Kathmandu

I thought I better post an entry before you all thought I had fallen into a black hole. After almost one month, I am still in Kathmandu and life has settled into a routine for me here. But I'll start at the beginning....


I arrived in Kathmandu from my Mustang trek on July 1. I went out for dinner that night with Reiko and we bonded like we never did on the trail...perhaps we can thank the cocktails for that. On our way back to our respective guest houses, we passed a sign at a local sports bar for a Canada Day party. Needless to say, I couldn't pass it up, and Reiko joined me for the first hour or so. The place was all decked out in flags and balloons and I immediately requested some Canadian music. I got Bryan Adams - wouldn't have been my first choice but it was okay. It turns out that the Canadian volunteers working here had organized the party and they all turned up in force about an hour after I arrived. I actually spent most of the evening with an Irishman, a Dane and a Dutch guy but had an absolute blast. I also connected with the volunteers who I still see. It was a really fun evening. My favourite line of the evening was from a European guy who was complaining that the maple leaf wasn't uniquely Canadian enough to be our national symbol. He said we "should have picked something that stops at the border, like sanity". (No offense intended to my American readers.)

A few days later, I had had my laundry done, was clean and well-fed and back into the whole Kathmandu night life scene. Not much had changed since I left except that the tourist faces were different. I tried to register for a tour to Tibet and found that the August 9 tour was cancelled but that the same tour would be departing a month later if I was interested. I was and still am but haven't confirmed anything yet.


Bhola contacted me a few days after I arrived and we went out for lunch together. It was very difficult and he told me, as best he could, the story about his son's death. If I understood it all correctly, his son likely could have been treated successfully in Kathmandu, but he resisted modern medicine in favour of visiting the shaman in Bhola's home town. He died en route.


Bhola invited me to visit his family for lunch one day, which is the kind of invitation that you just can't turn down here. It was the hardest couple of hours I've spent on this trip. The situation would have been difficult under the best of circumstances with the language barrier, the cultural differences and them all going out of their way to please me. But with the recent loss to the family it was even worse. Bhola's wife (who, incidentally, he never introduced me to - gotta love the position of women in this society) collapsed into sobs several times during my visit, but never the dropped the ball on preparing a meal for me. I ate with Bhola and his sons in front of the TV - I don't know if/where she ate. She was sleeping when I left.


Bhola is still hoping to take advantage of this opportunity in Alberta and is putting together the paperwork required by the Canadian government. He doesn't have a copy of his marriage certificate and had to travel to his home town to get a copy. Not only can this not be accomplished over the phone/internet/fax, he and his wife both have to make the trip. He also needs medical tests and a myriad of other things, all of which are costing him money that he doesn't seem to have in abundance these days. Given the care that he has taken to fill me in on his financial situation and the logistical problems he's facing, I'm pretty much convinced that the invitation to his house was to encourage a donation to the cause. I haven't given him anything as of yet, but am considering it. A fairly small amount of money on my part would go a very long way towards getting all this stuff settled for him. There's a part of me that is somewhat incredulous that he would leave his family for two years under the circumstances, but I also understand that it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for them and they just can't afford to pass it up.


Other than the visit with Bhola, my first week or more in Kathmandu was spent wasting time. I couldn't bring myself to make any plans and I was just kind of wandering around at loose ends. I know enough people here that it's really easy to party the nights away and sleep the days away and totally lose track of time. I seemed to have lost all motivation to move on or even make a decision about where I wanted to go next. So I didn't.


Then things started changing for me. On 07-07-07, I met some people from a whole different world than the normal gaggle of backpackers in town and they have had a really positive influence on me. Their names are Rupert and Laxmi: he's a Brit and she's Brazilian and they are both living in India. Once I was on a roll, more wonderful people wandered in and out of my life and I've made some really great connections. I am learning so much about myself, the world and my fellow travelers through these encounters. In some cases the time I get to spend with them is far too short as they are just traveling though town on their way to somewhere else. However, I have come to accept that they are all part of my life for a reason and I just try to find the lesson and move on when they do.


I have decided to stick around in Kathmandu for a while to take advantage of what all these people have to offer. I have made my room feel a little more like home and have bought myself a few pieces of clothing that aren't trekking gear. I have largely given up the night life, and have developed a daily routine that keeps me very busy. I am now in bed by 10:00 so that I can get up early in the morning. I start my day with a run which has to be completed before the traffic and pollution get too heavy by about 8:00 AM. I am using this exercise to explore Kathmandu and try to experiment with different routes. After one wrong turn got me hopelessly lost and took me several hours to find my way home, I now carry a city map and a few rupees in my pocket when I run :-). Other daily events include some meditation, spending time with Laxmi and Rupert and a 2-hour yoga class in the late afternoon. My yoga instructor, Rodrigo, is from Columbia and was in the marines there for years. Like Laxmi and Rupert, he also lives in India where he feels more spiritually connected. They are all here getting their Indian visas renewed and escaping the heat of summer in India.


Lest any of you are starting to panic at this point, I'll put your minds at rest. I have not shaved my head, moved to a monastery or otherwise joined any religious group, organization, cult or sect. I am feeling very much at home here, but have no intention of making this my home on any kind of permanent or semi-permanent basis. I just know with absolute certainty this this is where I need to be right now. In fact, I think I am finding what I was looking for when I left home 10 months ago. I have put all further travel plans on temporary hold, and will just let things play out as they will.

I'll make sure to blog from time to time just to let you know that life is still rolling along here. I don't suppose I'll have too much news for the next few weeks, but I'll try to describe what it's like over here. Here's the first installment of Life in Kathmandu.

Getting Around

Regardless of whether you're traveling by car, motorcycle, rickshaw, bicycle or foot, it's every man for himself. There is technically a right side of the road here (the left) but this is only observed on the major streets. A major street is one that is more than one lane wide and actually has lines painted on it. Even on these streets, some drivers decide that their side of the road doesn't have enough lanes assigned to them, so they veer over into the oncoming traffic and just lean on their horns to announce their presence.

Elsewhere, it's just a free-for-all. A strip of road that is little more than one lane wide has to accommodate two directions of cars, motorbikes, rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians. People tend to walk two or three abreast and many hold hands (same sex only) so wouldn't dream of dropping back to single file. Given that it's monsoon season, most people are carrying umbrellas so you run the risk of having your eye put out by a spoke. The streets are sort of paved, but are riddled with potholes which everyone swerves around without any warning. There is no such thing as a shoulder check here - if you want to swerve you swerve and whoever is beside you gets taken out in the process. They don't use turn indicators because to do so they'd have to take their hand off the horn which is presumably a fate worse than death. And speaking of horns, they have a whole different purpose here. They use the horn just to let people know they're there. They are sometimes used in frustration, like in a traffic jam, but rarely in anger as we use them at home. Given that the streets are a seething mass of activity, horns are being blasted all the time. There is literally not a moment when you're not in danger of being hit by something, and whatever that something is will be honking a horn or ringing a bell at you. I am particularly amused by this when I see two vehicles heading for each other head-on, both of them honking incessantly. It seems clear that both of them are aware of the other, and both realize that they're on a collision course, so what's the point of honking? Just turn the darn wheel already.

Getting around is generally like a perpetual game of chicken. Everyone chooses their own course and keeps going regardless of what or who gets in the way. I don't really know how this sorts itself out for the Nepalis - I have only seen one very minor collision and nobody seems to get run over. As for me, I am constantly flinging myself into the gutter or worse just to avoid being hit or trampled. I think that perhaps the Nepalis recognize that westerners will be the first to chicken out, so they play a more aggressive game with us. I am starting to get a bit more bold, but facing a car or motorcycle head-on still disturbs me. This is my least favourite thing about Nepal - I would so love to take a walk and just let my mind wander rather than have to assess every step for potential danger.

