These boots were made for trekking

Counting down my days in Nepal, teaching yoga, editing and warding off re-entry panic, spring warmed the days and the snow capped mountains appeared through the fog around the rim of Kathmandu Valley.  In the capital of the country that boasts the Himalayas, the dust and heavy sky of the city is oppressive.  There is no outside life, apart from pot plant rimmed roof tops that vie for sunshine, if not blue sky, as they reach skyward.  One rickety building level placed on the previous, scaffolded with bamboo, like houses made of cards.

Every morning at breakfast, fledgling trekkers descended on the breakfast buffet, as if this was their last supper.  Sparkly new backpack mountains, spiked together with trekking poles teetered in the doorway.  The owners, who were never going to carry them – instead most would soon schlep them off to porters – formed a human parade of advertising banners for North Face and Black Diamond or Black Yak.  By 9.30am they’ve evacuated to the airport for the first leg of their base camp expedition.

As trite and sanitised as these pre packaged tourist trails have become, I still felt the pull to put my boots at some altitude.  A serendipitous breakfast companion pushed me off the starting block and I found myself headed for the Mustang Region of Annapurna Conservation Area – the last forbidden or forgotten kingdom of Nepal, and Buddhist enclave of annexed Tibet.  On Google Maps it all looks close and small, and flat, and my planned trek was only 30 kilometres, plus add-ons to make about 40 kilometres in total.

Since I was going by myself, I was pretty keen to lock in transport and some accommodation.  Also permits and entry fees - Trekkers’ Information Management System (TIMS) Registration Card for Individual Trekkers, and National Trust for Nature Conservation, Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) Entry Permit – were required.  My expectations of acquiring these with any ease were not high as I took a trip to the Tourism Board in Kathmandu.  Payment of USD 20 and NR 2000 respectively and I was in and out within half an hour.  The longest part of the transaction was the impromptu survey the girls at the desk were conducting, on the day Lindsay Lohan posted the ‘Is it white and gold, or blue and black?’ dress on her web site.

The morning of my departure.

“The airport is closed.  A Turkish Airways plane crashed yesterday.”

You’re kidding me.  Is it April Fools’ Day?

“Domestic flights are still leaving, but there will be some delays.”

Of course there will!

At check in, “Do you mind going on a small plane, madam?”

Sure.  But how much smaller than the usual Kathmandu to Pokhara plane.  “Mountain Flight sized plane?”  These are the one seat either side of the aisle size.

“Yes.  They only need short takeoff runway.”  Avoiding the Turkish jet lying sideways and nose down, and creating a beautiful silhouette looming out of the early morning haze as I’d approached the airport.

Taxiing past the jet on takeoff was interesting, but landing back in Kathmandu a week later, was disconcerting, as the one up from smallest sized plane rocked side to side and really didn’t appear to have visual alignment.  But I am writing the story, so ...

Back to the beginning and my taxi driver to Beni met me at Pokhara Airport and off we went for one of those 60 kilometre, 3 hour drives that I love so much.  The plan was to take a shared jeep from Beni to Lete, another 50 kilometres but about now I completely abandoned the plan.  It was Holi and it was late, and “No jeeps for you, madam!” as the drivers of both jeeps and local taxis lounged lizard like against their idle vehicles.  A quick recalculation and I was looking around the dust hole that it is Beni (today I even read that it was the focus of a Maoist terrorist attack and massacre just a few year ago) and wondering about a place to stay for the night.  My Pokhara driver proved somewhat of a chivalrous knight and cajoled and convinced both me and the local bus driver, that I was going further up the Mustang Valley to Tatopani for the night.  Holy Crap!  A compressed bus ride along a mule track and two hours later, I was deposited half way from Beni to Lete, feeling like I was between nowhere and the unknown, with the reassuring instructions, “Just go up that way, madam.”

With no idea of what to expect or how much to pay, I walked into the most likely looking guesthouse, that is the one in the sunshine, and secured a NR 200 a night room with an inside bathroom, hot water unclear, at Dhauligiri Guesthouse.  When in Nepal, it’s dal bhat for dinner, and really you just should.  Rice, dal, vegetable dish and pickle (achar), with as many top ups as you can eat, for less than NR 500.  A torch, a book and a sleeping bag.  A room and a bed.  It’s all good.  Breakfast Nepali style means Tibetan bread or Nepali bread.  The former deep fried scone mixture, and the latter buckwheat pancakes.  Good stick to your ribs fare for trekking.

Back down to the road for the local bus the rest of the way to Lete.  With no seats to be had, I ended up in the jump seat, wedged between the driver and the conductor, affording me an uninterrupted view of the road, or more usually the ravine we tilted precariously into.  Inhale and consider that unlike the Indian Hindus, the Nepali seem to have a healthy regard for this life, and therefore are not keen to topple a bus load of locals and one white woman into the river below.  These wiry Nepali bus drivers are awesome!  I was nonetheless still happy to alight in Lete with a Namaste and Namaskar prayer hands, two hours and 30 kilometres later.  Wandering along for the first tiny part of my trek, I found my next overnight stop, Kalopani Guesthouse.

During the afternoon the temperature plummeted and the Annapurna peaks stood their icy ground against a spring snow, as I huddled inside with endless cups of tea.  The next morning for my first proper day of walking, the sky was boundless blue.  Steam wafted from lofty slopes as the sun edged across the surface of the centuries old frozen landscape.  And I set off for Naurikot.

