Field Trip

Despite my best efforts to extract information about this trip from anyone I could find on campus, I left home knowing only that we would be visiting Chitwan and a beer factory and that we were staying in different places every night. I had no way of knowing what to pack or what to expect. Needless to say, this pretty much killed me. I’m really trying to be more flexible but I’m a planner at heart and I couldn’t get my head around this one. It was especially difficult because it was being organised by students who had never done anything like this before and I felt like I needed to be prepared for every contingency in case of mishaps. I did my best with my packing, choosing my day pack rather than my small carry-on wheeled luggage which was a bit bigger. I thought I had done pretty well, but most of the students showed up with bags smaller than my purse. I can still forget from time to time how spoiled we are in the west and how much stuff we have.

I started off the trip by getting up at 4:30 and showering by candlelight (not so romantic when you’re doing it alone and it’s about 5° C in the bathroom) so that I could get to the college by 6:00 AM, our scheduled departure time. I arrived a few minutes early and the campus was deserted. The security guard thought I was off my nut for expecting to find anyone there at that hour. Shortly after 6:00 I texted Khem to see if I got the instructions wrong, when finally the first student showed up. I should have realised we were dealing with Nepalese time, not Swiss time like in my parents’ house. I waited on the bus for the others to arrive and sometime around 7:15 we finally pulled out of the college. We had a few more students to pick up around the city and by the time we finally left Kathmandu it was after 8:00 and we had 45 people on a 27-seat bus. This was the first, but certainly not only time on the trip I was grateful to be a staff member: I actually got a seat and didn’t have to sit on another person, the floor or the roof as many of the students did.

A couple of hours out of Kathmandu we stopped for breakfast and I had my first of many Nepalese meals. Our drive to Chitwan took most of the day and it was really interesting to drive through the countryside, especially as it was wedding season. Unlike in Kathmandu, the guests all followed the bridal car in a bus rather than on foot, with the dowry packed on the roof Clampett-style. Fortunately there never seemed to be any livestock involved, but there were literally whole households up there. People were hanging out of the windows and doors of the bus yelling and waving in celebration. It was very cool.

At one point I was in a rather intense conversation with Khem so was facing inwards for about 5-10 minutes. When I turned to look out the window again, it was like we had left Nepal altogether. The most startling change was that the ground was pancake-flat. For a few miles we drove through a forest with tall trees and little undergrowth. In the middle of the dry season this felt very much like the national park around Brian’s place near Melbourne, Australia. We soon left the forest and were surrounded by fields of various crops. Not only was the terrain very un-Nepalese to me, but the whole ambiance seemed different. It was also much warmer there than in Kathmandu. It felt more like India than Nepal, and you all know how much I love India.

We arrived at the hotel mid-afternoon and both Khem and I were pleasantly surprised by the lovely grounds and clean rooms. We were brought back to reality when we realised that there were exactly eight rooms booked for us. Is anyone doing the math yet? Yes, that’s an average of 5.6 people per room, each of which had a single and double bed. Again, as a staff member I got my own single bed, but the students were sleeping in heaps on the beds. We had a great lunch at the hotel and then sat around looking at each other. Apparently there were no plans to actually do anything in Chitwan. Khem stepped in at this point and arranged for us to go to an elephant breeding camp nearby. This was followed by a visit to a riverside restaurant that offered fabulous views of the sunset however we arrived there about 20 minutes after the sun had slid below the horizon. We walked back to the hotel in the dark stopping to browse at the handful of souvenir shops along the way.

Back at the hotel we were treated to a cultural show by a local dance troupe. It was different than the other Nepalese dancing I’d seen and was actually a really good show. By the end of it we were all up dancing with them and the students really seemed to be enjoying themselves. This was followed by dinner and then the kids found a sound-system which they set up on the lawn for more dancing. They lit a bonfire and the party began. Meanwhile, back in the dining room, Khem, Jiten and I were finishing our dinners. Jiten is the chef and head cooking teacher at the college and looks far more like a short, round Mexican than he does a Nepali. He wanted to buy Khem and I a beer after dinner which we both declined due to the strict no-drinking policy we had implemented on the trip and also because neither of us really wanted one. But Jiten wasn’t going to be denied and went ahead with his order. Khem and I hid our glasses under the table in case any students came by and tried to rid ourselves of the illicit stuff as quickly as possible. We both had a good laugh the next morning when one of the students reminded Khem that he had to pay for his beer when checking out. So much for discretion.

I had a headache after dinner so went right to bed. Khem and Jiten joined the students for their bonfire party and finally shut things down at about 10:30. One of my roommates came home at about this time, but went to bed with the light on and the door open so the others could get it. (There’s no way to close the door without bolting it, so we had to leave it ajar.) After virtually no sleep, I finally got up at about 4:00 and turned off the light, only to have the other girls arrive home five minutes later and turn it back on. They were in and out of the bathroom doing their ablutions and then finally climbed into bed and turned the light off. I thought I might actually grab a bit of sleep, but they then started sending text messages, with every keystroke beeping from the next bed. I was a tad cranky the next day.