Street Vendors

You can buy lots of stuff in the street here, from fresh fruit to jewelery. The most popular street product is Tiger Balm and you literally can't take more than a few steps without someone approaching you and offering it to you. They must make a living this way, but I can't figure out who is buying all this Tiger Balm. I guess a lot of trekkers want it at the end of their hike, but still, it seems impossible to keep so many families fed on Tiger Balm.

One is also pestered regularly for taxi or rickshaw rides. Every morning for the last month I have come out of my guest house and crossed the street to the internet cafe to check my e-mail. Every morning the same taxi and rickshaw drivers try to sell me lift. They can't understand why you'd want to walk somewhere when you could ride, and they just don't seem to understand exercise for the sake of exercise. The street vendors all have a style of approaching you like they're your best friend, and hang onto the conversation like pit bulls. I guess they figure that once they've engaged you in conversation, you won't be able to say no to them. When you try to terminate the encounter, their tone implies that you have rudely walked away in the middle of a discussion and this must surely be a mistake on your part. I swear if you stopped to talk to everyone who approached you, you wouldn't make it breakfast before dinnertime.

Some sample exchanges:

Rickshaw Driver: Rickshaw Didi?
Heidi: No thank you.
RD: Where are you going?
H: For a run.
RD: Good. Get in...I'll take you there.
H: No, I'm going for a run (mimes running)
RD: Okay, I'll help you.

RD: Rickshaw Didi?
H: No thank you.
RD: Okay, let's go.
H: No thank you.
RD: Okay, get in.

Shop Owner: Yes Please? (gestures towards shop)
Heidi: No thank you (walks on)
SO: Hello? Hello? Didi?

Street Vendor: Namaste!
Heidi: Namaste
SV: Where are you from?
H: Canada
SV: Capital Ottawa. Beautiful country.
H: Thank you.
SV: Tiger Balm?
H: No thank you. (walks on)
SV: Hello? Hello? Didi?

And so it goes. One would think that after they had seen your face every day for a month and you never bought anything, they would give up.

Street Kids

There are lots of people living on the street here. It's really sad to see the mothers with their small kids sleeping right in the gutter. Unfortunately, there are ton of young boys living in the street in groups. One has to assume that they have families somewhere but they have chosen to leave. All of these people beg and like anywhere else you have to be really careful about who you give your money to. The boys sniff glue constantly and spend their days lolling about stoned. I have learned that they eventually graduate to stronger drugs. I choose to give money only to visibly crippled people (of whom there are a lot). Whenever I have leftovers at a meal, I ask the restaurant to pack it up for me and I give it to someone in the street. The mothers are the most appreciative so they're my first choice. The boys can be a real pain and will block your way for ages trying to get money out of you. If the street is wide enough to get past them, they'll walk beside you with their hand on your thigh for blocks. I'm starting to get used to it but it's still really tough to see.

Okay...gotta run to a party. I'll post the next installment of Life in Kathmandu soon. Please write - I love to get news from home.

Mustang Trek: Thoughts and Observations

A person has a lot of time to think and to interact with others while trekking. One therefore tends to have a lot of revelations and insights out there on the trail. Some are deep, some frivolous and probably some have no value whatsoever. The following are some things that came to my mind while trekking and that mattered enough to me at the time to jot a note down in my journal.

Reiko and Tshering's Relationship


When I first met Tshering, he referred to Reiko as not only his client but also his friend. When I first met Reiko, she told me about how deep her friendship with Tshering ran, and how very much she cared for him and his family. They had originally met 10 years ago when he was 19 and she 56. She has trekked with him a dozen times since then and attended his sister's wedding last summer. He visited her in Japan and stayed with her and her husband for two and a half months there. It sounded like a very solid friendship to me, so I was somewhat surprised by the way they related to each other. Reiko has very little English and admitted to me early on that she doesn't understand Tshering's English. The mystery of how they communicated eluded me for over a week before I came to understand that Tshering actually has a pretty good handle on Japanese. Still, they never seemed to speak to each other in any language. We trekked in silence (which was fabulous, by the way) and if I didn't speak at meal times, nothing was said. The few times that I ran into them taking a stroll together, I never caught them speaking. I continue to wonder how such a deep friendship formed with little or no verbal communication. I figured there must be some other connection. Maybe he had saved her life on a mountainside or introduced her to the wonders of the Himalayas.


As I'll discuss later in the blog, Tshering wasn't the best guide I've ever had, and certainly wasn't overly attentive to her. If she specifically requested his help, he would give it, but would never offer it of his own free will. He would allow her to cling to him in strong winds or when crossing swift rivers, but only at her insistance. In fact once she slipped in the scree and fell at his feet and he didn't even offer her a hand up. I would certainly have expected more attention from guide much less my very good friend.


I think I finally found the answer at mealtimes. Tshering ate his meals with us and was perpetually late to the table. Reiko and I would always go ahead and begin our meals and he would join us whenever he managed to get there. This is where the magic comes in: as soon as she heard him approach, she morphed into a geisha. It was like something out of Harry Potter. She would drop her fork, leap to her feet and run to greet him. She would settle him into his chair, serve him his meal and make sure that he was happy before returning to her seat. You could almost see her trekking gear transform itself into a kimono and obi. If she was sitting beside him (which she worked very hard to orchestrate) she would stand and walk around the table to serve him. If, heaven forbid, I was sitting between them and offered him the potatoes before I helped myself to seconds, she would grab the dish out of my hand and run around the table to serve him.



I found this to be both disturbing (it offended my feminist tendancies) and amusing, but soon learned to ignore it. Frankly, I was usually much too interested in devouring my meal to be concerned with who was pouring the tea. Every once in a while she would shower me with the same treatment, and at these times I had to bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood. I'm all for being polite, but you all know how independant I am.

My conclusion regarding their amazing friendship is that she found a man she can dote on right at about the time that her own children left home, and he just sits back and soaks up the adoration. I would assume that he also enjoys substantial financial benefits from their friendship. An interesting connection, but it seems to work for them.


Nepali Quest for Comfort


I had met several young men in Kathmandu who all dreamt of finding their way to America. I asked Tshering one day about why there is this universal dream among young Nepalis, and he answered that they all wanted a greater degree of comfort than they had here. They've all seen TV and know that all Americans live in 3000 square foot homes in beautiful suburbs. They want a piece of that pie. I bought that for a few hours, but the more I thought about it, the more I disagreed. (As an aside, I suggested that there were a lot of places in the world more comfortable than Nepal and which also had gun laws in place that these young people might want to consider.)

On my last trip to Nepal, I was distressed to see that the majority of my trekking porters, who had just spent 20 days schlepping 50 kilos each around the Himalayas in flip-flops, all put on nice, solid running shoes when we got back to town at the end of the trek.


On this trek, Tashi showed up with two pairs of socks. One of them could almost be called socks, the other pair were more like a few threads of cotton held together with dirt and sweat. On the third day, he hiked without socks and I assumed the two pairs were both wet. During that day, his left heel started bleeding because it was rubbing on his shoe and he had to pull a couple of leeches of his feet. That evening, I found the local haberdasher, who also sold biscuits and teapots, and bought him three pairs of socks. The idea was that I wanted him healthy and I certainly didn't want to end up carrying him to Jomsom. After I presented them to him, I never saw them again. I assume he's saving them for a special occasion.


