Dervla Murphy is an Irish touring cyclist and author of adventure travel books. She is best known for her 1965 book Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle, about an overland cycling trip through Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. She followed this with volunteer work helping Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal and trekking with a mule through Ethiopia. Murphy took a break from travel writing following the birth of her daughter, and then wrote about their travels in India, Pakistan, South America, Madagascar and Cameroon. She later wrote about her solo trips through Romania, Africa, Laos, and the states of the former Yugoslavia and Siberia.
On Foot to Langtang
9 NOVEMBER – KATHMANDU
I have spent the past few days trying to forget the Pokhara Tibetans and organising a fortnight’s exploratory trek to the Langtang area due north of Kathmandu – though perhaps ‘organising’ is too strong a word for my sort of pre-trek arrangements.
Trekking parties here vary enormously according to the status, pernicketiness and physical fitness (or unfitness) of their members. The most elaborate are the comical Royal Progress of Ambassadors, who travel accompanied by scores of porters, a team manager to control them, a cook, a kitchen-boy, a guide, an interpreter, personal servants, quantities of imported food, cases of alcohol and every conceivable piece of equipment from a mobile lavatory to a folding wardrobe. The next and largest group are the lesser Embassy officials and Foreign Aid men, who travel in moderately luxurious parties numbering their porters by the dozen and forgoing lavatories and wardrobes – but bringing tents, tables, chairs, beds, larders and cellars; and then there are the hoi-polloi, who are too poor – or too sensible – to do anything but rough it.
I had planned to go alone on my own short trek, but Rudi Weissmuller, a Swiss friend who is familiar with the area, told me that this would be unfair on the locals because during winter they have no surplus food to sell to travellers; he also pointed out that I would be permanently lost without a guide, and advised me to go to the notorious Globe Restaurant to look for a Sherpa who would be willing to act as both porter and guide.
Had I not by now been semi-integrated in the Nepal province of Tibland it would have been difficult to find such a combination; the Sherpas are being a little spoiled by the Big Time Expeditions and are no longer very enthusiastic about ambling in the foothills with ordinary mortals. However, through Tibetan friends I contacted Mingmar, a twenty-four-year-old native of Namche Bazaar who agreed to come with me for eight shillings a day – by Sherpa standards a sensationally low wage.
A month ago I applied to the Singha Durbar for a trekking permit, but inevitably I have spent most of my time during the past few days prising it out of the relevant Government Department. In addition to losing my application form these caricatures of bureaucrats had also lost my passport, so I just hung around the office waiting... and waiting... and waiting... until at last I became a Public Nuisance. Then someone bestirred himself to excavate a mound of documents (doubtless losing several other passports in the process), and a battered green booklet inscribed EIRE eventually appeared. This was at once seized on by me – to the great distress of the clerk, who insisted that it belonged to a Czech stocking-manufacturer – and in due course the permit was grudgingly issued by a more senior clerk, who reprimanded me for not having made my application until the last moment.
This morning I again met Mingmar and gave him money to buy rice, salt, tea and a saucepan. He seemed considerably agitated by the scantiness of these provisions – not on his own behalf, but on mine – nor was he much consoled to hear that I myself was bringing twelve tins of sardines, twelve packets of dried soup, a tin of coffee, two mugs, two spoons and a knife. This was still not the sort of provisioning and equipment he expected of even the humblest Western trekker, and despite my assurance that I perversely enjoy hardship he remained convinced that I would fold up en route for lack of comfort.
Yesterday I spent an unforgettable afternoon wandering around Patan – beyond a doubt my favourite part of the valley. To me there is by now something very special about this disintegrating yet still lovely city; familiarity with the most obscure of its filthy little alleys and a positive sense of friendship towards its time-worn, grotesquely carved animal-gods has changed my original excited admiration to a warm affection.
The rice harvesting is at its height week and as I strolled around the narrow street, feeling the local magic rising like a tide to engulf me, the air was hazily golden with threshing dust. Now Patan is to be seen in the role of a big farming-village and even in the Durbar Square, where a prim group of guided tourists was pretending not to notice the temple-god’s penis, I had to pick my way carefully between mounds of glowing grain and stacks of straw. Most people quit all other work at harvest-time and return home to help – a delightfully sane arrangement of priorities which does nothing to speed the modernisation of Nepal. While the men cut the crop in the field the women attend to the threshing, and outside every house along every street the family’s rice supply for the next year was being heaped. Normally the surplus is sold to bazaar merchants, but unhappily there will be little surplus this year, for Kathmandu has also had vile weather during the last fortnight.