After breakfast we climbed back on the bus for an hour or so drive to the brewery that we were supposed to be touring. (A wedding is passing by my window as I’m typing this and the band is surprisingly good – I think they’re all playing the same song for once.) We arrived and found that the brewery was currently closed for a break due to lack of demand for their product. Khem, the silver-tongued devil that he is, managed to convince them to let us tour the facility anyway. We also toured the noodle factory and chocolate factory on the same premises. It was quite interesting but I’m glad that packaged noodles are not a staple of my diet as they are for many people around here. After watching the students poking the dough passing us by on conveyer belts, I had to wonder how many other dirty hands, stray dogs and other contaminants find their way into the factory and then into the average package of YY noodles. Ditto for the chocolate wafer cookies they were making. It didn’t exactly meet Western standards for hygiene. I was happy to see that broken bits of noodles were collected and sold to workers and local villagers in 20 kg bags at very cheap prices.

After spending about double the amount of time we needed to there (herding Nepalese college students is somewhat akin to herding cats) we climbed back on the bus and headed towards Beshisahar. It wasn’t until much later that evening that I realised this name was familiar to me because it was the trailhead for the first trek I did in Nepal in 2002. We drove all day and well into the evening to get there, stopping only for lunch in the city of Chitwan, a filthy, flat, industrial town that really belongs in India rather than Nepal. By the time we stopped that night we were back into the Nepal I love, in the foothills of the Himalayas. A few kilometres before Beshisahar we passed a brand new hydro plant that was officially opened that day. I remembered having seen them working on this dam when I passed by in 2002. (More about electricity in my next blog.)

Our hotel here wasn’t quite as nice as the one in Chitwan but I got my own room and I think all of the students got their own beds this time around. The hotel was run by one of our students’ brother which meant a lot to the kids who are all aspiring hoteliers. Santos, the student in question, snapped into shape from this point on and really impressed me with the way he managed the group. He had been less than impressive earlier in the day on the factory tour, so it was really great to see him pull up his socks without any prompting from college staff. We had a late dinner and then went right to bed.

We got up early the next morning and watched the sunrise from the roof of the hotel and then went down for breakfast. At this point I discovered that we were hiking up to a Gurung village called Ghalegaun in the mountains above Beshisahar. I had been told the night before that we would be driving up, but now I was facing a six-hour trek uphill. You all know how much I love trekking, but a little advanced warning would have gone a long way for this one. I did the trek in jeans and running shoes, as did many of the students, although some only had flip-flops. I reckon that trekking in jeans is just slightly more comfortable than trekking in chain mail. I chose, as I always do when trekking, to walk at the back of the pack. This allows me to go at my own pace and experience the space and freedom of being in the mountains. I also really hate the feeling of having someone walking on my heels. In this case I also thought it prudent that someone with a shred of common sense should bring up the rear and make sure that nobody got lost or left behind. Of course the students all thought I was dying and kept offering to carry my pack or otherwise help me up the mountain. They kept telling me how difficult it was for people such as me doing this kind of thing for the first time. It was all quite cute considering my considerable trekking experience and the fact that the majority of these kids had never been out of the Kathmandu valley. (It should be noted that at this point I was congratulating myself on my choice of daypack over wheeled luggage.)

We stopped for lunch half way up at a tiny restaurant in a lovely little village. They managed to accommodate all of us in shifts. When we finally arrived at Ghalegaun I was stopped at the ACAP office at the entry to the village. This was no surprise to me: the night before in Bessisahar I had seen a pamphlet indicating that Ghalegaun lay within the Annapurna Conservation Area and that all foreigners needed a permit. I’ve been through this many times before and I know the rules, so I had questioned Khem about it. He assured me that since I was a teacher on a Nepalese school trip I would be exempt from the permit. Of course when we encountered the ACAP warden, no such exemption was forthcoming. Worse, if you buy your permit inside the ACAP area, rather than in the city before you leave, the fee doubles. This meant I owed about $60 rather than $30. When we arrived at the ACAP office, we had just climbed a wickedly steep stretch of trail and I was dripping with sweat. Almost immediately, some clouds rolled in around and the temperature dropped markedly. I had to sit there becoming more and more hypothermic while Khem argued with the warden to no avail. They finally agreed to pick up the discussion in the morning – it wasn’t like we were going to sneak out of the village in the middle of the night and we had to walk past the ACAP office on the way out the next day.

