Thursday, June 24, 2010
Many days later, as I sat on Desolation Row, I was to remember the distant morning when I made my solitary climb to Tilicho Lake. Two weeks before then, after a period stuck on the border when a Maoist strike crippled transport all over the country, I crossed into Nepal for a second time, reaching Pokhara on May 11 just as the sun set on the fruit vendors and painted row boats around Phewa Lake. Pokhara is a tourist town, and the Lakeside district feels like a tolerably hot Wanaka. It would have been comfortable to spend my Nepalese days reading Catch-22 on a lounge chair in the shady courtyard of Butterfly Lodge, while sparrows made their nest in the tree above, sometimes losing twigs which fell on the smiling Nepali owner cutting grass beneath them - to sip mango lassis on hot afternoons as tight local bands covered Dire Straits, Santana, Hendrix and The Doors - but the 70's vibe was as conducive to sentimentalism as it was to laying back in peace. I was living the memories of my father, who thirty-five years ago experienced the same good music, French hippies and German bakeries that I would remember many days later as I sat on Desolation Row. And though I had decided with a firm air against trekking in Nepal after my five day struggle in the Singalila hills, a wave of emotional second-hand nostalgia overcame me; I extended my visa by twenty days, bought fifty snickers, and set about planning for a trek into the mountains around Annapurna, combined with a trek following my father's footsteps to Annapurna Base Camp, which lies at the heart of the Annapurna mountain range itself.
The treks, together with possible excursions, were to take three or four weeks. I had only a vague itinerary, but I knew that I would follow the Marsyangdi Valley for about six days to a village called Manang at 3,500m, before hopefully finding a companion for either the risky ascent to the Great Ice Lake, or the crossing of the Thorung La Pass, which would take me to breathless heights equal to that of Everest Base Camp. If I managed to cross the pass without any complications, I would then follow the Kali Gandaki river for several days down to Tatopani, where I would detour for a few more days and meet the trail to Annapurna Base Camp. Other than that, I had no idea what to expect as I left the road at the town of Besi Sahar, 700m above sea level.
In Nepal, as in India, there are three distinct seasons. The cool season runs from October to March. At low altitude temperatures are comfortable, but in the mountains trekking in December and January is almost impossible due to frequent snowstorms and avalanches, as well as the very real dangers of frostbite or hypothermia. April to June is the hot season, with almost unbearable heat lower down. Around early June, the monsoon clouds reach Nepal from the south, signalling the arrival of the wet season and bringing partial relief from the heat but creating new problems - landslides, floods, and the constant damp that is the misery of all backpackers. The best, and by far the most crowded times to go walking are beneath the clear skies of post-monsoon October, and during the Spring months, March and April.
I had ventured to go trekking in late May, and my position in the lowlands was therefore terrible. The first two days on the trail were physically exhausting in the heat and humidity; melted snickers and warm Iodine water had little comfort to offer. If I had been alone during those first days, as I should have logically been owing to this insane decision to go trekking in the cruellest months - if I had been alone, I think I should have been destroyed psychologically, completing the trek with my legs but not my heart. But a wrong turn at a village saw me walk an extra thirty minutes up a hill, and by the time I retraced my steps to the trail I found myself right behind three very French people, my companions for the next seven days. Dulcius ex Asperis. These guys were life savers. Without the steady, unrelenting pace of Patrice I should have given up each day at the first village I came across. If it wasn't for Stephanie's antibiotics I might have suffered much longer from a vomiting bug acquired in Pokhara, cruel companion to the sweaty heat, and without the sympathetic black beard and comforting good humour of Sam, the weeks ahead would have been miserable to dwell on. Many an uphill slope was tackled while distracting myself with French lessons and translations of Psycho Killer. The first days passed, and we reached Tal village on May 18. I now almost needed warm clothes at night, and I could lie in an unzipped sleeping bag as I listened repeatedly to a chilling live version of Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees on Patrice's Ipod. Life was good.
We continued to follow the steep gorge to Danaque and then Chame. At Chame, one of the larger villages on the east side of the pass and a good place to resupply, we could see Lamjung Himal looming far above us - for the first time we could appreciate the fact that we were walking through the highest mountain range in the world. It was about this time that I fully recovered from my illness, and lack of fitness after the sedentary lifestyle of the past month. Day five, from Chame to Upper Pisang, was easily my favourite day on the whole trek. The gorge had widened now, and the walk was relatively flat, the strong scents of pine forests mingling with mountain air as we made our way past the mighty Paungda Danda rock face along the road to Manang. In Pisang, a few hundred metres up the side of Pisang mountain, we faced Annapurna II and IV, both above 7500m. The south was dominated by the Paungda Danda rock face, while up the valley to the north we could make out the distant Tilicho Peak. When the last rays of the sun shone red on the highest peak in the evening, I was distracted from my chess games with Sam on the sun deck of Pisang Guest House, that evening forced by my impressions to spend my time gazing, in awe of that vast place.