The point here is that I don't believe that comfort is their primary motivator. In both these cases, they had comfort available to them but chose not to take advantage of it. Rather, I think these people crave prestige, which is why they save all their "good" stuff for special occasions or when other people will see it. There was an ad for a tractor in a shop window in Mustang. (Now that they have a road, there is a place for vehicles and also a means to get them delivered. I saw three tractors in the entire district during my trek.) The ad wasn't about how much easier the tractor could make their life, or even what chores it could be expected to do. Rather the caption was: "Show them how properous you are" or something similar. I wonder how many generations it will take before this country will be just like home and people will be amassing stuff just for the sake of having stuff. If they had any money they'd surely be doing it now. What a wonderful message the West has delivered to them.


Trekking Style


You'll all remember my beef on the Everest Base Camp trek about everyone walking so closely together. During my walk up to Jomsom, Tashi was usually light years ahead of me, so this wasn't an issue and it was really quite lovely to have all this space. In Mustang there were either three or four us walking together, which usually was okay. Still, I can't tell you how much I would love to have looked around me and not seen somebody's back. It seems somewhat malapropos that the guide is at the head of the pack and therefore gets the unobstructed views, and the trekkers, who have never been here before and are paying big bucks for the views get to look at the guide's backpack. Of course Reiko wouldn't dream of putting her feet anywhere other than in Tshering's footsteps, so she was happy following right behind him with her nose an inch away from his backpack. It was actually comical at times because he liked to challenge himself with the most difficult paths and she would follow him blindly without even looking where he was going.


As mentioned in my last post, we followed the new road for part of the trek. As much as I hate the idea of the road, it did allow me to get out from behind Tshering and Reiko. I thought this was the perfect solution...he could still be out in front but I could move to the side and have an unobstructed view of our surroundings. Unfortunately, whenever I wandered over to the other tire-track, Tshering would drift over in front of me with Reiko following right behind him. I would then move over to the track he had just vacated, and he would drift back in front of me. I began to make it a game and had them both zig-zagging all over the road. I don't know if he was actually aware he was doing it - I can be sure that Reiko didn't since she never looked at anything other than his feet.


Guiding Style


Tshering is a really nice guy. He's quiet and doesn't volunteer a lot, but I was able to get him to open up a bit and have a laugh at most mealtimes. However, I'm really glad that I never had to trust him with my life, or anything else for that matter. He had a lot of bizarre habits for a guide, including:


> choosing to challenge himself on the trail, apparently without any concern for the 66-year-old woman who was following in his footsteps

> leaving Reiko to fend for herself on a wet river crossing, when he was able to leap across and didn't want to be bothered to take his shoes off to help her across

> becoming so engaged in conversation with Tashi that I think they forgot we were even hiking with them

> walking so far ahead of us he was out of sight and earshot

> choosing rest spots that provided only one convenient seat (usually a smooth boulder) which he sat on and left Reiko and me to either stand or sit on the sharp gravel

> dragging us up hills for hours on end without a rest and then stopping every 15 minutes or so on the flat bits.


Anyway, none of this was particuarly distressing to me, as I'm confident I can take care of myself and am never really dependant on the guide. I did, however, feel a bit bad for Reiko who clearly did need his help from time to time and he wasn't there for her. There she was, waiting on him hand and foot, and he virtually ignored her on the trail.


Hot Drinks


Here's the deal: everything that we drink on the trail has to be made with boiled water so that we don't get sick. This includes coffee, tea, chocolate, lemonade, orangeade, milk and just plain drinking water. So you get up in the morning and have a hot drink. You hike in the 30-degree blaring sunshine all morning and when you stop for lunch you get a hot drink. At the end of your trekking day, you get a hot drink and then you cap off dinner with a hot drink. On most of my treks this isn't a problem as you're at high altitude or at least out there during the autumn or spring, so you're always cold and the hot drinks go down nicely. Not so on this trek. I would have killed for something cold. A couple of times I asked for my water bottle to be filled with "sito cani pani" (cool drinking water) rather than "tato pani" (hot water). I was hoping that maybe they'd give me boiled water that had cooled off. Instead, they corrected what they thought was my faulty Nepalese and filled my bottle with boiling water. I did have two room temperature beers along the way, but I have to say they were hardly satisfying. By the time we got back to Jomsom, I was absolutely gasping for a cold drink and practicallywept when I had my first refrigerated Sprite. I never thought I'd say this but the cold Sprite was actually better than the apple crisp.


The Need for Water


Have you ever noticed that since the beginning of time people have tended to settle by the water? There's a reason for that and it exists here too - we need to drink, wash and water our crops. Every trekking day started with a climb out of a riverbed and ended with a descent into one. Some of our worst days were only difficult because of this. Trekking would be so easy if only people would build towns on the hilltops.


The Philosophy of Photograpy


Okay, let's face it: stereotypes exist for a reason. Reiko, like every other Japanese tourist you've ever observed, seems unable to take a photo without a person in it. Because she is so devoted to Tshering, and to a lesser degree, Tashi (who she's hiked with before), they are her main subjects. As a result, they are very much used to being the subjects of photos, and in fact seem to have become somewhat obsessed with it. Every time we came upon something of beauty and/or significance, one or both of them would go pose in front of it. Tashi especially would go way out of his way to ham it up for the camera.


I like to take photos of scenery and I like to take photos of people, but generally they aren't in the same shot. For me to get a photo of our environment without Tshering or Tashi in it was a major accomplishment. As mentioned, when we were trekking, at least one or both of them was always in front of me, so I couldn't take a photo forward on the trail without including them. At all the passes, they would put their packs down right in the middle of things and then sit down in the most scenic spot. As a general rule, I had to wait until everyone was about half a kilometer down the track so that I could frame a shot without them in it. At first I tried asking them to move out of the shot, but this generally caused great offense so I learned to grin and bear it. I also learned to discreetly delete a lot of photos in my tent at the end of the day.


Other Trekkers


We trekked during the off-season so we encountered very few other trekkers. In Mustang the only other foreigners we saw were a couple of teachers and one trekking couple. In order to maintain positive relations with their country, I won't mention where they were from (San Fransico). My first encounter with them was quite comical. We invariably set up our camp in someone's paddock, which was usually surrounded by a stone wall of about five feet in height. The doors in these walls often flapped in the wind, so they were generally kept latched. As a result, we sometimes found ourselves locked into the paddock from the outside. On one such occasion, I looked through a wide crack in the door frame and was happy to see some Westerners outside with whom I would surely be able to communicate. I asked them if they would be kind enough to unlatch the door for me and thus free me from the paddock. They actually turned to their guide and asked him if he thought it would be alright to let me out. Fortunately for me, he was a reasonable man, and immediately unlatched the door. To this day, I don't know what they were thinking - perhaps that I was a terrorist being imprisoned in the Mustang version of jail. The Mustangis are a very simple people after all and I'm sure a paddock with a 5-foot stone wall around it is the best they could come up with as far a prisons go.


My next encounter with them was a bit more frustrating. We were attending the demon-banishing ceremony in Lo Manthang. It began to rain just as the ritual was about to begin, so it was moved from the courtyard of the monastery onto a covered verandah in front of the temple. As all the monks and lamas reassembled themselves there, all the onlookers moved to the covered verandah of the adjacent dormatory which provided an excellent (and dry) vantage point. All on-lookers that is, except Bill, who sat with his mega-camera right in the middle of the monks and lamas. His partner, Nancy, suggested that he might want to get off the "stage" but he insisted that he wasn't getting in the way. Finally, to my relief, a monk shooed him out of the way, and Bill moved from sitting on the stage to merely leaning one butt cheek against it. The festivities began and Bill started clicking away with his camera. He was right in the middle of the action and perfectly in the line of sight from all the on-lookers to the ritual. I joked to Nancy that I would have to Photoshop him out of all my photos, hoping that she might take the hint and encourage him to move for the benefit of the other spectators. I was rewarded with her calling out to him to take off his hat. Go figure.


