Notes from Nepal

Kathmandu was covered in a thick blanket of clouds when the plane began its descent into the airport, which obscured the haze of pollution that usually covers the city. After de-planing (which I don't think is a real verb), the first order of business was buying our tourist visas, conveniently available at the airport. The visa is sold for the equivalent of thirty dollars U.S. per person, payable in a variety of different currencies - but, cash only. The purchase of the visa was the first example of old-school bureaucracy I would see in Nepal: three guys were required to process the visa. One took the cash and issued a receipt, the next recorded the details into a book, and the third pasted the visa into the passport. What would seem like a simple process took us nearly twenty minutes of standing in lines, for reasons I couldn't fathom. But once the visa was issued, we were free to travel as we liked through non-restricted areas of Nepal for the next three months.

We picked up our bags from the baggage carousel and made our way to the exit; we were well-advised that there would be a gaggle of taxi drivers, hotel touts and tour operators, waiting to help us find ways to part with our money, but even with this knowledge in mind, I would compare it to a frontal assault when we left the airport doors. Within seconds we were surrounded, people pushing flyers towards us of their remarkable hotels, telling us how they could take us there for just a look. It seemed a well-practised routine, and you could tell who had more experience than others: some guys spoke a little louder and a little more forcefully than the rest. It just became surreal for me and I realized that regardless of how loudly and convincingly they spoke, we were still the ones with the power here, and I started to flex it. While joking with them over the absolute absurdity of their onslaught, I told them they had to step back behind a certain line (which they all did). I think for them, it was a bit of a game, as they would joke with each other in Nepali when one would start reducing his price to try and win us over. In the end we took a chance on a place, agreeing to pay a dollar for the car ride over there, regardless of whether we stayed or not.

The car in question was an older model of Toyota Corolla - one might call it vintage - in surprisingly good shape. Driving in India had prepared us for driving in Nepal - no seat belts, loose traffic rules, et cetera. On our way to the hotel, the Pilgrim's Guest House, we got a few lessons in Nepali, which while similar to Hindi (the prominent language of India) is notably different in the ways that matter. But since Indian television programs are so prominent throughout Nepal, everyone can understand Hindi to some degree.

The Pilgrim's Guest House turned out to be acceptable for our needs; we ended up staying there for the duration of our four-day stay in Kathmandu. The hotel is on the northern edge of the city district called Thamel, otherwise known as the tourist district. It's called the tourist district for good reason; the real estate is taken up almost solely by hotels, restaurants, pubs and outdoor shops, and only tourists have the necessary money to be able to afford to stay there. This may seem surprising when you consider that a moderately cushy hotel room can be had for five U.S. dollars per day, and something quite lux can be found for fifteen. It certainly gives you an idea of the relative economies at play here, and how Nepal is very much on the poorer scale.

Meditation on the rooftops of Kathmandu.

The city seems to want so hard to be taken seriously as a modern city, but lacks the infrastructure necessary to see this end. A small shop will have a hand-painted sign declaring itself a supermarket, while their selection of goods will be far from super. Credit cards are taken only in high-end establishments, and then, only when the phones are working; there are established blackouts in the city to reduce strain on the power grid; there are no street signs. They're proud of their city, tolerant of the traffic jams and the pollution, the noise and the bustle. The city sprawls for kilometres, with buildings seemingly constructed on top of one another, and small shack-like huts are built in the cracks in-between. It's the kind of place that's very hard to take in all at once, as there is just so much of it. Buildings are decaying, but despite the cracked facade, the Nepalis that live here are very frugal and efficient with their buildings. Water is all heated by the sun, for example.

Kathmandu has an undeniable charm, if you can see past the grimey exterior. Unlike Delhi, or any of the big cities we've visited for that matter, the people here don't seem to live here solely to make money. There is no doubt that the culture of the west has a huge influence on the culture of the city and its inhabitants: the dress is western, and few people wear obvious Nepali styles, except the older Newari men who wear traditional brimless caps. And it's only in Kathmandu that you'll see women riding scooters by themselves.

We knew that we wanted to go on a trek in Nepal; it's one of the most popular activities in Nepal, and for good reason. With few paved highways to connect the mountain villages, the walking trails have been highly developed to support the foot and animal traffic that transports goods from town to town. We spent the time in Kathmandu preparing for our trek, hiring a guide and porter from the Sherpa Trekking Cooperative, and organizing a tour that would take us from Pokhara, a small city six hours from Kathmandu, and around the Annapurna Sanctuary for seventeen days. At the end of the trek we would fly back to Pokhara from the mountain town of Jomsom.