Next day we made a strenuous but rewarding climb further up the Pisang mountainside, having a light meal at traditional Ghyaru before continuing on to the badlands around Manang. Now, at 3500m, we felt the altitude for the first time - the breaths we drew were a little quicker, any exertion was a little tougher, and after sunset it was too cold to be outside in jandals. Manang was quite something - the village and the desert area surrounding it reminded me of my future extensive travels in Afghanistan.
From Manang we detoured from the main trail, trodden thousands of years ago by traders on their way to or from nearby Tibet. We were on our way to the fabled Tilicho Lake, the existence of which was first recorded by Maurice Herzog and his team during their 1950 expedition to climb Annapurna. Herzog later wrote a book about his journey, and it was interesting to make comparisons later on. In little-visited Khangsar, I had a fantastic night, the Gurung lady running the guest house being surely one of the friendliest people in Nepal - and therefore the world. Laxmi Gurung bade us warm ourselves on a bench beside her ancient wood oven as she cooked unlimited quantities of the staple Nepali meal for us. Her dal bhaat - rice, lentil soup, and vegetables, in this case potatoes from her own garden - was something that was to remain in my memory for a long time, as I would fail to find a better or more simple meal in all thirty-four villages I ate in over the next seventeen days. Tragically though, the altitude of Khangsar badly affected Stephanie, and necessitated a French retreat down the mountain. They would not be able to cross the pass, and it would be considerably perilous for me to continue from Khangsar and attempt to reach the lake alone. The tral from here was used only by the occasional yak or hardcore Mexican girl. It traversed a 100 degree scree slope, where the only obstacles were towering rock spires. Hundreds of metres below a river raged; hundreds of metres above were a million small stones that could each potentially send a rockfall hurtling past the inconsistent trail to the river below. While counting my snickers at Khangsar, after a sad departure from the French, I realised that the risks involved were too great for a sane man to go on.
Many days later, as I sat on Desolation Row, I recalled the resignation I felt on the scree that day while I picked my way to Tilicho Base Camp. Nothing entered my mind then except Bear Grylls, annoying cliches, and Tom Petty's "Freefalling". Eventually, covered in dust and with stone-filled shoes, I arrived at the empty base camp, where I spent the coldest and loneliest night of my life, surrounded by glistening peaks, reading One Hundred Years of Solitude until the sun went down.
Nothing leaves such a vivid impression of emptiness in the things we say and do, of our unimportance, as does a crisp alpine dawn when its silence is broken only by the steady trickle of the unseen stream, and the irregular distant cry of an eternal, solitary bird. I rose to this impression at four o' clock the next morning, for today was to be a long day. At high altitude, the first ten minutes of exertion is always the most difficult. I struggled for breath as I began to make my way up the slope, and every time I drank water I had to dedicate several minutes just to recover my composure. The dangers of yesterday had passed, though, and it was an entirely peaceful struggle past a flock of Blue Sheep up the narrow track to the lake. And the next hour passed as if part of a dream. Finally, as I reached 5000m, the Great Ice Lake lay before me, the Great Barrier of mountains, from Tilicho Peak to Gangapurna, forming a remarkable backdrop. The sun had just risen behind me over far-off Manaslu. I was transported with joy. I could hardly breathe. I struggled with my apparently frostbitten hands to open a snickers, melted out of shape five days before. It was frozen. My wisdom tooth was acting up. It was beautiful. It was time to go. And the Blue Sheep turned round in surprise at the sound, like the howl of a dog, with which I picked up my bag, began singing Tambourine Man, and ran back down the scree to Manang.
Lunching at a strange village called Yak Kharka the next day, I pushed on to Thorung Phedi - the last outpost before Thorung La pass - despite the devious-looking clouds which had swept up the valley that morning. For my stupidity I was rewarded with a two-hour walk through a snowstorm, my warm clothes stuck at the bottom of the bag that my frozen hands failed to open. I had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and could actually have died had not I come across a wild-looking yak harder, screaming commands to more than a hundred yaks and naks roaming the snow-covered mountainside. He asked me for food, and pointed downhill to the river far below. It was clear that I would have to make my way down this steep slope, and quickly. In exchange for a snickers he gave me his walking stick, which would save my knees on a number of descents, particularly this one. Two more hours later I was in Thorung Phedi, where I had the best hot chocolate I will ever have in my life. I also met the Hollander, Laurenz, who would be my walking partner for another six days after Muktinath.