Perhaps there won’t be time for me to visit Patan again, but I could have no lovelier a final memory than yesterday’s, when the streets were one vast sun-burnished granary, with crimson skirts swirling above golden grain, and sheaves of shining straw being balanced on raven heads, and the untidy music of swinging jewellery sounding faintly as lithe bodies displayed a timeless art.
10 NOVEMBER – TRISULI
A typical Nepalese day, with lots more waiting. Mingmar and I had arranged to meet at 6 a.m., on a certain bridge; but we each went to a wrong one – unfortunately not the same wrong one – and by the time we had got ourselves sorted out it was 9 a.m.
Trisuli is a valley north-west of Kathmandu where the Indian Aid Mission is now working on a colossal hydro-electric project. A rough forty-mile track has been hacked out across the mountain and every day an incredible number of heavy, battered trucks carry machinery, piping and cement to the work-site. To my annoyance Mingmar decided that we would do the first stage of our trek – in what he most misleadingly described as ‘comfort’ – by taking a truck to Trisuli. I argued that my conception of a Himalayan trek did not include rides in motor vehicles; but it is against modern Sherpa principles to walk one yard further than is absolutely necessary, so I soon gave in and we set out for Balaju, the suburb of Kathmandu from which the Trisuli track begins.
This is the industrial area of the valley, where foreign aid has already done its worst and produced incongruous little factories, schools and blocks of ‘workers’ flats – not to mention a deep-freeze plant with a notice advising foreigners to book space for storing their PERCIABLE goods; even in the context it took me a few moments to decipher that one.
We waited here by the roadside for over an hour, during which I became more and more restive. It is easy to wait patiently when a situation is beyond one’s control, but to sit around pointlessly when one could be happily walking into the hills is very galling indeed. Yet Sherpas are as obstinate as Tibetans, and it would have been impossible to convince Mingmar that some people do enjoy walking.
When a cement truck finally appeared we joined the twenty other passengers after a prolonged haggle about fares; obviously, though his own purse was not affected, it was a point of honour with Mingmar to secure the lowest possible rate from the Sikh driver. We then drove a few hundred yards up the village street, which is being newly paved, but soon our way was blocked by an ancient steamroller that looked as though it had been abducted from some Museum of Early Machinery. This fascinating object, having expired on the narrowest section of the embryonic road, was now resisting all attempts to push, tow or otherwise move it out of the way. Occasionally a scowling young Indian with set jaw appeared from somewhere, shinned up to the driver’s seat and struggled violently with whatever it is that makes ancient steam-rollers roll; but nothing ever happened.
Meanwhile our driver was having trouble with the police, who could not make up their minds whether we should proceed to Trisuli (steamrollers permitting) immediately or at 5 o’clock this afternoon. (It was not clear to me why the police were in control of our apparently innocent movements: but I have long since ceased to be surprised by the quirks of Nepalese officialdom.) No less than three times all twenty-two passengers and their luggage were moved out of the truck, and back into the truck, as the police vacillated. One feels that Lewis Carroll must have secretly visited Nepal; a strong ‘Alice’ atmosphere now enveloped the whole scene, and to Mingmar’s alarm I succumbed to an uncontrollable giggling fit when, for the third time, we were ordered back into the truck.
At this point an Indian Senior Engineer arrived at the scene of the breakdown and did something so drastic that the steamroller gave a scream of terror, emitted unbelievable clouds of steam and moved at terrifying speed down the steep hill, grazing the side of our truck as it passed. Fortunately this development coincided with a police mood favouring our immediate departure, so off we went at full speed – 10 m.p.h. – up the hill over the half-made road.
One suspects Sikh drivers of fiddling their loads so that they can make a good profit on carrying passengers and our covered truck was only one quarter full of cement sacks; but, as these constitute a most unpleasant cargo with which to travel, I soon climbed out on to the roof of the cab and hung on there, obtaining splendid though terrifying views for most of the forty-six mile, six-hour journey.
This track makes the Rajpath look like the M1 and, as we crawled along, I reflected yet again on the unlikelihood of Nepal ever having a conventional network of roads, or of China ever wanting to annex a country that could be of no possible use, either agriculturally or industrially, to anyone. There is only one Himalayan range in the world, much of which happens to be right here in Nepal, and even the ingenuity of mid-twentieth-century technologists can do very little about it. The Chinese have just spent four million pounds on building their sixty-five-mile dirt track ‘strategic highway’ from Kathmandu to Kodari – on the Tibetan frontier – and no doubt they regard this final link in the Lhasa–India road as being worth every penny of these four millions; but the building, and even more the maintaining of commercial roads throughout landsliding Nepal is never likely to be considered economic by any government.
