as well, setting up "checkpoints" on popular trekking routes and asking tourists for "donations." The donations even came with a tax receipt, but one might consider a certain level of duress on the donations, as they were being asked for by men carrying assault rifles. So, after a lot of unrest, a truce of sorts has been reached between the Maoists and the government, with the government conceding a place for the Maoists in the political system. In the ensuing national election, the Maoists won a referendum, to the considerable chagrin of the then-ruling government. There were challenges; the king tried to get involved; there was much strife. In the end, the high court has decreed that a new election should be conducted, and everyone is still hammering out the rules for how this will happen.
Thus, it's a bit complicated. And by no mean should you consider the preceding to be an authoritative representation of how things actually came to be in Nepal: I've cobbled this together from many a discussion held in varying levels of English with Bhakta and several other people we met during our trek.
So how does this have anything to do with us, tourist trekkers in Nepal? Well the Maoists do still put up checkpoints, but they're more rare these days; they've officially stated that they now welcome tourists to Nepal, recognizing that tourism is a major source of cash for the country. But perhaps the biggest change for tourism in Nepal is the development of the road.
Recognizing the trade imbalance with India, Nepal has stretched its international relations as far as they will go and taken their development dollars to invest in a road that will link Kathmandu with China. The road, unfortunately, will be built over existing trekking routes, which makes sense as the trekking routes are pretty much the most direct points between A and B. So in five years, the trek we're currently doing will be gone, replaced by a road. Local economies - the trekking lodges - will fold up.
But, I digress. Hail in Gandruk, that's where I was starting this dispatch.
There wasn't a sunrise for our first morning in Gandruk; it was overcast. Since we'd scheduled in a rest day, we went back to bed. Luxury! When we did finally get up and have some breakfast, Bhakta took us for a walk through the town of 270 inhabitants. Gandruk, the original home of the Gurung peoples, is a Buddhist town; Bhakta as well, is Buddhist. However, people have moved away to the east of Kathmandu to practice a different, less-expensive religion. As religions go, Buddhism (at least, the type practised in Gandruk) is apparently quite expensive: by way of example, Bhakta mentioned that if a family member dies, the family is expected to hold a large ceremony complete with meals for the entire community. And I'll bet it's the same with weddings and births, as well.
The actual town of Gandruk has no real structure or organization to it: there are no street signs. The majority of the buildings are single-family, single-level dwellings, made from stone and mud with thatched rooves. When you're looking at a building with multiple levels, you're looking at a trekking lodge. You have this constant feeling of walking through someone's back yard as you ascend small stone staircases, head down back alleys, and walk alongside farming paddocks. Without a guide, we would have been lost.
When we came back, we had enough time to do some laundry before the heavens opened up and nickel-sized ice pellets started landing. It lasted for quite some time. Not quite conducive for laundry drying. It was very much an indoors day. For dinner, we discovered momos - kind of a dumpling-styled steamed spring roll - and why these haven't caught on internationally, I don't know. They're heavenly.
The next day, the hail has melted away and the weather has returned to normal; we head a little bit back the way we came to go towards Ghorepani, where we will link up with the most popular trek in Nepal, the Jomsom trek, so-named because it links Pokhara with Jomsom. It's actually the western circuit of the larger "Annapurna circuit" trek, which carves a circle around the entire Annapurna Sanctuary range and takes between sixteen and twenty-one days to complete, depending on how you do it. It's hallmarked by the legendary Throng La Pass, the highest walking pass in the world, routinely covered by snow drifts and usually quite difficult to cross. We wouldn't be going that way, owing to our less-than-winter proof clothing and gear.
As we walk towards Ghorepani, we do a fair amount of uralo-janni and ucalo-janni - climbing down, and climbing up. I'm struck by the farming terraces cut into the mountains. Essentially, if it's arable land, the Nepali people have cut terraces into it and cultivated it. They don't grow it all at once, rather, they use quite a smart system of rotating crops, allowing some terraces to go fallow while other bear produce. As the climate changes dramatically the further you ascend, one mountain side can produce an incredible variety of produce.
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| One of many Nepali children we passed on the route. |
As we progress along the trail, we encounter another small trekking party, Willem and Jolanda from the Netherlands, and their guide. We find ourselves walking the same direction, so we take turns passing each other during breaks, walking alongside having conversations, and dining and sleeping at the same lodges. We teach each other some card games and have a generally great time. We break up our trek to Ghorepani at Bhantanti, a very small (ie., five or six houses) trekking junction set in the base of a gorge, but tomorrow, it's a lot of climbing to the peak of a tall hill, then some downhill to Ghorepani.
