Dark mountains fringed in pink

I got up at around five am and wandered up to a small hill on the outskirts of the village. I sat there and watched the silhouettes of the Himalayas starting to catch the sun. This was the most beautiful part of the day for me; dark mountains fringed in pink.  It became hazy afterwards and the mountains slowly disappeared.  But it was lovely to sit there meditate and listen to the village come to life.  Dad and I set off with Prem after breakfast.  Mum and Ann came with Kailash and all our luggage by jeep.  There were quite a lot of people coming up the path as it was a Saturday.  One group had a couple of young women wearing bikinis as tops which annoyed me (!) although Prem blamed the guide for not telling the women that bearing so much flesh was unacceptable in Nepal.

At a tea stop overlooking the valley we saw kites, eagles and buzzards flying quite close by, circling over the valley below.  A nice ending to our trek, although it all seemed to end too soon. 

Back in Pokhara we said goodbye to Kailash – he was getting a little microbus back to Kathmandu.  Then, because we’d not wanted to stop walking, Prem suggested we get a boat across the lake and walk to a Peace Pagoda that overlooks Pokhara.  Mum and Ann couldn’t manage the steps on the walk so they booked a ‘taximan’ they’d met during the week who spoke good English and  had befriended them while we’d been trekking.  The boat was an open canoe and we had to wear enormous life jackets, the walk was lovely but we went quite fast in order to meet mum and Ann in time, so couldn’t really appreciate it.  The Peace Pagoda was beautifully cool beneath my hot, tired feet and had a hazy view across the lake and Pokhara.

Looking back on this trek (it is now August!) it feels like it was a little window of calm in what has been a very busy and stressful time over the last five months.  The eye of a storm.  On my return to the UK I was inundated with work, trying to finish off writing the research report for the Bamboo Project (the reason I was in Nepal in the first place) and taking on another consultancy project (more writing).  It’s wonderful to remember the mountain views, and writing this post has allowed me to dip into the calm and beauty of those four days and refresh myself….

A Temple at Dawn

Dad, Mum and Ann at Breakfast

And I know it's a bit naughty but I found these photos of my day rock climbing in his youth - he hasn't changed a bit!

The beauty of a well laid table

We woke up to the big secret - a fantastic view of the Himalayas from the grassy knoll, floating at first like crystallised clouds.  Then, as the sun rose their mass beneath being revealed crevice by crevice.  Dad and I spent three hours in wonder and delight looking at the changing panorama. Everything took on a magical feel.  Gugung, the waitress served us breakfast with such care and beauty.  It was positively ceremonial.  She slowly and carefully named and placed each item down 'black tea, milk tea, sugar, spoon'. We played with the little boy Dallan again but after some group photos had to drag ourselves away.

It was just a short walk (one and a half hours) to to Damphus where we were meeting Mum and Ann (my parent's friend who had been keeping mum company while dad and I were trekking ).   Dad and I could easily have trekked longer, it felt like we were moving back into civilisation and the 'real' world.  Although the hotel (it had ensuite facilities!!) had a lovely view of the foothills and the roofs of the village.  It was good to see mum and Ann although they didn't seem to have done much in Pokhara.  We went for a walk around the village - dad explained how the trek went and I stayed quiet for the most part.  We did a bit of star gazing at night.  I liked the fact that dad and I had already developed our little routines - our tea, 'bon-bons' (Bourbon biscuits) at elevenses and apple slices for our 'pudding'.  We showed off about these to mum and Ann I guess and went to bed praying for rain so that the view would be clear in the morning.

Annapurna South

The beauty of a well laid table

Prem and Dallon playing

The group at Puthara

The Big Down

The big down was thousands of steps, winding down past terracing and small stone houses and ended at a beautiful tea house covered in flowers by a watermill.  Across the river was a small dark cliff that had bee hives hanging from its crevices.  We were told that they have a honey hunting festival where people scale down the cliff to pick up the honey combs – there was a huge comb hanging from the rafters of the tea house about half a metre in length.

After crossing the river, which comes straight from Annapurna we then wound our way up more terracing to the village of Landruk and were able to look across the valley to the route we’d done the previous day – to Gandruk (notice a theme!).  I spend a large part of the day thinking about how I could organise a fundraising trek for Children Unite, who would be interested in doing one.  After Landruk we lost Kailash – he had rather a long break we think, smoking and resting!  Prem drew a big arrow on the path at a point where it forked and eventually caught up with us at the next tea stop.  The afternoon walk was beautiful, through forest teaming with birds, rhododendron trees (yes trees  not bushes), all sorts of gorgeous ferns and moss filled crevices.  Of course it reminded dad and I of Scotland (a regular haunt) – but on a grand scale.  As we walked up and you had to concentrate on each step you noticed tiny blue flowers, pink ball shaped flowers and white daisies – all miniature, like little gems in between the stone pavement. 

We reached Puthara in the afternoon and in the shower after our walk, I could hear a guitar and flute playing.  It was Prem and Kailash!  They were sitting on a kind of grassy knoll surrounded by pines and rhododendron trees with prayer flags strung up in between.  It had a lovely panorama of the foothills and villages.  At the time we didn’t know the secret beauty of this place.  It was enough to be sitting listening to Kailash and Prem play Nepali love songs.