In preparation, we decided that we needed a few warm clothes: some fleece layers, in particular. We didn't have to look far: about as far as you could sling a cat. Trekking being the number one pastime for foreign tourists visiting Nepal, Kathmandu is busting at the seems with outdoor shops. The prices for boots, sweaters, jackets, tents, sleeping bags, you name it, are ridiculously cheap compared to what you'd pay back home. But the reason for this is that the goods are locally made, and logos are sewn on with a such a high level of quality it's hard to tell a fake from a legitimate product. The most highly copied items are items with The North Face logo: but the quality is almost as good, so for the use of a few weeks, it's definitely worth the price, which you inevitably reduce with some simple bargaining. Every shopowner will profess that his items are the real deal, but something usually gives it away: most often, a tag with a logo that's different than what's emblazoned on the front.

The other big business in Kathmandu (if not all of Asia, it seems) is the sale of pirated DVD movies. They're available by the boxload, for the equivalent of about two dollars per movie. We bought a few to see if they were created by someone taking a videocamera into the movie theatre; but no, the quality was just as good as any regular DVD. The surprising part was the selection: movies that hadn't even hit theatres yet were available, and even movies that were never to see the light of day in North America. The best example was an Al Pacino movie I'd never heard of: the description on the back of the label had obviously been typed up by the DVD pirate, who went on to criticize the movie in such terms I wondered if anyone would ever buy it.

After a few days of acclimatizing to Kathmandu, including a bout of carbon monoxide poisoning from the horrible pollution, the day of our trek finally arrived. We started in the dark hours of the morning with a walk to the bus terminal for six hours of bumpy roads towards Pokhara. We met our guide, Bhakta, and our porter Padam and strolled the dark and hazy city streets towards our bus stop. Even in the early hours there was a visible presence in the city, a simmering of activity as it began to stir itself awake. Reaching our bus, our bags were strapped to the roof and we began a lazy trundling towards Pokhara. It's only about one hundred kilometres to Pokhara, but with the poor condition of the winding, climbing roads, the age of the bus, and the need for rest stops, it takes a long time to get anywhere. There's not much to say about the bus ride other than it was relatively comfortable, the scenery was very impressive with the large, terraced hills and deep river valleys spanned by suspension foot bridges. Our experience was marred only by the passing of one overturned bus, who had probably overturned as a result of trying to overtake on a poor road. The passengers simply waited alongside the bus, drinking tea and waiting for another mode of transportation to come and continue their journey.

We had set up a hotel reservation in Pokhara so that we had a place to stash our extra baggage while we trekked, and a place to sleep when we got back. Arriving in Pokhara, we weren't met by the taxi as promised by the hotel, so we caught another one and swung by the hotel to drop off our stuff, and continue on to Phedi, the trailhead into the Annapurna Sanctuary. We didn't get much of an impression of Pokhara at the time, other than it was small and manageable, and a pleasant lake meandered through it. We were focussed on the trek at hand.

Phedi is one of those "blink-or-you'll-miss-it" hamlets whose claim to fame is being one of three starting locations for a trek into the Annapurna sanctuary (so named for the protected wilderness area surrounding the highest peak in the area). When we arrived, we spent a few minutes getting ourselves ready for walking, and in those minutes we were offered walking sticks, bottles of water, extra porters and food for the road. Unfortunately, we came prepared and couldn't drop any money on an area which could probably have used it. We started to trek.

Our first day, or at least, the remains of the first day, were spent just getting to the next town on the route, called Damphus. This involved an ascent up switchback stairs of around four hundred metres. Yes, stairs - made out of rock slabs, but stairs nonetheless. Several dispatches ago, when I first mentioned the phrase "trekking in Nepal," if you had any flights of fancy that our trek would involve machetes, abseiling and zip lines, I'm afraid you're going to be a bit disappointed. Thirty years ago, getting around the Jomsom trail probably was a "real" trek: today, it's evolved for the convenience of the people the trekking route serves. We're only visitors. The trails' true purposes are for trade and transport, and a lot of effort has gone into making it easier to get around. A road through the mountainous area has been historically impractical; it's comparatively easier and cheaper to strap four hundred pounds of goods to human or animal porters and send it around from place to place.