As we left Balaju I was brooding morbidly on yesterday’s American jet crash, in relation to our flight home; but before we had travelled far on this track I could only think how very slim my chances were of ever again boarding an aeroplane. The snag is that when sitting in a corner of the box on a cab-roof one’s seat is projecting beyond the wheels – which are only a matter of inches from the often crumbling verge – so at hairpin bends one imagines repeatedly that the lumbering vehicle is about to go over the edge. Recently I have been congratulating myself on having an improved head for heights but, though it is true that I no longer even notice 1,000-foot drops, and am only mildly impressed by 2,000-foot drops, I do still take fright on finding myself poised over 4,000-foot abysses while being driven by a slightly inebriated Sikh. Yet when I had adjusted to the singularity of this road – which is not to be compared with anything I have ever seen elsewhere – it became paradoxically soothing to go swinging around mountain after mountain, hour after hour; but the jolting was hellish, and tonight my whole body feels as though it had been put through a mangle. Such journeys are not the best sort of preparation for strenuous treks.
The soil in this area appears to be much poorer than around Pokhara. The main crops are millet and maize, but three-quarters of the land is an uncultivable – though gloriously beautiful – mixture of rock and forest.
During the day several trucks and two jeepfuls of Indian engineers came towards us en route for Kathmandu, and during the complicated manoeuvrings that have to be executed before vehicles can pass each other here our lorry went axle-deep into soft mud at the cliff-side of the track. Obviously there was going to be a long delay, while the more able-bodied passengers freed the vehicle with spades borrowed from local peasants, so I suggested to Mingmar that we should walk the remaining ten miles to Trisuli Bazaar: but the idea was spurned. I then briefly considered going on alone; however, Nepal being Nepal, the truck could suddenly take a fancy to return to Kathmandu with Mingmar and most of my kit on board – or some other inconceivable catastrophe might occur to prevent us from ever meeting again in this life.
I noticed that the four Tibetans among the passengers were the most willing and energetic helpers; they showed no resentment of the Sikh’s peremptory instructions, which so antagonised the local farmers that they were understandably reluctant to lend their spades and finally charged for the loan.
Within the past decade there has been some deterioration in Indo-Nepalese relations, and by now, having studied at close quarters quite a number of individual Nepalese-lndian relationships, I feel that India must accept rather more than half the blame for this. Admittedly the Nepalese have the usual excessive – though attractive – pride of mountain peoples and are very quick to resent, or even imagine, minor slights; but it is unnecessary for them to over-exercise their imagination in this context for the Indians usually treat them with breathtaking tactlessness. As citizens of a country to which the British introduced rail-ways, hospitals, electricity and postal services the Indians now affect extreme contempt for a city like Kathmandu – forgetting that Delhi might be similarly undeveloped had foreigners never meddled with Indian affairs. ln a place like Pokhara the condescension of the resident Indians is beyond my endurance, let alone that of the Nepalese. Were it not so infuriating it would be funny to see how expertly these men reproduce the attitudes of the worst type of British sahib in India; and frequently too there is venom in their voice, for they seem to be compulsively avenging themselves on the Nepalese for the unforgotten hoard of trivial insults directed at their own countrymen in the past.
However, it is probable that in any case the Nepalese would have been hostile to India at this present point in history, because of our common human inability to accept assistance graciously. During the past six months a number of Nepalese have sulkily told me that had India not been given so many dollars by America she could not possibly have given so many rupees to Nepal – which make one wonder just how much furtive animosity is provoked in materially poor countries by the lavishness of Western financial aid.
Our truck mishap had occurred when we were almost down to river level, and now long streams of late sunshine were making the savage clefts in the hills – relics of monsoon landslides – glow redly amidst the dark green of the forests and the pale golden-green of ripening millet. At this season there is no great urgency here about work in the fields, and as time passed a small crowd gathered around the truck to enjoy our little crisis. One woman was accompanied by her self-possessed five-year-old son who, feeling a bit peckish, had a long drink from his mother’s breast – and then stood up, wiped his mouth, took a cigarette from the pocket of his tattered shift and strolled over to me to request a match. One hears that mothers should not smoke while breastfeeding their children: but apparently it is quite in order for Nepalese children to smoke while being breast-fed.