I am happy to say that my two or three subsequent chance meetings with this couple were very pleasant. I haven't decided if they redeemed themselves or not.


Permits and Garbage


Mustang is a restricted region and requires a special trekking permit. This is issued not by the Kingdom of Mustang, but by the goverment of Nepal. Mustang really couldn't care less who treks there, how long they stay or where they go. It's the Nepali governement who set up the system, mans the checkposts and pockets the cash.


We entered Mustang via a town called Kagbeni, where there is an ominous looking checkpost with huge signs forbidding anyone to pass the border point without a permit. When passing this checkpoint, Tshering not only had to register all of his foreign charges, but also all of the non-compostible waste that his company was bringing into Mustang, including glass bottles and jars, plastic bottles and jars and tin cans. This waste would have to be brought out with us.


Lo Manthang, our northernmost destination, is bordered in the north by a small river. According to our permit, we were not allowed to cross this river. The two day hikes that we took out of Lo Manthang both required that we cross this river, which we did with ease. As I said, the Mustang people couldn't have cared less, and I guess the Nepali government couldn't be bothered putting checkposts at any of the river crossings. In fact, once we passed Kagbeni, we never had to show our permits again. I thought that being an illegal alien may have been a little more exciting but it was all very mundane.


We left Mustang via a town called Muktinath. We walked out of Mustang into Muktinath without having to tell anyone where we had been or showing our permits. It was kind of like walking into Chelsea from one of the Gatineau Park trails.


On our way back to Jomson the next day, Tashi took our garbage to Kagbeni, where the border police went through it piece by piece and made sure that we brought out everything we took in. He had his wrist duly slapped for showing up on the 11th day, rather than the 10th day - they had no way of knowing that we had in fact left Mustang within the 10 days that our permit allowed.


So here's the thing. There is only one border crossing into this huge restricted region. The border guards in Kagbeni had no way of knowing whether Reiko and I ever left Mustang at all, much less what day we left. And the fact that we could walk out of Mustang unnoticed via Muktinath means that we could equally as easily have walked into Mustang unnoticed via Muktinath. I have to tell you, I am seriously considering another visit to this region without dropping $700 for the priviledge of doing so. I'm really glad that they are so meticulous about the garbage in the region - I think that it's a great system. But you have to wonder about the brains behind the operation that doesn't monitor the revenue-generating portion of the business. And why restrict an area if you aren't going to keep an eye on the borders?

Mustang Trek

I will be using excerpts from my journal entries again for this one.


From June 18: It was a bit touch-and-go to start. The flight from Pokhara was delayed but finally arrived a bit late. I met my trekking companion, Reiko, who is a 65-year old grandmother from Japan. Her English is limited but she seems like a lovely lady and is happy to have some company on her trek. Given the late start, we decided to have lunch in Jomsom while the guys hired some horses to carry our gear.


The trek to Kagbeni took about three hours plus a 30 minute break. During the break Reiko took off her boots and shoes which certainly tended to draw it out a bit. [I would learn that this was standard practice for her, so there was no such thing as taking a quick breather.] The wind was crazy throughout the walk, which is standard for the Kali Gandaki after 10:00 AM. I don't think I ever walked this stretch in the afternoon before - it was like nothing I'd experienced before. The wind is part of the problem for flights from Pokhara to Jomsom and back. They can't land in Jomsom after about 10:00 AM so all flights go first thing in the morning.


Kagbeni is exactly how I remember it, and I still love it. We are camping in the same spot that I camped in last time I was here. We visited the monastery and walked around town after tea. The monastery hasn't changed a bit. I checked my e-mail before dinner and all seems to be quiet on the home front so am heading into the wilderness feeling good. We had a fabulous dinner and were introduced to all the staff afterwards. They are Tshering the guide, Tashi the sherpa, Nima (Tshering's brother) another sherpa, Ram the cook, Santos and Kumar the kitchen boys and Little Ram the horse handler. Little Ram (our nickname, not his) is only 15 and as cute as anything you've ever seen, with a brilliant white smile. He should be in school instead of out here on the trail with us.


From June 19: I didn't sleep well last night. I was up a couple of times to use the loo and the local dogs woke me up a bit. I think I was just really excited about finally going to Upper Mustang. I have been looking forward to this for five years ever since I first looked across the border during my last stay in Kagbeni. We set out after breakfast and a few minutes later stopped at the border to present our permits. Once cleared we stepped into the "Last Forbidden Kingdom" of Nepal. The walking was fairly easy going - no major hills. The ground is rocky and sandy and required some concentratio as we tended to slip in the scree a bit. We followed the river but seldom walked in the riverbed as the water was too high. The wind was wicked and embedded the sand right into our skin. Reiko, who would easily fit into my pocket, frequently had to grab onto Tshering to keep from blowing off the trail.


The towns we passed were amazing - they look like I would imagine northern Africa to look. You expect to see Bedouins and camels rather than Tibetans and horses. I am totally intrigued by this place. The rock cliffs beside the river seem to go on forever. The cliffs are dotted with man-made caves - former homes or hideouts during times of war. We had a fabulous picnic lunch in an orchard in a small town. We are now camped in a town called Chele which is very small and only seems to have a dozen or so people in it.


This region is truly the land that time forgot. It is easy to imagine that nothing has changed here for centuries - all subsistence farming and nothing else. The first town or two after Kagbeni had hydro poles but no actual wires. Further up there isn't even that. There are a few solar panels on some roofs, but no vehicles, TV or noise other than the wind. It's magical.


From June 20: I had a much better sleep last night and was only up once to pee and admire the stars. Away to the south there was a storm and I could see the sheet lightening on the horizon. We set out early again this morning and had quite a long but fortunately not too steep, uphill climb. There were dark clouds to one side of us which made things a bit cooler. We stopped for lunch in a town called Bhena which consisted of two buildings: a house and a barn (both essentially identical). Two families live here and I find it rather amusing that it has a place name on the map. We have moved away from the Kali Gandaki valley a bit so the wind is a little less strong here. It was nice not to be sandblasted all day.


We crossed a pass after lunch from which the views were spectacular. It's just so big, it's hard to describe. It looks a bit grand canyon-ish and also partly desert. The town where we're staying, Syangboche, is also very small and consists of only a handful of buildings. After tea I was able to wash my hair and a pair of socks in the community fountain. [I'm not sure what to call these watering holes. They are exactly the same in every town in Nepal. There is a square cement basin with drain at ground level with a tap at about waist height above it. As a general rule the water never stops running and I'm not sure if it is actually possible to turn the tap off. The water comes from nearby streams or rivers and is diverted to these taps. This central source of water is used for washing bodies and clothes, brushing teeth, doing dishes and watering the animals.] After I washed, I went and sat just uphill from town and watched life happen. There were people collecting dung for fuel, preparing meals, chasing horses out of houses, returning from the fields, building a stone wall extension on a home etc. It seems to be such a busy, yet peaceful existence.


From June 21: I had a decent sleep but with lots of short interruptions: dogs barking, donkeys braying, a guy puking, and lots of people violently ridding themselves of phlegm. We had a fairly easy walk today - crossed a pass and then it was all downhill. Unfortunately at the pass we saw the start of the northern end of the road that runs all the way to the Tibetan border. I was of the impression that it only went as far south as Lo Manthang, but here we were, still three days walk from Lo Manthang and the road is already here. Given that it stops dead in the middle of a hill, at least there are no vehicles on it yet.