But I digress. Our trip up the Damphus hill was pretty slow, as Bhakta had decreed we would ascend "slowly, slowly" in order to let him gauge our pace, as well as to get used to walking on the trail. We didn't complain, and had our first view of the scenery we would be seeing for the next seventeen days. From midway up the hill, we looked down into the whole lush Pokhara valley, large rolling hills carved into farming terraces, shrouded in mist in the far distance.

We arrived in Damphus a few hours later, to stay at our first lodge. You basically have two options when you trek through Nepal: you can camp along the route in your tent, or you can sleep in lodges. No one camps on the Jomsom trek, as there are so many lodges, and the towns are only a couple of hours' walk apart, so there isn't much free space available to camp in, even if you wanted to. But on other treks, or off the beaten path, it's the only option, and it's fairly complicated: you could do it on your own, but for the money, it's much more viable to hire a fleet of porters and gear. Our trek, however, was not one of these: it was lodges all the way for us, and I can't say I minded that at all.

I can't remember the name of our first lodge, but it was probably "The Damphus Inn" or something to that effect. Staying in lodges is cheap compared to staying in the city, but you're expected to eat dinner there, which is where the real money is - especially if you like to drink. As you trek higher into the mountains, prices ascend proportionally and choice thins out. Our guidebook mentioned that it can be terribly bad form to sleep one place and eat someplace else: this can see your room rate jacked up, or even get turfed out in the middle of the night. The one saving grace was that we were trekking in the low season, so we never had a problem finding a place to stay, or getting a good deal on room and board.

The sun set at around seven o'clock, and the power was out, so dinner was held around candles in a very dark dining hall. One thing that we never got used to was the fact that non-Nepali guests have their orders prepared first, and then the Nepali guides and porters retire to the kitchen to eat. With limit cooking resources, it's just the way it is: there are only so many burners in the kitchen with which to make food. By the time eight o'clock rolled around, it was pitch black and there wasn't much else to do but go to sleep. I found our daily schedule would change completely, and be very much tied to the movements of the sun

Sunrise over Damphus.

We awoke the next morning to a magnificent sunrise at around six o'clock; this is the kind of thing postcards are made from. The sun reflected off the mountains in the distance, the Annapurna range, in a pastel collection of pinks and oranges. It was a sunrise worth getting up early for, and to be honest, it raised the bar pretty high for sunrises. We learned later that this is one of the best reasons for starting a trek in Phedi and spending the night in Damphus, as with other routes, you have to spend a couple of days trekking before you get to a location high enough to see the surrounding mountains. And really, that's what makes trekking so special - the mountains, looming in the distance.

These are some massive peaks we're talking about here: this it the country of Mount Everest (or, Sagarmatha, as its known in Nepali), and Annapurna isn't much smaller. At around eight thousand metres, we weren't going to be climbing it, but just getting to the base camp for mountaineering would require us to get to four thousand, one hundred metres. The Annapurna Base Camp is affectionately referred to as the "ABC" - its acronym.

After breakfast, we settled up our bill and hit the trail for our next destination, Landruk. Bhakta was be careful not to have us walking to far in a single day, and I didn't mind the pace as I managed to stop us every fifteen minutes or so to see something that had to have its photograph taken. However, as the days were to wear on, I would find that we probably could have handled a tougher trek.

As we walk, I find that Bhakta isn't one to chat; I suspect it's because he's not comfortable with his level of English. When we do talk, it's mostly to do with a little local history or what we can expect over the next hill. Padam, while very friendly, doesn't speak any English, which makes any attempt at conversation a bit frustrating and mostly restricted to pantomiming and hand signals.

We figured out quickly we were going to be getting a lot of exercise in this trek. Because this area of Nepal is so mountainous, there are very few parts of the trek which are flat for a very long time. Consequently, walking involves going up a lot, and then going down a lot. You don't go at a very fast pace, but your legs get a different workout depending on whether you're going up or down. I know this because at the end of each day a different set of muscles would do the complaining.

The road to Landruk, as I recall, wasn't composed of a lot of up or down, but varying bits of both to small degrees. While Nepal is a temperate country it still gets quite cool in the mornings and evenings, so we start off in full fleeces and jackets, and as the day goes on, we strip down layers until we're in our shirtsleeves.

Sunrise over Landruk.

