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?