We didn't stop for lunch today, but had it in the town where we're camped: Ghami. It is a fairly large centre with a hospital and many houses. I think I love it as much as Kagbeni. I spent a lot of time wandering around and taking photos. There are some old ruins here and we also went into the 500-year old monastery which is currently being renovated. After tea we went up to the roof of the home where we're camping and watched the monks playing their horns on the roof of the gompa nearby. I went off for another wander and came upon a raucous game of volleyball that seemed to involve every male in town. I stayed there until dinner, taking photos of the local kids for them [they love to see their photos on the screen of my camera] and trying to take photos of the more interesting faces among the volleyball players who refused to stay still for me.

We had fresh baked apple pie for dessert tonight - awesome. The food has been fabulous and Ram is proving to be the best cook I've ever had on a trek. The boys even cut the paper napkins into snowflake doilies for the plates when bringing us cookies at tea time. We had a beer tonight to celebrate the summer solstice.

[Ghami and several other of the larger towns north of here have micro hydro plants. The electricity seems only to be used for light. There is still no sign of TV, radio, computers or other modern conveniences. There are some cassette tape players around, mostly with Nepalese or Indian music. I rarely, if ever heard these, but saw some cassettes for sale.]

From June 22: We walked past the longest mani wall in Mustang this morning and had a fairly easy trek to the town of Tsarang where we had our lunch and camped. After lunch, Tshering, Reiko, Tashi and I went to tour the former palace and monastery which are located here. We had a fabulous afternoon full of fun and camaraderie and interesting history and sights. The monastery is 675 years old and contains some books that pre-date it. Tsarang isn't as pretty a town as some of the others, but is still nice. The massive chorten gate, palace and monastery perched on the cliff-side really make the place. The people are very friendly but unfortunately the kids perpetually have their hands out. I am glad that I decided to do this trek in skirts. It was a bit awkward in the really windy places where I had to tie knots in the hems to keep them in place, although it has been a lot more comfortable on the hot days (nothing like a cool breeze up your skirt!). Generally, I find that I am being much more warmly received by the local women than Reiko in her pants. The local women here all wear traditional Tibetan costumes but the men and children are largely in western garb.

From June 23: Woke to a bit of rain today which stopped shortly after we got up. We trekked under overcast skies but didn't get any more rain. The walk to Lo Manthang took about four hours and was quite monotonous. When we arrived at the pass which overlooks town, we stopped for quite a while and took tons of photographs. We had lunch as soon as we got to town and then headed for the local gompa, as this was the last day of a significant festival. Unfortunately we missed all the dancing of the previous couple of days, but were able to witness the ritual slaying of the demons and have photos to prove that they were all summarily driven out of town. It was very interesting to watch. It is such a change to watch religious festivals of other faiths after having been exposed only to Christianity for so much of my life. My past experience is that everything is so formal and solemn and heaven forbid anyone might make a sound. Here there is general mayhem going on while the rituals are being performed: kids are running around playing tag, animals are wandering through the courtyard and there is general merriment everywhere. The monks participating in these rituals actually chase some of the spectators around at times during the ceremonies. It's really fun. We saw our first [and only] westerners of the trek here: a couple of Americans and two people who I think are aid workers teaching in town.

Before the ceremony began, we toured the gompa. It is about 700 years old and is really beautiful and full of great vibes. I lit a butter lamp for Bhola's son and had the Abbott bless it. It was quite a moving ritual and it felt good to be doing some small thing for him.

Just before dinner, Tshering announced that it was Reiko's birthday today. There was no time to do anything about it except buy her a sweet at the local shop. (It was either that or a roll of toilet paper - there's not much on offer up here.) The boys made a big deal out of her birthday - Ram baked her a cake and Tshering and Tashi both had gifts for her. I felt like real idiot. After they had their dinner, the boys all came and joined us for singing and dancing. It was a nice evening.

From June 24: Was up early this morning. At about 5:30 AM, the towns up here go through a waking up process which is very noisy but only lasts about 10 minutes. All the animals are making their various noises, dishes are clanging and people are people are bringing up phlegm from the very core of their beings. I decided to get up and do laundry instead of trying to go back to sleep. I washed my clothes in the stream that runs through the street outside our yard, as all the local women do. I'm not sure what's in the water, but my clothes seemed to come out smelling better than they did going in, so I was pleased with the result.

Tshering, Tashi, Reiko and I did a day hike today. We started out by visiting a 13th century monastery school which is nearby to Lo Manthang. We got a tour of the monastery and the school and were then served butter tea and biscuits. Drinking butter tea is a fate worse than death for me (hot yak butter, hot water and lots of salt) and I must have gone through about two dozen biscuits trying to get it down. On top of it, they're so darn hospitable that the minute you take a sip they come with the kettle to refill your cup. It's considered very rude to refuse.

The monastery, and in fact the town of Lo Manthang and its own monastery, are all in a tizzy as their head lama is coming for a visit from India in a couple of days. Archways are being erected, flags and banners are being hung and everything is getting a good scrub. There are 40 very young monks here (22 in kindergarten and the rest in grade 1) who are all very excited about the proceedings. They are absolutely adorable.

After tea at the monastery we climbed a nearby hill just to the north of Lo Manthang and ate our packed lunch at a ruin there. The views were amazing and we were able to see right up to the Tibetan border. There are a lot of ruins in the area, which I learned were largely deliberately ruined. The buildings are made from clay bricks and the older ones were usually built on top of hills or at cliff edges. When they start to deteriorate and are deemed dangerous, they destroy them so they won't be used anymore.

After lunch we "skied" down through the scree on the hillside and walked through a village at the bottom. We arrived at Thyaker, the town where the king's summer palace is located. There wasn't much going on here, and the palace appeared to house nothing but dung, so we wandered though town and up to some other ruins on another hillside. I am totally intrigued by these ruins and could hang out in them for days. We headed back to Lo Manthang and had a bit of a kick-about with the guys who were enjoying a rest day.

At about 4:00 we went off to have tea with the king. Yes, really. Mustang is the last remaining kingdom in Nepal and it is indeed run by a king. He blessed our katas for us and then we sat and had a cup of tea. The room was comfortable but rustic. The palace itself looks to me like it could use a substantial bit of work, but I guess that happens when a wood and mud building gets to be about 700 years old. It's really not very palatial at all. The king was dressed something like Grampa Honegger when he came in from the garden. It was a pretty casual meeting.

All in all a fabulous day. I felt a great sense of companionship all day. Tashi and Tshering were very playful at times along the trail. They like to play games like a form of jacks with stones or other contests that they seem to make up on the fly. They will both spontaneously burst into song while hiking and Tshering has this tendency to start skipping all of a sudden. It's really quite cute.

From June 25: This morning we had a day hike to a town called Chasser which is up the eastern valley north of Lo Manthang towards the Tibetan border. We actually came within 2.5 hours walk of the border. It was a long, rather boring, hot, dusty walk along the road. Tshering had suggested that we rent horses and ride up. I was very excited about this and had actually taken riding lessons a few years ago specifically so that I could ride in Mustang. Unfortunately, Reiko is afraid of any animal bigger than a goat (which can be quite humorous to watch around here with constant herds of all kinds of things walking down the streets) so she vetoed the idea and we went on foot. It was a six-hour return walk.

At Chasser we visited a gompa built into a cliff side as well as the Jhong cave. The latter is five stories high, 44 rooms and is over 2500 years old. It was used primarily for defense and hiding out when enemies came to town. We went all through it - it was very cool.

After we got back to Lo Manthang we had lunch and washed our hair. I spent the rest of the day wandering around town, mostly inside the walled part of the city. I really love it here and wish I could stay longer.