Landruk has only a handful of lodges, so we choose one and hang out there while it rains a bit. We chat with some other trekkers for a while, but it seems as the sun sets and after dinner is eaten, there's little to do but head for bed. The next morning we are again rewarded with a stunning sunrise, which led into breakfast, getting everything packed up again for travel, and then back onto the trekking trail.

Our initial intentions were to head steadily north towards the Annapurna Base Camp, however, reports were trickling in from trekking groups heading south that there was snow in the range, and that we weren't likely to get that far. Hoping for a little luck and a change in weather, we persevered onwards towards our next destination, Chomrong.

Five hours of "Nepali flat" later, and we arrive in Chomrong. "Nepali flat" is a longstanding joke from Nepalis to foreigners - it means a lot of up and down. Chomrong is a small hamlet - more of a collection of houses, really - that exists at a crossroads from three directions. Our lodge was warm and hospitable, and we met another trekking couple from the UK there - Gavin and Jade. Jade was, unfortunately, suffering from what we assume to be giardiaisis, a nasty bug which turns your intestines into knots. You catch it by drinking untreated water, and while it's treatable from widely available medicines, you have to have the foresight to consider that you might get sick, and bring some with you; something which they didn't do, and as it happened, something we didn't do either. We were lucky; Jade wasn't, and the indications were that they would probably be calling their trek to an end shorter than planned.

But for us, it's another morning of a stunning sunrise, breakfast, packing up and setting out. The reports are in, and it's snow to the north - lots of it. Five feet. So much so, that the lodge owners are closing up shop for a few weeks to let the stuff melt out, which means for us, we're not going to make it to the base camp. It's a bit disappointing, but it does mean that we have some extra days to spend, and we don't have to rush anywhere. We elect instead to turn south and head towards Gandruk, the largest settlement in the area and home to the Gurung ethnic group (that is to say, the majority of people that live there are descended from the Gurungs).

I've struggled to find the time to write this dispatch, so I'm going to just post it to ensure that something gets posted rather than thinking we've dropped off the face of the earth. Before signing off, I'll leave you with the rules for a great card game that Bhakta taught us, called "Dal Mara," which in Nepali, means "the Killer."

It's a four-player trick-taking game, with two teams of two; team members sit diagonally opposite from each other. The goal of the game is for one team to win the tricks that contain the "ten" cards. The dealer deals out the entire deck, counter-clockwise (in Nepal, this is the norm) in a slightly irregular fashion; to the first player, you deal three cards, then a fourth face-up, then the fifth. The fourth card determines what suit will be trump for the round. After that, the dealer deals five cards to the remaining three players, then four cards each, then another four cards each (or, whatever number strikes the dealer's fancy; Bhakta would sometimes deal three, then three, then two); it seems the cards just should be dealt in groups.

In this game, the two is the lowest value card, and the ace is the highest value card. The ten, while the key to winning the game, is only more powerful than the nine, and less powerful than the jack.

Two conditions will force a re-dealing: either the dealer has no trump cards, or one person has all the ten cards. If either of these are the case, the cards are re-dealt.

The player to the dealer's right commences play, and cards are laid by the players in a counter-clockwise direction. Players must follow suit, unless they don't have any cards of the suit, in which case they can lay trump or any other card, except a non-trump ten. The only time they can lay a card in this situation is when they have no other choice.

There is also a seemingly optional rule that a player must play a card higher in sequence than the one previously laid. If you don't have a more powerful card

Since the objective of the game is for you and your partner to win the tricks where tens are played, it's not always important to win for the sake of winning. For example, if three cards are played: 6 of spades, 8 of spades, jack of spades, and the fourth player has no spades, he or she doesn't necessarily need to play a trump card to win if they don't want to. Since there isn't a ten in the mix, there won't be an advantage to winning the trick, unless it's to take the opportunity to lead.

It's also a popular strategy to lead an ace so that your partner can put down a ten of the same suit, if they've got it, because nothing but trump can beat an ace. Dangerous to do, of course, if the suit's been played out a bit and it's likely someone has run out and can play trump.

The game ends when one team wins the tricks containing the tens, but this really only happens with luck and good tactics. More often, at least one ten will be won by both teams. If one team wins only one ten, they must deal the next round; if both teams win two tens, the one with the least tricks must deal the next round.

And if you want to play it like the Nepalis play, each trick you have to throw down your card with an oath-like protestation. I can't remember what they actually said, but it translated to "what do you think of that!" and "get out of my hand."