After seventy minutes of hard work the truck was at last liberated and we drove down to the valley floor where, at 1,700 feet, the air seemed thickly warm. Then, having crossed the river by a startlingly posh new bridge, we arrived at Trisuli Bazaar just as darkness fell and are spending the night in a ramshackle eating-house that calls itself an hotel – having evidently ‘got notions’, as we say in Ireland, since so many Indians came to work here. This small town is built on a steep slope directly above the river, and all the streets are smelly flights of steps. As usual in Nepal the men seem to spend most of their evening hours gambling intently, and it was difficult to get the hotel-keeper away from his cards for long enough to lead us to the top of a dark, narrow stairway. We have a most luxuriously furnished room to ourselves – with no less than three straw mattresses on the floor; but these are probably the headquarters of an army of bed-bugs so I have urged Mingmar to sleep on all three and am hoping that the army will concentrate on his impervious body. My own sleeping-bag has been laid in the centre of the mud floor, as far away as possible from the presumably infested walls.
11 NOVEMBER – IN A SHACK ON A RIDGE
After an undisturbed nine-hour sleep we woke at six o’clock, and fifteen minutes later were on the track, Mingmar carrying sixty pounds (a light load for a Sherpa) and I myself carrying thirty pounds (a heavy load for an effete Westerner). Mingmar’s load could be much lighter were his standards not modelled absurdly on those of the expeditions he has worked for; in addition to his flea-bag he is carrying an inflatable rubber mattress and a thick blanket, which together must weigh at least twenty-five pounds.
The Trisuli Valley would be very lovely had the Indian Aid project not already desecrated it with the roar of machinery, and with hillocks of cement and stacks of piping. Now monstrous bulldozers and angular cranes are bullying the river into submission, and one is frightened by the speed with which men can despoil beauty. I was glad when after two hours’ brisk walking we had passed those scenes and recrossed the river to where our track began its climb. Here a hamlet of wooden houses stood just above the river and, though it was a little early for trekkers’ brunch, Mingmar decided that we should eat now as we would come to no other settlement before dusk.
By the time we had finished our meal and set off up the first mountain (alias ridge) the sun was quite fierce and Mingmar was muttering impolite things about the heat. On being questioned he admitted that he was wearing woollen ankle-length underpants and nylon skiing pants under his denim jeans, plus a woolly vest, a flannel shirt and a sweater under his down-padded wind-cheater. As I was too hot in a thin cotton shirt and shorts the mere thought of this apparel weakened me and eventually I talked him out of two-thirds of his garments – leaving him still grossly over-dressed and considerably increasing his load. This Sherpa predilection for excessive clothing amounts to a mania; having acquired these status symbols from various expeditions they cannot bear not to wear them everywhere and all the time.
Today we were climbing most of the way, going north above the Kyirung River. Our track was never forced right down to river-level, though it often descended a few thousand feet to avoid the more intractable precipices and then climbed steeply again to its average level of about 5,000 feet; but at no stage was it as gruelling as the Pokhara–Siglis route.
Yet simply to say that we were going up and down hills all day gives a misleading impression of monotony; around every corner of the winding track one saw a new loveliness, or an already familiar and striking vista from a completely different angle. Sheer mountains rose beyond the narrow Kyirung gorge and we passed from thick forests to barren stretches of rock-littered moor, and from sunny, grassy glades half-encircled by high grey cliffs, to cool, dim tunnels overhung by giant shrubs and filled with the tumult of waterfalls – while everywhere were patches of pungent herbs, and a glory of wild flowers splashing the mountainside with oranges, blues, reds, yellows, whites and pinks.
This region is virtually a no-man’s-land between the Hindu dominated area to the south and the almost exclusively Buddhist area to the north, and I felt ridiculously moved on coming to my first ancient wayside chorten – a sight which indicated that now I’m as close to Tibet, spiritually and geographically, as any ordinary traveller can be in this sad decade. These stone chortens, usually built in the middle of paths, are symbols of Nirvana; when walking around them Buddhists always keep them on their right and it is one of the signs of a Bon-po that he keeps them on his left. This was a very old chorten, with grass and weeds flourishing in the crevices between the stones; one could almost have passed by without noticing it, yet its very inconspicuousness seemed to symbolise most fittingly the often imperfectly understood but ever present Buddhist influence that guides all Tibetan peoples.