From June 26: We got up, packed, had breakfast and prepared to leave. We managed to convince Tshering to let us stay for the arrival of the big lama at 7:30. We lined up with all the villagers, who were all scrubbed up and in their Sunday best. It was nice to see some of the men in their traditional gear. Most people were holding incense or katas. At 7:30 on the nose, the chopper appeared over the hill and landed in a nearby field. (I think the chopper created as much excitement as his holiness did.) The procession wound its way through town. There were reams of local monks in all manner of costume and carrying various things: instruments, flags, and other holy symbols. The lama and his contingent, including the king, rode horses and the rest were on foot. It was spectacular. I haven't felt such an energy since I was in Lhasa - it brought tears to my eyes and goosebumps to my arms.

After the procession, we left Lo Manthang. When we reached the pass above town, we sat for quite some time looking back on the city and all saying our silent goodbyes. Tashi is walking with us now, as we are in territory that Tshering has never visited before. Tashi, it seems, has walked every inch of this country at least five times and really knows his way around. The four of us walk well together, and it is a really comfortable group.

The terrain was quite steep and dusty towards the end of the hike. The descent into Dhi felt like going down the wall of the grand canyon. After our arrival, we had lunch and then Reiko and I went down to the river to wash off some of the day's dust. We only there for a minute before Little Ram came down to find his horses and then Tashi and Tshering showed up to bathe. No privacy here.

After tea, Tshering and I climbed a nearby hill to see another ruin. Reiko had a nap and Nima declined to join us on the grounds that he didn't need to see any more mud and stones. He really cracks me up. He comes from the country but is very much a city boy at heart. He just moved to Kathmandu where I think he will be happy, but he really needs a new line of work. My favourite line of the trek was when he grumbled "walking up and down hills all day...that is not life". I reminded him that Reiko and I were paying a lot of money to walk up and down hills all day.

Dhi is a small town with no lodges or stores and is far away from the new road. There are a dozen or so houses and a couple of camping spots. I watched a woman weaving on a loom in a barn, and the man in our yard is building a door. He is amazingly accurate with very primitive tools.

From June 27: The start of today's trek was along the Kali Gandaki riverbed and the views were spectacular. We had to cross the river four times without benefit of bridges. I changed into my sandals, hiked up my skirt with one hand, grabbed my hiking stick in the other and plunged in. I had all of the staff insisting on helping me across but I managed to thwart their efforts (read: beat them off with my stick). The water was up to about mid-thigh and very fast, but I made it across with great panache. It was a pant-load of fun. Needless to say, Reiko needed some weightier people on either side of her or she would have been swept away.

We then had a very long climb out of the river. I didn't fare to well on this portion and Reiko left me in her dust. I finally caught up to her close to the top when she was starting to wear out. We had a brief downhill walk then stopped for lunch at 11:45 - felt like about 3:00 to me. The rest of the day was fairly easy: a Moses-like desert crossing then a sharp downhill in Tengge. This is a cool town - much more rustic than what we've seen up to now. Shortly after we arrived we got a bit or rain which was nice as it forced a bit of a rest in my tent. After tea I went exploring and then sat on a ruin wall above town and listened to my iPod for a while. Early to bed tonight as tomorrow is our hardest day of the trek.

From June 28: We left Tengge very early and after about 40 minutes had our single wet river crossing. Then the fun began. We had about 2 and a half hours of fairly difficult uphill climb. It was a tough slog but for some reason I had a much easier time of it than yesterday. We only had one break on the way up - I could have used more and Reiko was really struggling today. We finally reached the pass and had views of Dhaulagiri, which was really beautiful. After that, the terrain evened out and we had a flat trek for the next four and a half hours or so. We spread out during this part and it was my only opportunity to be pretty much alone on the trail. It really felt good to have all that space and freedom. We passed some amazing rock formations, like you would expect to see in Utah or Nevada. Despite its length, it was a really enjoyable walk.

When we approached Thasang, the fun began in ernest. We descended at a quicker rate than we had ascended that morning. It was really trecherous going: lots of opportunity to slide in the scree and end up at the bottom of a cliff. I was not impressed with Tshering's guiding style here. He pretty much left us to our own devices and didn't even help Reiko up when she fell right at his feet. We were tired and it was a very difficult and somewhat dangerous path. We finally made it to town after nine and a half hours of trekking and Tashi hadn't stopped talking the whole way. I really would have enjoyed a little silence along the way.

Upon arrival I immediately asked our host for a beer, which I think shocked the others but I managed to persuade them to join me (four of them shared one beer). I just couldn't face a hot cup of tea at this point. After our drink, Reiko and I washed our hair (we had a routine down pat at this point and could do both our heads with less than one bucket of water) after which I developed a sore throat.

We were in the coolest town that we had yet visited, but by the time we got there and got all our stuff done, the sun was down and there was no opportunity to explore. I was quite disappointed but not sure if I could have found the energy anyway. [The last two days of the trek were so long because we are on a fairly uninhabited route and we had to travel these long distances just to get to the next town. There is nothing in between them and nowhere to camp.]

From June 29: I had a very sore throat and fever through the night. I couldn't sleep in my bag as I was just too hot. I was a bit worried at breakfast as I was out of breath just climbing the stairs to the dining room and the smoke in the house was choking me. The house where we're camping is a traditional Nepalese home - we have to walk through the barn to get to the stairs to climb to the living quarters above the animals. Reiko is not happy having to pass a couple of cows to get fed.

We had a very small wet river crossing at the very beginning of our day. After that we were supposed to have three and a half hours of uphill, but really the uphills were interspersed with some flatter terrain. It felt like it would never end. We had lunch just below the pass and all kind of fell into a doze in the sun after we ate. We finally summited our last pass which Reiko and I celebrated with a bit hug and lots of photos. We then began our descent into Muktinath and crossed the border out of the restricted area of Upper Mustang. It was a longer descent, and in fact a longer day, than expected but we were in town by about 3:00.

Muktinath has certainly changed since my last visit. It hasn't so much grown but has really modernized. There are a few new buildings that are very westernized, including a couple of new gompas. I really don't like it much and wouldn't hurry back here. I visited the Hindu temple to light a candle for Bhola's son, as they are Hindu and this is a very holy place for them. The last time I was here it was a quaint shrine. Now there is a huge compound surrounded by a white wall and enclosing the fully renovated Hindu temple as well as several Buddhist gompas. I don't see it as much of an improvement although I know that people come from all over Nepal and India to worship here.

My cold is starting to set in although it wasn't too bad over the course of the day. I was hoping I might have sweated it out.

From June 30: Took an Actifed last night and am feeling somewhat better today. We left Muktinath and stopped in at the next village, Jarkot, to visit the gompa. This is a fabulous town and I would have given my eye teeth to have spent a few minutes exploring, but the others didn't see the benefit so we moved on. We had lunch in a small village on the Kali Gandaki riverbed where the paths to Kagbeni and Muktinath merge. I was pretty much ready to stop at this point but there were still two hours to go. They turned out to be two very windy hours and this time with the wind directly into our faces. We finally made it to Jomsom and the trek was over. Reiko and I went to the bakery for apple crumble and an ice-cold Sprite instead of having our usual tea. There was nothing going on in Jomsom so I had a nap before dinner.

After dinner the boys joined us for cake and singing and dancing. We all had some beers, although I was quite surprised at how tame the party turned out to be. I managed to get enough beers into me to be convinced to dance for a few minutes, but the Sherpa steps don't come easily to me. I think you need a few less left feet to make it work right.