The big attraction at Ghorepani is Poon Hill, where a five-o'clock ascent up the hill brings you to the highest point in the area, at 3210m and you are (hopefully) treated to a spectacular panoramic sunrise vista. If you didn't start the trek from Phedi, but Naya Pul, then this is the destination after two days of trekking, and you don't even see the mountains until Ghorepani. We met some other trekkers for whom this was the case: in addition, they had terrible weather (they trekked through the hail). So by the time they got to Ghorepani, they were very much looking forward to something to make all their travails worthwhile.
The trekking route to Ghorepani takes us through a fair amount of very packy snow, the kind that's perfect for building snow men. To provide some humour to our small band of trekkers I elect to slip no less than three times on the packed snow, as if to prove the point that my shoes aren't going to be taking me over the Throng La Pass. But we do arrive at Ghorepani, where the small (thirty buildings) town is in the midst of nice sunny thaw, and there is a fair amount of dancing as we have to jump from stone to stone to avoid the pools of water and slushy snow.
Despite the fact that everyone that has settled into the Mountain View Lodge knows that they're going to be getting up at five o'clock the next morning, the night actually goes quite late. We met a large group of Norwegians, who let their hair down and dance with the Nepalis; an Israeli girl named Tamar (whose name is surprisingly difficult to pronounce) who's just out of her military service and travelling on her own; and several Brits. Some have already seen Poon Hill and are on their way out, but for most of us, we're here for the sunrise, and it's not until quite late that everyone turns in. I should note that Padam is one hell of a musician, singer and dancer; his skills as a porter are clearly secondary to his other abilities. In short, he's fun at parties and I really wish I could speak more Nepali. He's generally just fun to have around, too; while we walk, he often sings some Nepali dirges (at least, that's what they sound like to me), and is able to make loud, high-pitched notes by blow a leaf held tightly in-between his thumbs, where he plays the same song.
The next morning, we're up by five-thirty for the walk up the hill: it's tricky in the darkness but there are no injuries, and we arrive to a dusty grey pre-dawn sky. There's an observation tower on top of the hill, giving one a spectacular vista view, and it is pretty good, except there is some cloud cover. In forty-five minutes the show is over as the sun makes its appearance over the mountain range, and eventually everyone trickles away. It's back down the hill for breakfast, and afterwards everyone goes their separate ways.
We head north towards the Jomsom trek and stop in Shike, on the way to the hot springs of Tatopani. The sky has been threatening rain all day and it does rain just after we arrive, fortunately for us. Germans at the hotel have been ruminating whether to go on to Tatopani, but as the rains come and go intermittently they decide to stick around and drink instead. Thirteen bottles later and I'm not sure what effect has been had on them. Amy and I play cards with Bhakta and Padam, losing fantastically at Dal Mara, but I think we're getting the hang of it.
We head on to Tatopani the next morning: it's a big descent almost all the way and there are some big suspension bridges to cross. Today we're not lucky enough to escape the rain, so we pull out the rain covers. As if to prove my theory about wards, it doesn't get any more rainy than a constant spitting. After a descent down knee-jarring stone steps that feels like a thousand metres, we come to the next suspension bridge only to find out it's been put off limits due to the road construction. This is why having a guide is so handy, as Bhakta just turns around and takes us down to the river to walk beside it for some time. It's a different kind of trekking, as there's little to no difference in elevation, and I find it's actually a bit more tiring as you can keep a constant pace that's perhaps faster than normal. As we walk, we pass fantastic vegetation: contrary to what our guidebooks have mentioned, Rhododendrums are still in bloom, a brilliant scarlet red flower that puffs over deep green foliage. They're definitely hitting the end of their season, but they're still pretty impressive. Bamboo trees the size of small office buildings loom on either side of the trekking paths, their shoots careening into the sky and bending in graceful rainbow arcs. Bhakta tells us that these plants grow extremely quickly, benefiting from annual harvesting.
We pass an odd stream on the way to Tatopani: there's a silvery sludge on the sides that I hope is sand, but it's really sludge. Ick. However there's a girl nearby selling oranges for a ridiculously low price, and they're absolutely fantastic. The recent snows have felled some orange trees, so there's a glut on the market. Good for the consumer.