We continued on and were greeted by the villagers a hundred metres or so up the path. The welcoming committee had malas for us (the Himalayan version of the Hawaiian lei, made with marigolds) as well as tikkas for our foreheads. The tikkas were a mixture of rice and curd (yogurt) that they sprinkled in our hair and plastered all over our foreheads. I’m keen to participate in most rituals and ceremonies, but I have to say that having food stuck on my face isn’t my favourite thing, and the smell of curd started to nauseate me very quickly. We then joined the rest of the students in a stone courtyard where we were served tea and a very rich, oily pastry. (The Nepalese use mustard oil for much of their cooking which is very heavy and cholesterol-laden. Their food tends to be very oily, which is hard for us Westerners to handle in large quantities. Eating only Nepalese fare over the four days of this trip was difficult for me, even thought it all tasted great. I actually lost a bit of weight in spite of the the grease, simply because I could only handle small quantities.)

There are no hotels or lodges in Ghalegaun so accommodation is provided through homestays. As everyone was assigned their home and left with their hostess, I was somewhat concerned that Khem and I were being billeted together. I was sure that everything would be above-board but I wondered what kind of message we were sending the students is this very modest country. We arrived at our home and it turned out that I had a fabulous little room above the woodshed with two single beds in it. The woman of the house initially assumed that we would share the room but Khem had her take him to a vacant room in the main house. (This conversation occurred in Nepalese so I didn’t know it had taken place until later that day. She brought it up again over dinner and it took considerable effort on Khem’s part to convince her that we wouldn’t be sleeping together. Apparently this was a first for her – no previous guests had managed to last the night in separate rooms.) I was able to take a moderately hot solar-heated shower in a stone hut and get into dry, warm clothes. I then went and found a stone bench in a quiet spot on the edge of town and did a short meditation. When darkness fell I joined Khem in the kitchen for dinner. (I should come clean and admit that I got lost finding my way back to the house at dusk. Some villagers found me and offered to help, but I didn’t know where I was going or the name of my hostess so it was a bit of a mess. Fortunately it all ended well but not without a bit of embarrassment on my part.)

The main house had two rooms. Khem was in one, so I didn’t see the inside of it. The other was a simple room, about 6’ X 10’ with a fire at one end and a bed at the other. The ceiling was about 5 feet high and blackened with soot so we had to stoop to move around. Khem and I sat on a woollen blanket on the floor and our hostess sat on a straw mat as she effortless prepared our dinner. She was able to swivel on her mat and reach every utensil, pot, spice and food item that she needed. She kept the fire burning at an even heat, chopped, poured, kneaded, stirred and served like a well-oiled machine. All the while she kept up a steady conversation with Khem and produced a beautiful meal. It was a joy to watch, although my knees were aching out of sympathy for her maintaining a squatting position for hours on end. She offered Khem and me some rakshi, the local homemade whisky of the Himalayas. It is made with whatever grain is grown at that particular altitude (in this case millet) and distilled in large clay pots on the fire. It is served in water tumblers and goes down much like paint thinner. Khem and I decided that nobody would know if we indulged in a drink in our snug little kitchen so we accepted. Three times. I had a pretty good glow going by the time we ate our meal.

After dinner we found our way through the labyrinthine pathways to the community centre where we were being treated to a cultural show. Once there we realised that we weren’t the only ones to be offered rakshi at dinner – the students were all pretty tipsy. In true Nepalese form the show started about an hour and a half late and had an endless gap in the middle. During the break Jitan and one of the students took over the show, dancing and frolicking on the stage. The audience ate it up. We eventually made it home under a stunning starlit sky and retired to our respective rooms. I bundled up in all my clothes and climbed into bed under the piles of blankets left in the room.

I woke early and looked out my window at the stunning mountain view taking shape in the dawn. I walked to the top of a nearby hill to watch the sunrise with a bunch of students. I could see the same mountains as I could on my sunrise hike with Judy a few weeks ago, but this time from the other side of the range. After breakfast we congregated again for our farewell ritual. I tried to dodge the tikka this time, but failed miserably and left the village with a meal’s worth of rice and curd hardening into a crust on my forehead. We stopped in at the ACAP office to revisit the issue of my permit but didn’t make much headway. The silver-tongued devil did all he could with Santos and his brother throwing in their support for good measure, all to no avail. They finally reached an agreement whereby I would buy my permit when I got back to Kathmandu in order to avoid the penalty. (The college ended up covering the cost.)

We left the village about one hour later than planned (surprise!) so were a bit worried about time. We descended at a fairly rapid rate considering the terrain and I was concerned for my knees. My worries were all for naught and we made really good time. About 2/3 of the way down the hill the path crossed the road and Khem wanted to hop on a passing jeep and catch a lift to town. I would have preferred to walk and extend my time in the mountains, but I agreed to jump in with him. It was quite possibly the roughest ride I’ve ever had and we both regretted the decision moments after it was made. We were in town by about 2:00 PM as were the majority of the students. Of course we needed another meal and we ate lunch shortly after 3:00. Unfortunately there were some stragglers who didn’t get down until after 4:00 so we didn’t get on the road until after 5:00. It was a long drive back to town (with one more stop for food) and I didn’t get home until just after midnight. I was very happy to climb into my bed.