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So that's pretty much the logistics of the whole thing. My next post will be the fun one where I discuss all juicy stuff, like my impressions and observations. It will take a bit longer to write as I have very few notes and will have to be much more creative. Be sure to stay tuned - it will likely be much more entertaining than the last two posts.

Pokhara to Jomsom Trek

The Kali Gandaki ("Black River") flows from about 15 kms south of the Tibetan border in northern Nepal to the southern part of the country. It is not literally black, but more a dark taupey-grey which probably doesn't translate into a nice river name in Nepalese. Imagine the run-off from a potter's wheel and you pretty much have it. It is a unique river in that it runs in one direction through the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri mountain ranges. Logic, and indeed physics, would suggest that rivers would originate high in the mountains and flow downwards in several directions. Apparently the Kali Gandaki and the gorge that it formed for itself pre-existed the Himalayas which rose up around it. As it runs through the mountains it is a very fast-moving and rather shallow river - totally unnavigable. In the north, specifically in the Mustang District, the river bed is broad and flat with multiple streams threading their way through it.


Because it cuts a north-south path practically the whole way through Nepal, and more importantly, through the mountains, the river provides a natural route for trade. Salt from the Tibetan plateau finds its way south to be traded for pretty much everything else. It has been working this way for hundreds of years. When I hiked the Annapurna Circuit five years ago, about one third of my trek followed this age-old path along the Kali Gandaki.


Progress and the hands of time have found their way into the Kali Gandaki valley. The Nepalese government is building a road that will connect a town called Beni in central Nepal to the Tibetan border in the north. Work began on this road a few years ago and is expected to be finished in another 3-5 years (I get differing reports). The trek that I just completed followed the old trading route, and the road, almost the whole way (I got within 2.5 hours walk of the Tibetan border). In Jomsom I had occasion to speak to a very savvy business woman who indicated that the locals love the road and the tourists hate it. It is very hard to know where to stand on the issue. It has, of course, changed the feel of the area tremendously. Nothing like trekking in the Himalayan wilderness and having to jump off the track to allow a motorcycle or jeep to pass. On the other hand, we can hardly deny a country progress just because we want a pristine vacation spot. In some places the road deviates from the old trading route, and in these places it will likely have a negative effect on the economy of the villages it bypasses. I would imagine that hard-core trekkers will no longer want to follow this route, but that it will open up the area to people who are more comfortable riding a bus than hiking. As Chris would say, those on the "Marie Antoinette" tour. I'm guessing that a lot of trekking lodges will go under and be replaced by a Hilton or two.


I provided all this information not to bore you, but to give you a backdrop for the trek and so that you'll understand my references to the "damn road". So here I go....this will be split into a few posts, so stay tuned. I will copying a bunch of excerpts from journal to save me rewriting too much.


As I think I previously mentioned, my actual trek was to start in Jomsom but I decided that I wanted to hike up to Jomsom rather than fly from Pokhara. I was assigned a Sherpa named Tashi who was part of the Mustang trek and we hiked together. His English was very rudimentary but he understood "hungry", "water", "rest", "toilet" and a few other words so we did fine. Because I didn't have a porter for this part of the trek, I carried my main pack and Tashi strapped my day pack to his small backpack and carried that for me. We did argue about this for quite some time - he was very insistant about carrying my big pack for me, but I was keen to do it as long as I could. What he didn't know was that I was carrying stuff like my down sleeping bag and fleece jacket and he was carrying my batteries, books and toiletteries. Even though my bag was three times the size of my day pack, he probably had more of the weight than me.

The plan was to start at Beni, a four-hour drive from Pokhara and the start of the infamous new road. When he came to meet me on the first day, Tashi suggested we hike through Ghorepani rather than start at Beni. I'm not sure what his agenda was, although he said it was to get the great views. Ghorepani does indeed offer arguably the best views of the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges, but given it was monsoon season, there was virtually no chance of seeing anything. Taking this route also meant that I would forfeit my "spa" day at Tatopani where the hot springs are. It also meant a much more rigorous first few days of trekking, as Ghorepani sits atop a substantial hill. Despite these obvious arguments against the proposed route, I did agree to the change mostly because it meant that I'd have an extra couple of days away from the "damn road".


From June 11: The trekking itself was great today. Lots of uphill but I'm handling it well since we're at such a low altitude. [We never really got over 4000 metres on the whole trek, so altitude was never a problem.] The Annapurnas really are much more enjoyable for me as the culture is rich here. We passed many villages that don't just cater to the trekkers - Nepali life is being lived along these trails. I even saw some chicken baskets. [Chicken baskets are metal cages full of chickens that porters carry up and down the trading route for sale in the villages. I didn't see any chicken baskets - or in fact any local trade porters - in the Everest region.]


From June 12: There was a wicked thunder storm in the night - I have never seen rain like this. Between the noise and the heat, I didn't sleep well. Today's trek was a 6-hour uphill slog. The first couple of hours were particularly steep and grueling. Add the heat of the sun and I was sweating buckets. About ten minutes into the day my body decided to add some raging hormones and abdominal cramps into the mix. [Too much information, I know, but I want you all to share my pain :-)] Generally not my favourite day of trekking ever. Of course Tashi is a human mountain goat and is ruthless in setting the pace. We are staying in Ghorepani ["Horse Water"] tonight which is exactly the way I remember it. The spot where we camped 5 years ago is right beside my lodge. It is very quiet in town - I am the only trekker in town and I have only seen one or two others on the trails. I am really enjoying having all this time to think.


From June 13: As expected we didn't get any views from Ghorepani during daylight hours. However, when I awoke at about midnight last night and there were a million stars out. The milky way was cutting a swath across the sky. Behind me somewhere there was an incredible thunder storm. The thunder claps were distant rumblings but the sheet lightening was flashing every few seconds. When it lit up the sky it also lit up Machupachare and Annapurna South which were both right outside my window. A spectacular show and worth the walk up here.


We left Ghorepani for our six-hour downhill trek. After about two hours my knees politely indicated that they weren't having a good time. After four hours this became a full-on, complete-with-pipe-bomb protest. At this point we stopped for a break and had a coke. Shortly thereafter, about two hours out of Tatopani ["Hot Water"] we could hear the blasting from the roadworks. An hour or so later we came to a junction in the road and it started raining. We had reached the riverbed of the Kali Gandaki so I knew that it would be flat from here to Tatopani which is on the shore of the river. At the little shop there, we were informed that it was still another 1.5 hours to Tatopani so we stopped for a snack. [If anyone is doing the math here, you'll notice that we did not really get any closer in the last hour!] We piled on the Gortex and set out again. Anyone who still maintains that Gortex breathes is welcome to go clamber about the Himalayas on a hot summer day in it. You might as well wrap yourself in saran wrap and do jumping jacks in a sauna.


It turns out that they are building the road along the trekking path on the river shore, so they've built a temporary path around the roadworks. This involved hiking half way up Everest and back down again just to gain about 300 metres of distance. [Yes, that was sarcasm - we were actually nowhere near Everest.] On top of it, it was a little billy goat trail that required real concentration to stay on top of. I was not impressed. I don't mind the trekking but this was totally unexpected and also all because of the #$%&ing road.


We finally made it to Tatopani (which is also unchanged from my last visit), had some lunch and headed down to the hot springs by the river. We were the only ones there which was very different from last time when I was trekking in peak season. I kind of missed the party atmosphere at first but ended up really enjoying the solitude. I had a very cold beer as I soaked in the tub which was wonderful. After we dressed we hung around for a while chatting with a couple of locals, one of whom is a hermit who lives in a lean-to by the springs. At one point a dozen military guys came down to bathe in the adjacent public baths and I thought I better leave before somebody got arrested for indecent exposure (and it wasn't going to be the soldiers!).