On the twenty-seventh day of May, after ten days of trekking, I crossed Thorung La. This crossing took me nearly twice the height of the summit of Mt Cook, and more than 500m higher than Tilicho Lake - but by that stage I was well acclimatised, by far the fittest I had ever been in my life, and with relative ease (relative to the first days of the trek) I gained 1000m, decended 1500m, and arrived in holy Muktinath on the other side of the pass. Entering the Kali Gandaki valley, this was a dry, rugged, high-altitude landscape which in many ways resembled Tibet - and in fact, the area is essentially part of the Tibetan Plateau. The next day Laurenz and I passed the desert Oasis of Kagbeni, in the lower Mustang area, and fought the immense winds as we progressed to the red-and-white stone houses of Marpha. It was in this unlikely village that I found a copy of Voltaire's short stories.
We were now connected by a terrible road to Pokhara for the first time in two weeks. It would have taken several days to reach Pokhara by jeep, but in any case we were both eager to leave the road and go on to the panoramic views of Poon Hill, near Ghorepani. However, Laurenz was having problems with his foot after the tough descent to Muktinath, and was forced to take a vehicle as far as Tatopani. We agreed to meet there in two days. It was more than forty-five kilometres from Marpha including detours from the road. We said goodbye at seven in the morning, and with what surprise Laurenz glanced out his window at seven in the evening and saw me stumbling around in the darkness! It was a bad move - I had been fast-walking for twelve hours, stopping only once for a quick dal bhaat with two refills, and my ankles were swollen, my whole body aching and stiff. We both needed a day of rest.
And thus ended the most notable section of the trek, around Annapurna. The next ten days would see me make my way to Annapurna Base Camp at 4100m, but this period was culturally less interesting, and very much like tramping in the South Island in summer after a heavy rain. The photos taken from the Sanctuary should speak for themselves as to how I enjoyed it. I spent the twenty-second evening eating what TIME Magazine ten days before had named the best chocolate cake in Asia - Mum's is better. And after twenty-four days of trekking in the Nepal Himalaya, I reached the roadway at Naya Pul. From here I rode on the roof of a speeding bus to Pokhara, my conversation with a former Gurkha in the Afghan army interrupted only by branches, power lines, and his suddenly taking leave of me, running down the hillside, and jumping into the river.
It was now the 9th of June. After some lazy days reading Herzog's 'Annapurna' and watching three World Cup games every day, I had thoroughly regained my old lack of fitness. I bused to Kathmandu on the 13th, and stayed in the surprisingly surviveable tourist area of Thamel. Despite the dodgy stories I had heard about Kathmandu - and certainly it was squalid compared to Pokhara - I found it a lot nicer than cities like Varanasi and Delhi, in almost every way. Nepalis are remarkably friendly, a fact I didn't fully appreciate until I left the country. They are also extremely fond of football, and the night we thrashed Slovakia 1-1 was a memorable one because of it. Whoever was playing and wherever you watched them play, you could guarantee that there would be twenty Nepalis in the room yelling like the English - the only difference being that they cheered for good football. Women also seemed to bear much more freedom and responsibility in Nepalese society, in comparison at least with some parts of India. My week in Kathmandu was therefore quite a happy one, albeit filled with bewildering sights and contrasts. The number of temples, relics and ancient buildings was incredible - almost every step took me past something that wouldn't look out of place in a museum - but in Kathmandu this history is simply part of the city, being used as a washing line or playground. This especially was the case in the preserved medieval city-state of Bhaktapur.
On the 18th I planned to take a 17 hour night bus to the border with India, where I would continue on to Darjeeling for New Zealand's remaining World Cup games. Night buses in Nepal are renowned as being some of the most uncomfortable and most dangerous in the world. And it was an uncomfortable ride, but physical discomfort was not so bad as the horror I felt that night, which I will never be able to fully understand or convey. Nothing in my life has ever achieved so completely in me such a rapid onset of desolate cynicism and loss of general hope, as my semi-conscious, abstract contemplation of the following apparently trivial things in the half-light of the night bus to the border.