Dad and I had had a physically tough day so we were tired in the evening.  Over dinner we spoke to a Malaysian man who had been trekking solo for 22 days.  The restaurant we were eating in had only been open 6 days.  The son of the owner had recently returned to take over managing the place, he’d installed a full drum kit, Nepali and African drums, a guitar and flutes.  He told us he’s been learning guitar and during the meal, in the kitchen, he started playing ‘Heaven’s Door’ and ‘Hotel California’, two songs that always remind me of Indonesia and my time with the street boys of Yogyakarta.  The boys all seem to know how to play those two songs and I could never remember the lyrics! 

The kitchen had two big glass windows separating it from the dining hall which meant we could see the porters and family chatting and eating. Prem told us that guides and porters usually want nothing to do with the trekkers once the reach the tea house but he likes talking too much so ends up spending more time with trekkers.  While walking during the day Prem, dad and I had a long chat about the holocaust, Israel and US motivation for joining WWII.  He remembers so many facts I’m astounded.  He’s studying cultural trauma, which I’ve never heard of before – not your typical guide that’s for sure!  I do like the way Prem talks to the people we meet at our tea stops.  At one place, we could hear a shrill American voice for about five minutes before we saw a couple of young women walking along, their porter on his mobile, who passed us without acknowledgement and were deep in conversation about which books and films they’d seen.  Prem seemed to make a snap judgment about them being the kind of people who don’t really appreciate where they are and he made some disparaging remarks them to dad and I.  But then he appeared to say the same thing to the tea stop woman as she made a face and laughed at his remarks – just as dad and I had done.  I liked this equal treatment. It has helped dad and I to feel part of these little conversations that take place between Prem, Kailash and all the people we’ve met along the way.  Sometimes they’ve been about the farming techniques or plants and trees in the vicinity.  I love the fact that dad knows about farming – it’s broken the ice with a number of people and brings a small part of their world (actually a large and important part) to life for me.

Realising a boyhood dream...trekking the Himalayas

Extracts from my journal...from a trek in the Himalayas earlier this month...with my dad!

I’ve been preparing for this trek for 3 years and first spoke to our guide in 2010 about the idea taking my dad on a trek to realise his boyhood dream – walking amongst the Himalayas.  Dad first became obsessed with the Himalayas when Everest was conquered in the 1950s and he was a teenager.  Now, aged 73 he had so far spent a good part of his seventies discussing the best time to go (it had to fit in with a research project I was running in Kathmandu), our fitness levels, equipment, length of trek, location of trek (Everest or Annapurna?) whether we could eat local food, at what height altitude sickness kicks in...  Over the past 6 months dad had also been in training, taking on longer and longer walks and carrying 20kg packs.  Although I’d managed one or two walks recently my knees had suffered for days when we climbed Ben Nevis two years ago (and dad was fine!!) which had made me nervous about a Himalayan trek…we were both a bit anxious about whether we could cope, and hoped we wouldn’t get injured or sick and ruin it for each other.

We started our trek at Nyapul, a scrappy place by the river about an hour's jeep ride from Pokhara, the path was lined with small shacks selling everything from rucksacks to digestive biscuits.  Our guide is Prem, recommended by a friend of a friend. He’s a lithe, slight man with a ponytail and gravelly voice.  He talked politics for the first hour or so, enthusiastically critiquing democracy in Nepal, the influence of China and India, the cultural devastation caused by road building in the foothills, the uselessness of most Nepali men (drinking and playing cards) – in fact the whole day was punctuated with political discussion.  Not your average guide I think (well he is studying for a PhD in cultural trauma)!  We walked up all day, first along a road (or 'motor' way as Prem called it) that snaked through villages rather choked with tea houses, then after we stopped for lunch at the ‘Don’t Pass Us’ tea shop and I bought this diary, and we started going seriously up along a stepped path.

We saw a snake before lunch – a tiny worm-like creature with an inflated yellow head – venomous apparently.  As for other wildlife we saw red headed vulture, step eagles, black kites and pack ponies along the trail (not really wild animals though!).  The funniest was seeing pack ponies with their heavy loads and antiquated harnesses like something out of the 13^th century alongside their driver on his 21^st century mobile phone nonchalantly chatting away. At our lunch stop there was a sign saying 4525 steps to Gandruk – our final destination for the night, just a little daunting!  It started to cool down a bit through cloud cover after lunch which was a relief for dad – I found out later he’d had a bit of a dicky tummy all morning (such an English phrase!) and he’s never been a huge fan of the heat so I think he found the morning hard. We stopped quite regularly - Kailash our porter usually determining when.  Kailash is in training to be a guide, we aren’t able to talk much as his English isn’t great yet and he’s a shy, quiet lad. He sings as he walks though which is lovely and, for me, gives him a depth somehow that doesn’t require intellectual conversation.  

We reached Gandruk at 3pm, quite exhausted.  We’d been buoyed on by the increasingly rural and beautiful surroundings, the path in shadow from moss covered cliffs, the rubbish strewn at the side of the ‘motor’ way replaced with ferns and small shrubs.  We are staying in a beautiful old traditional tea house with wobbly clay walls.  Dad soon struck up conversation with a number of the guests – one of whom met his wife in Nepal in the ‘70s and couldn’t believe how much it had changed in terms of pollution, urban sprawl and general ugliness.  I saw a step eagle when dad was having a shower and he was miffed so I teased him about missing it and he teased me about my eyesight but we watched the sky and chatted until it was too cold to sit out.  After dinner (lasagna for dad, the local ‘dal baht’ for me) we went to bed at 9.00 in preparation for the big, worrysome ‘down’ tomorrow.

Day 1 The 'motor' way

Dad the Explorer!

Tea House at Gandruk