From June 14: Had a horrible sleep last night due to noise, heat and mosquitoes and woke to rain this morning. The hike today was generally great - a couple of hours of flat and one significant uphill. We were in Ghasa by about 1:45 and had lunch here. I'm splurging on a room with an attached bathroom. It looks great but is largely malfunctional. Unfortunately there's no hot water either so no opportunity to shower.


We saw roadworks the whole way today. It looks like they did the easy bits along the river bed first and now they're stuck having to blast through the cliff walls to connect all these discrete stretches. As we came into Ghasa I saw my first motorbikes and jeeps. The road is complete from here to Muktinath on the other side of Jomsom. There is also electricity here and the TV is on incessantly in the lodge dining room. It's really sad to see the road and TV. At least I only heard three vehicles all afternoon, so it hasn't exactly turned into Kathmandu.


At one point during the trek, we passed a group of particularly small men (even by Nepali standards) coming off the road works. They were all older with lined and weathered faces. All were carrying shovels or pick axes over their shoulders and I could almost hear "Hi-ho, hi-ho" in the background. It took all my willpower not to pull out my camera and line up the cutest seven of them for a photo.


From June 15: Last night as I was leaving the dining room for bed, Tashi told me that there was an "ool bard" outside. By the time I figured out what he was talking about, someone walked in with a huge owl in his hands and unceremoniously dumped it on the dining room table. It sat there with its eyes closed against the light while they poked it and laughed. I went to bed before I found out if this story had a happy ending for the ool. [Interestingly, Tashi can read English about as well as I can, but 97% of the time he has no idea what the words mean.]

Today we walked in the damp but had no real rain. As suspected, we followed the road for much of the way. Whenever it was faster to take the old path we did - usually to get to a closer pedestrian bridge or to go straight up a steep hill through the middle of the wide switch-backs of the road.

At one point today a jeep passed us on the road and Tashi was delighted that it was full of our kitchen staff and sherpas for the Mustang trek. I guess they were taking the easy way up the valley to Jomsom.

We had to run by another blast site today. I say run because we were the last ones they allowed through before closing it off and they made it clear we had limited time to get through to the other side before the blasting started. Unlike the last time, the guards on either side of the blast zone did not have walkie-talkies, so the guy on the far side did not know we were coming through and to hold off on the blasting. This was the only time that I willingly ran with all that weight on my back. We got through in time but it was really something to see. When we were safely on the other side of the "danger zone" we stopped to watch the action. First you see a bunch of Nepali workers hurriedly vacating the area. Then you see a huge puff of dust, followed by a spew of rocks and finally you hear the boom from the blast. They obviously don't use any kind of blast mats here as the debris seems to fly pretty far.

We hiked farther than expected today and are staying at a place called the Musk Deer Valley Resort in a village called Kobang. I can remember this place as clear as day from my last trek here - looking longingly at the beautiful resort as we walked past to pitch our tents in some one's goat paddock. It's in a totally different place than I remember it, but I guess my grey matter can't always be infallible :-).

We arrived here, had lunch and then I climbed the hill behind the resort to visit the gompa. The Sanctuary was locked but I sat on the steps for quite a while enjoying the solitude, positive energy and views. Unfortunately I could hear the motorbikes and tractors from the road below on the river bed. It's really a drag.

There are virtually no other westerners around and it would be nice to be integrating more with the locals. I'm not sure how to do that as Tashi seems to be doing his best to segregate me from them. I guess with no common language and no interpreter it's difficult. I walked around the village with my iPod for a while today and managed to spend some time with the local kids introducing them to Great Big Sea and Blue Rodeo. I probably would have done much better if I had some Avril Lavigne or Britney Spears on my iPod. The former is on posters throughout the region, usually hanging beside a mural of the Potala Palace, and the latter is on every second t-shirt in Nepal. Despite the abundance of her photo, nobody seems to know who Avril Lavigne is, so my proud crowings of coming from the same home town buys me absolutely nothing around here.

From June 16: Slept fairly well last night but a motorcycle revving had me up at both midnight and 5:00 AM. Not impressed. When we left, I was dismayed to see that the bill for my stay in this beautiful resort came to about $16 (about 3 - 4 times more than most other nights). Then I realized that I had a beautiful wood-panelled room with a double bed, ensuite bathroom, hot shower, three meals and a beer and realized it really wasn't that much of a travesty after all.

The weather wasn't great this morning and we started walking in the rain. We were in Marpha by 10:15 so had all day here. The walk was almost entirely on the road but we did get onto the riverbed for a short while. Marpha is exactly as I remember it but is growing a bit out the south side. Fortunately the road by-passes the town but there are still a few motorbikes in the main "street".

Tashi and I went up to the gompa after lunch. It's nice to visit the Buddhist sites with him, as he is fairly devout and watching him worship is really nice. He just has to see a mani wall or prayer wheel and he begins to chant. Unfortunately we were unable to get into the sanctuary as it was locked and the monk with the key was away for a few hours. We were able to spend some time in the smaller meditation centre, which was lovely.

Later on I wandered down to a settlement south of town that I had noticed on the walk in. It looked like another monastery or something, but I couldn't tell what it was from the path. I got there and felt like I had been dropped into the middle of Tibet - same clothing, lifestyle etc. It turns out that it was a Tibetan refugee camp. I spent quite a bit of time there, watching an archery game and other activities around the village. I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Marpha soaking up the atmosphere. I really it love it here - it feels how Nepal should be. Despite the presence of electricity and now a road, everything is still done the old way. The town is an Umberto Eco-esque maze of stone buildings and passageways. I think I am more enamoured with it this time than last.

Marpha seems to be the turning point for the weather. To the north the sky remains fairly blue and clear, while to the south it is grey and rainy. I believe I am on the cusp of the rain shadow of the Himalayas.

From June 17: We completed the walk to Jomsom in an hour and spent the day just hanging out. I went to the Mustang Eco-Museum at the south end of town. The flora and especially fauna exhibits leave much to be desired but the cultural part was excellent. I learned a lot about the people from the area, as well as their history and how the different villages interact with each other.

I wandered around town, got dragged by my skirt all through the main street by a filthy, snotty-nosed but very cute little girl, ate apple crumble at a "German" bakery, chatted with a few locals, took a shower, got laundry done and actually caught sight of Nilgiri, my first mountain of the trek. I got a bit of an education about the road and the vehicles. The "taxi" from Ghasa to Jomsom costs about $6 and takes 2 1/2 hours. You can continue from Jomsom to Muktinath, but the roads north and south from Jomsom don't actually meet there. You have to get out of one jeep, walk across a pedestrian bridge and get into another jeep to go the rest of the way. Something about different zones. The main clients for the taxis are pilgrims coming to the Hindu temple in Muktinath which is very holy and draws crowds from all over Nepal and India. I was told that the jeeps cost 20,000,000 rupees to buy and have air-lifted into Jomsom. This equates to over $300,000 USD which seems a bit steep to me but I'm sure they're high-end jeeps. The road is little more than a track and the jeeps need to be pretty sturdy to withstand the beating they take. There are currently three jeeps and countless motorbikes on the Ghasa-Jomsom road. The petrol comes into the area on the backs of donkeys from Beni to Ghasa. I'm sure the donkeys are looking forward to the completion of the road.

Tashi got a call from Tshering this afternoon indicating that he and his Japanese client would be on the 7:00 AM flight from Pokhara tomorrow morning. We are hoping all goes well as there hasn't been a flight for the last 6 days due to bad weather. Fingers crossed.