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| A hedge plant in Tatopani. Prickly. |
By the time we're ready to move on from Tatopani, we've met a half-dozen new friends. We meet several women travelling on their own, who have decided to travel together: Beranice, a young woman from Toulouse, France; Monica, from Poland, and Josie from Morocco. While hanging around on our second day, we also meet Fred and Jasmin, two more lovely French Swiss that we seem to instantly get along with. I'm not sure what it is exactly about French Switzerland that produces such warm and charming people, but I'm all for it; my suspicions are that once removed from a somewhat conservative environment, they're partially starved for meeting new people. Anyway, they're on their way to Vietnam and southeast Asia and also don't speak much English. I marvel on how difficult this is going to be for them (I marvelled previously about this for Julien and Stépanie), but really, I guess we had the same problem in Portugal. It is indeed an adventure and when it works, quite rewarding.
I almost moved on from writing about Tatopani without writing about the feature which gives the town its name (Tatopani means "hot water") - the hot springs. The pool itself is quite large (at least thirty feet square, or less than ten metres) and has hot water poured into it. The water is then drained out with three small openings, with which you can take a hot shower. When we arrived in the morning, a massive layer of steam was being produced from the water, giving quite an other-worldly feel as we sunk our aching joints into the hot water. It was definitely worth the forty cents' admission.
After being thoroughly relaxed in Tatopani, it's onward, heading northwards, towards Ghasa. It's a fairly leisurely stroll and from what I recall, unnoteworthy. Ghasa itself is a pit stop and the hotel we stay at is one of two so-so ones. They don't have much of what they promote on the menu - we have french fries as a snack instead of one of the Jomsom trail's famous apple pies - but in the evening, the entertainment was supplied by the Canadians. We managed to track down some extra decks of cards, and finally are able to teach Bhakta and Padam a game I hope will sweep the nation; Racing Demon comes to Nepal.
Racing Demon is something of a family tradition on my mother's side and the source of many a raucously fun moment during my childhood. When we stayed with Mary Gordon-Cumming in the French Alps, a call had to be placed back to Canada for some rules clarifications from my mum. For those who haven't played: if you've played Solitaire (a.k.a. Patience), you'd understand Racing Demon. Imagine playing it competitively, and the more players, the better: the level of chaos increases exponentially. It's slow going at first (poor Bhakta and Padam would be absolutely smashed by Mary Gordon-Cumming, who shows no mercy), but as our trek progressed, these two card sharks would prove to catch on fast.
The next early morning we're on the road again, leaving Ghasa for Tukche. This time we have a recommendation for a place to stay: the Tukche Guest House. The trek between these two settlements is relatively uneventful, except for two exceptions. The first has to do with the road, and the second has to do with coffee.
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| The trekking route outside of Tatopani. |
I bring all this up because for the first time in the trek, we're sharing the road with motorcycles, which are a very new phenomenon in this area, and unlike Kathmandu and India, these drivers don't tend to use their horn every chance they get. Rather, you barely have time to bounce out of the way before it comes screaming past. The motorcyclists have started a good business in ferrying trekkers from Jomsom to Ghasa (or vice versa) either because they've been stranded, injured, or are just tired of walking.
And the second, to do with coffee: we have a tea break in a very small town called Dana, where I have perhaps the best coffee I have had since leaving Europe. On being presented with a tall glass of frothy coffee, I imagined for a moment that I was in a Spanish café; it looked very out of place, and I had to wonder if the Nepali who owned this lodge-slash-tea house had a very expensive Lily espresso machine in there. It was marvellous coffee - so marvellous I had to find out how the heck he made it. His presentation to me provided a wonderful example of how Nepalis can do so much with very little. In fact, rather than shelling out what would have been a small fortune for an expensive coffee machine, his method was to pour boiling water over instant coffee and a little sugar, seal it with another container and shake it like a martini until it was nice and frothy. Some café owners in France could learn a lot from this guy.
Arriving at the Tukche Guest House, the place indeed lives up to the recommendation, with a particularly fantastic view from the roof. The owner, Saumer and his wife are lovely and take very good care of us. We arrive a little later than we're used to, and as a result are hungrier than usual, but we're lucky that lunch was already well-started. Lunch is pretty much always Dal Bhat, the national dish of Nepal: steamed rice, and a lentil curry. Usually it's accompanied by one or two other curries, and just as you think you'd start to get sick of the same old thing again and again, you find that it's different from town to town. The dal bhat in Tukche is very nice - but then, the thing that usually makes dal bhat very popular, is that it's customary to get as much rice and dal as you like.