Now Naurikot doesn’t appear on any maps.  It’s a small mountain village on a ridge above Larjung.  What could be hard about that?  Well, you can’t actually see it from down in the river village of Larjung.  The sign just points away from the river, and the local English speaking helper indicated up, and 25 minutes.  Okay!  With plenty of sun and daylight, all I had to lose was ... time.  I zigzagged up the ever increasing gradient of the path, crunching through ice and encountering Swiss cow bell adorned fluffy Himalayan cows.  Just as I was really beginning to wonder, a jeep loomed between the pines and the mud house village of Naurikot appeared.  Unable to make a low key entrance, and unsure even if I was in the right place, where or how I’d find my home stay, I went with the confidence that everyone would know Poonam’s House, and there I was.  Tea and introductions.  My little room up the rock climbing stairs.  A view of yaks grazing on the vertical slopes of Dhauligiri.  Two nights of living, cooking and being part of real Nepal today, tomorrow and yesterday.  Dal bhat, cauliflower, potatoes and beans, cel roti, pancakes, homemade lapsi (hog plum) jam and local honey.  Yak and mutton hanging for drying in the kitchen about the wood fire stove.  Coals in a brazier in the middle of the kitchen floor, where we sat warming and eating.  The rhythm of village life is the growing, preparing, cooking and eating of food.  Life plays out in dark windowless kitchens waiting for the faint flow of one electric light bulb when and if the load shedding is favourable.  However no one really notices or minds, with the glow of the fire and the call of blankets and bed as the cold night sets the roof water drips to icicles, and the silence closes the day.

Poonam’s husband, Manoz, is the village lama, and the custodian of the Bon Monastery next door.  Drum beats and chanting softly infiltrate the dream state of morning, and an invitation to see inside the monastery is a living archaeological quest amongst the pre Buddhist prayer wheel and Shiva icons, mixed with gaudily printed nylon blankets, cause even lamas get cold.

Another limitless blue sky day for trekking in the Himalayas and I joined with a young German couple to walk in the river bed looking for fossils ... and found some.  Carrying rocks in my backpack was not really an option, so a photograph in situ it was.  As the river meandered, so did we until the next village of Tukuche, where the apple menus began.  Apple pie, apple crumble, chocolate apple crumble, apple pancakes, apple cake, apple brandy.  You get the idea.  With a late spring, the apple trees were not yet even budding for this year’s crop, but the last of last season’s apples were being cooked up in a frenzy.  Not quite knowing what to expect, I ordered apple pie, and was surprised with a deep dish pancake, piled high with grated apple and cooked frittata fashion ... maybe.  The older Nepali couple who run the guesthouse with the sunny courtyard restaurant, replete with a satellite dish at least 2 metres across, bearing a saucepan of potatoes boiling in the centre, were happy to see us wander in.  Late snow and the subsequent closure of the main pass of Annapurna Circuit and villages higher up, had left Mustang Valley devoid of the usual early season trekkers.

Further along Gali Kandaki River to Marpha and my next stop, Neeru Guesthouse.  It was rocking with people when I arrived, although they were only a lunch group and by later in the afternoon it was just me, tea and apple crumble, then my German friends showed up.  Add two Japanese boys and a couple of Spanish girls, and the seven of us huddled around the table for dinner.  Brazier underneath, dal bhat on top.  Monastery, meditation, stupas, Tibetan community, and pretty in that higher altitude barren moonscape kind of way, Marpha lulls you into timelessness, melting away the days, if not the ice.

From various vantage points in Marpha I could see, high on a hill towards Jomsom, a Buddhist Gompa; a big gompa, stark against the sky and mountain backdrop.  With only 5 kilometres to walk direct to Jomsom and my next morning flight out, it was obvious to me that I had to climb this peak – if only for the yoga picture.  My highest Himalayan summit was here at Hutsapternga Monastery.  Jomsom is at 2800m and I’d like to think I made it to about 3500m on the top of the ridge, dancing in the wind striking yoga pose.  Down the other side and past Dhumba Lake, follow the red and white markers to Thini village, a collection of mud dwellings not unlike caves plastered to the lower slopes of Nilgiri Himal, then skirt around and down into the back of Jomsom, and on to Xanadu Guesthouse – because how could you not stay at a place with that name.

With a panoramic view of mountains, sky, snow, and the airport, I was content to sit on the bed and just be humbled by the enormity, majesty and total silence.  It felt like Day 4 of Vipasana when all the mind noise ceases, and there is just now and stillness.  I wanted to soak it all in; not lose a moment of being in this landscape, that reaches up in the same limitless way my erstwhile ocean life reaches out.

Although it was calm in Jomsom, the Mustang Valley spring winds prevailed and no planes landed in the morning.  The alternative of an 8 hour jeep ride to Pokhara was a long and winding road, to an unscheduled night in the lake town that is a launching place for Annapurna treks.  The highlight was the rear view of Machhapuchhre, the mystical Fishtail mountain, after which everything in Pokhara is named.  I’d been in Pokhara before and failed to see the resemblance, but a setting sun on the sheer western slopes revealed a shimmering mermaid tail of ice scales, flipping up above the clouds.

Breakfasting by the misty lake the next morning, I tried to imprint the mountains on my memory, before flying away, maybe for the last time.

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