I arrived at this solitary hovel on the crest of a ridge forty minutes ahead of Mingmar, who is in rather poor shape today because of a nasty boil on his right cheek. Western travellers do not often trek around here, yet the seven members of the household accepted my arrival without showing a trace of curiosity, disapproval or welcome: their apathy took me back to that appalling train-journey through Bihar.
This hut is built of rock-slabs, with a plank roof anchored by stones, and the squalor makes it seem more like a nineteenth-century convict’s cell than a home. I am not easily shaken by Asian standards of living, which frequently are not nearly as low, within their own climatic and cultural context, as affluent Western travellers imagine them to be; yet this degree of poverty is devastating by any standards. These people grow a little millet on the unsympathetic mountainside, but it is pitifully inadequate for their annual needs and tonight they had a supper of stewed nettles (known to them as stinging-grass), flavoured with chillies and washed down with rakshi. Seeing this fare Mingmar and I simultaneously suggested to each other that we should cook a double ration of rice, and on being offered the extra food they seized fistfuls of it from our saucepan and ate it ravenously.
There are two rooms here – an outer one leading on to the verandah and containing two plank beds, and an inner one with a fire in the middle of the floor, around which everyone crowds when darkness has fallen. Mercifully fuel is no problem and cheerfully-leaping flames do something to alleviate the general misery. When any object is being sought beyond the radius of the firelight a blazing brand is used as a candle, and crimson embers replace tobacco in the family hookah, which is passed silently from person to person; but the acrid woodsmoke (one of the causes of glaucoma) is very hard on the eyes and I can hardly see to write this.
In the darkness of the outer room a youngish woman is lying alone beneath a filthy blanket, moaning and coughing. Obviously she is in the last stages of TB, yet the rest of the family seem dully indifferent to her distress. A little while ago I gave her some aspirin, just to show an interest; she was pathetically grateful and now says she feels a little better, but the moaning and the rasping cough continue.
I’ve tried to find out which tribe these people belong to, but they don’t seem to know themselves; Mingmar says that their dialect is almost incomprehensible to him, though definitely derived from the Tibeto-Burmese rather than the Sanskrit language-group. Their features are more Mongolian than Aryan and, as none of the universal signs of Hinduism are apparent in the hovel, I assume them to be nominally Buddhist – though at this stage of dehumanisation it is unlikely that religion plays much part in their life.
As I write the complicated shutters that serve instead of a door are being lifted into place and securely barred with long wooden poles; so now I must spread my flea-bag on the second plank-bed before the firelight has entirely faded.
12 NOVEMBER – THANGJET
We were on our way by 6 a.m., having slept from 8.30 p.m. – if you can call it sleeping, between the biting of bugs and what sounded like the death-throes of that unfortunate woman.
From outside the hovel, before we continued down the ridge, we caught our last glimpse of the broad Trisuli Valley, far away beyond all the hills we crossed yesterday; and now the valley was so covered in cloud that it seemed like a sea of milk, whose motionless waves were clinging to the bases of many mountains.
Five hours later we stopped for brunch at a tiny hamlet of filthy stone farmhouses. Here was the same absence of food – too acute to be called a mere shortage – and at least every second person, including the children, had goitre. The skin diseases were not as bad as one would expect them to be but significant coughs were prevalent, and eye infections very common. The shattering poverty of this region almost counteracts the splendour of the surroundings; yet Langtang has always been among the most backward areas of Nepal, so it would be unfair to generalise from what one observes here. The people are mainly Tamangs, who speak a dialect of Tibetan, and Dr David Snellgrove estimates that they moved across the main Himalayan range before the sixth century AD.
Like all Nepal’s hill-people they have suffered from consistent governmental neglect, and even now, when some feeble effort towards responsible government is being made in other areas, as despised ‘Bhotias’ they are not receiving their fair share of attention. Also few Gurkha soldiers are recruited from this district, so army pay-packets don’t help the economy.
My Swiss relief-map of Nepal puts Thangjet west of the Kyirung River but, with all due respect to Messrs Kummerly and Frey, it happens to be east of it – or else I’m too addled to know where the sun is setting. (However, even such distinguished geographical publishers can readily be forgiven for losing their grip when producing a map of Nepal.) At first I thought it probable that a more prepossessing Thangjet existed beyond the Kyirung and that this was merely Little-Thangjet-Across-The-River: but the locals deny that any other similarly named place exists nearer than Tange in Thakkholi.