A tall emaciated Bhutanese man in a Che Guevara t-shirt apologises profusely for greeting a dark moustache and flashing teeth which yell abuse at him in Nepali as loud Hindi film songs blare from the speaker above my head and a Kolkatan gentleman sitting beside me repeatedly enforces the caste system on the woman behind us, the same woman who gave me her baby as she sat down and for the whole night refuses to take it back despite its incessant screaming as the bus hurtles along the broken road at high speed with four bald tyres, stopping only to let on a withered old lady who falls on the stairs much to the amusement of a fat man in a Hawaiian shirt and military pants, until he himself falls backwards when the bus suddenly starts moving again and hits his head against a metal bar with pieces of meat hanging from it, before roaring with anger and lunging over the dirty leather seat at the driver only to be pinned to the floor and thrown out at the next stop by several barefoot bare-chested men with grisly stubble that shines in the moonlight until clouds cover the sky and the monsoon rains begin, forcing everyone to close every window except the one in front of me despite the fact that this makes them sweat profusely and me and the baby soaking wet, but this doesn't for some reason stop the cackling woman two seats in front over the aisle from turning every two minutes and showing me her paan gums and single yellow tooth. In fact she doesn't stop until we reach the border and the immigration official with the silver watch asks me "How do you do?" and talks of the weather.
I take another bus as far as Siliguri before I discover that the roads to Darjeeling are closed due to a strike after the murder of an important person, so I wait for ten hours then catch another night bus to Kolkata.
Desolation Row is a state of mind, not a physical entity, and it is not understood until personally experienced. The lyrics to Bob Dylan's most powerful song were not meaningless anymore. And Tambourine Man was more difficult to understand.
Locals play table tennis by the lake
One of the town's many fruit vendors
Boats line the shore of Phewa Lake, Pokhara
Pokhara during a street festival
One of the many shops selling paintings of the area by local artists
Fishing at sunset
Approaching Manang on day six
The terrain of the first few days
Pack horses in Jagat
A misplaced photo of the Rockies
Patrice, Sam and Stephanie
The towering Paungda Danda rock face, which we passed on day five on the way to Pisang
Hundreds of porters carry impossible loads along the trail to the villages
Pisang lies on the hill in the centre
The view towards south-east towards Paungda Danda, taken from Upper Pisang
From the sunny deck of our guest house in Pisang, looking towards Manang and Tilicho
Annapurna II and IV as the sun sets
Ghyaru, our lunch stop on day six
These are horribly out of order. Looking towards Mustang and Tibet with Kagbeni village below.
Approaching Manang
Just visible here is the dangerous track across the scree and spires, with Tiliho Peak in the background
Taken while traversing the scree slope. The dot on the center-right is a hardcore Mexican girl who went to base camp the previous day
Blue Sheep run up the slope as I recover my breath about halfway to Tilicho from the base camp
Outcrops around the lake
The Great Barrier
Tilicho Lake
A photo of Tilicho Lake from Maurice Herzog's 1950 expedition.
Walking back, facing Gangapurna
Walking back, with Khangsar and Manang just visible far below
Crossing Thorung La
Crossing Thorung La
The gates of Annapurna Sanctuary
Dhaulagiri, sixth-highest mountain in the world, from Poon hill at sunrise
Macchapuchre from Poon hill at sunrise - the most consistently impressive-looking mountain in the world
On the way from Ghorepani to Tadapani
Macchapuchre in the evening, from Chhomrong village
A waterfall to our left on the way to Annapurna Base Camp
On the way to base camp, near Deorali
Gazing back down the gorge after the skies suddenly cleared
Dawn at Annapurna Base camp; view to the east - Macchapuchre on the right
Annapurna South - the view west from base camp
The view south from base camp
Annapurna!
Looking across the sanctuary towards Macchapuchre as we descend to Macchapuchre base camp. I was singing the meadow-fresh song the whole way.
Schoolgirls outside Bhaktapur
Street dogs are everywhere in India and Nepal - this was next to the monkey temple
Buddhist prayer wheels at the monkey temple - also at the entrance and exit of every village on the trek, as they give you good karma
In the old city on the way to Durbar Square
The incredible Durbar Square in Patan
Nepalis love football
Patan's Durbar Square...
...is still used as a market, as it has been for thousands of years
Silhouette of a temple in Patan
Momos. I ate these for every lunch and dinner in Kathmandu, and will learn how to make them when I go home
I found a time machine
Bhaktapur's Dubar Square
Bhaktapur's Durbar Square
This man was standing here in that pose for two hours before I walked past a fourth time and realised he wasn't a statue
Women lining up with offerings outside a temple in Bhaktapur
A city scene in Bhaktapur