With regular power cuts from the grid, the people of Nepal have come to learn a lot about alternate forms of energy cultivation, and the Guest House is a good example, with a firm investment in solar panels meeting most of the energy needs of the house, as well as heating the water. As the sun sets we set ourselves up in the rooftop solarium for dinner and Racing Demon. Dinner consists of some very good momos.
Our destination the next day is Jomsom, where we'll confirm our flight back to Pokhara before heading onwards (and upwards) towards Muktinath. The walk is much more level than we've experienced so far, mostly because the path has been transformed into the road. We encounter on more than one occasion several work gangs, hacking away at the side of the road with pick axes and shovels, and work would sometimes come to a halt as the workers watched us pass.
While we've heard lovely things about Marpha, a settlement renowned for its apples, apple pies, apple cider, apple brandy (basically, all things apple), unfortunately we pass through at about seven-thirty in the morning, and only the cows and chickens are awake. We decide against hanging around for an hour and a half to have a brandy tasting at nine o'clock in the morning and choose instead to push on.
As the day winds on, we find people playing cards and generally having more fun than usual; turns out today is "Holi," a Hindu religious holiday. The highlight of this holiday is for people to walk around with bags of brightly coloured chalk and paste each other with the stuff. Apparently, in Kathmandu it's a heck of a street party, that very usually gets out of control as all forms of social barriers are removed. We meet some kids that very kindly offer to smear holi on us, which we graciously allow. We're celebrities. Bhakta isn't too keen on the idea (he's Buddhist, so he doesn't really follow the celebration) but I give him a good pasting.
Our new colouring has the effect of driving the kids (and to some extent, the adults) we pass on the trekking route, absolutely wild with giddiness. I'm reminded of my sooty christening in Rishikesh. When someone invites you to be a part of the local culture, I've found it's an honour.
On the other side of Marpha the landscape changes dramatically as craggy hills turn into small mountains, and we climb up the side of one to leave the Myagdi district we've been walking through, and enter into the Lower Mustang district. At the border we encounter the home of a family selling music in their shop, and as usual, the kids go nuts that we've been pasted with holi. We have some great fun chasing them around to spread the joy.
Since we've long since run out of things to talk about, Bhakta has been teaching us Nepali, and it's coming along: we can count to twenty, comment on the food, know some very essential words and the difference between up and down. We're still working on telling the time.
We walk alongside a winding trail en route to Jomsom, heading at times up and down, until eventually the path empties into a wide, desolate, empty river basin, flanked on both sides by towering mountains. The basin is filled with stone, and two small creeks of water that meander from side to side. Outside of monsoon season, the channels of water are spartan, and apparently they change their course capriciously. One season the rivers follow the left side of the basin, another year, they follow the right. Donkey trains are quite regular as we walk along, a monotonous, hypnotic trek as we walk along the straight and level, keeping our eyes on the path to avoid stepping on big knobby, ankle-destroying stones. But we look very small in contrast to the mountains that line the sides of the canyon, piercing the ground and heading straight up to vast heights.
Jomsom emerges from around an upward corner as we depart the basin. The flights are done for the day (they're done by nine in the morning as the weather picks up dramatically). The town is essentially built around the airport: an army outpost, an army mountain warfare school, a district police headquarters, and district court. It makes sense as it's a travel depot. We stay at the Anka Marco Polo hotel, which has clearly done quite well for itself as it is actually comprised of two hotels, one behind the other, the better one being out back where we decide to stay (attached bath, but the beds don't move, so we have to sleep a single). We confirm our flight, but unfortunately we have to leave a day early as the day we'd originally booked, the plane isn't available.
Amy and I stroll along the main drag, having conversations with army soldiers anxious to practice their English, and interestingly, French; one of the soldiers had a United Nations peacekeeping placement in Senegal, and learned some of the language there. They're all really friendly, and tell us how they spend their spare time on various projects: the latest one is the building of a small shrine across the road.
The night is filled with Racing Demon, beer, and momos; in short, a pretty great way to wind down after about five hours of walking. Bhakta and Padam are getting better, and as we play, we get a small crowd of people, interested in the game. I'm convinced there's going to be a Racing Demon revolution before long. It's got a lot of things the Nepalis like about card games, including:
- The ability to slap cards down on the table in an aggressive and meaningful way
- A healthy amount of competition
- A fast pace
- Infinitely debatable rules
Jomson as a town isn't much to write home about: the weather and wind pick up a lot in the afternoon, bringing a stinging wind through the main drag. We didn't have long to get used to it, as the next day we were heading further up into the mountains towards our destination: Muktinath.
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