This is my first Tibetan-style village and on seeing the neglected mani-wall and the decrepit arched gateway I again experienced the bitter-sweet thrill of nearness to the unattainable. Today we passed several more chorten and a few very tall prayer-flag poles – suddenly recalling the existence of gods and men in the midst of the mountains’ isolation. And now, when I look up from my writing, I can see a large, tumbledown chorten in the middle of the village ‘street’, with white prayer flags fluttering beside it in the cold evening wind. It gives me a special pleasure to see these flags flying against their natural background, instead of merely indicating refugee settlements; yet here one has the sad feeling that a long separation from the mainstream of Tibetan Buddhism has reduced local religion to a rather perfunctory following of superstitious customs.
We arrived at Thangjet just before 3 p.m. after a much tougher walk than yesterday’s, and when Mingmar decided to call a halt, though the next village was only three hours away, I mutinously suggested that we should go on. In reply he pointed to a mountain north of another river and said, ‘Look at our track.’ Obediently I looked – and stopped feeling mutinous. Thangjet is at 8,000 feet and to get to the next village we must descend 5,000 feet to river-level, before climbing to 9,000 feet, at which point the track rounds the flank of the opposite mountain – and for all I know continues to climb.
Thangjet consists of about a hundred and fifty slate-roofed houses, and, being one of the main halts on the Langtang–Kathmandu route, it sports an astonishingly clean doss-house, run by a cheerful Thakkholi woman. The place is a lean-to rather than a building, with an inner wall of stones, loosely piled together as in Connemara, an outer wall and roof of bamboo-matting and no gable-walls. The result, at this height in mid-November, adds up to a Cold Night; but luckily Rudi Weissmuller insisted on lending me a windcheater, which I will wear with my slacks as pyjamas.
There was a treat for supper – boiled buffalo-milk poured over my rice instead of the usual soup. This establishment is also a tea-house, the hallmark of Thangjet’s sophistication! – and when darkness had fallen some half-dozen men, wrapped in ragged blankets, came to sit around the fire and drink glasses of tea. As they spoke in Tibetan I could follow some of the conversation, which was all about yetis. Our hostess and Mingmar denied that any such things exist, but the locals and our fellow lodger (a Tibetan trader) believed in them very firmly and only disagreed about the yeti’s nature: some maintained that it was an animal, while others insisted that it was an evil Spirit incarnate. Two of the villagers claimed to have seen small yetis, about the size of a five-year-old child, and at this stage I offered, through Mingmar, my own opinion that the yeti is indeed an animal, unknown to zoologists, which lives at exceptionally high altitudes and very sensibly declines to be captured.
At present I am sitting in unparalleled comfort on the Tibetan trader’s wool-sack, which measures five feet by three – though the significance of this statistic cannot be appreciated by anyone without first-hand knowledge of these Nepalese tracks. John Morris has written ‘...but I must emphasise that the paths in the hills of Nepal cannot in any way be compared with even the roughest tracks in the more remote parts of Europe: they are merely the result of people having walked over the same route for many generations.’ Indeed they are – and ‘path’ would be too flowery a description for much of the route we covered today. I now see that quite apart from carrying food Mingmar is essential as a guide. No doubt one could find the way eventually, but this afternoon we were climbing over fantastic wastes of colossal, wobbling, jagged rocks, through which my eyes could detect no vestige of a track; and the most disconcerting thing about this terrain is that when one is heading for a northern destination the right path often goes south and the wrong path north.
I am being fascinated this evening by the passers-by, who walk up and down the rocky, steep street carrying long branches of blazing wood at arm’s length – street lighting, Thangjet style!
13 NOVEMBER–SHABLUNG
The gods were against us today, and an individual who calls himself ‘The Police’ has forbidden us to go north-east from here into the Langtang Valley. It’s another of these Nepalese muddles – or is it? According to this unsavoury bit of humanity – whose uniform consists of cotton underpants and a torn Western shirt and who is the only Brahmin in the village – my permit says that we can go to Gosainkund Lekh, but not any further north. The document, being written in Nepali, is of course unintelligible to Mingmar and me – so we can’t argue. Admittedly it is very possible that within the Singha Durbar a request for a Langtang permit would elicit a Gosainkund Lekh permit, either through stupidity or for political reasons, and ‘The Police’ may now be luxuriating quite justifiably in this rare opportunity to exercise his authority against a Westerner; but it is equally possible that he sees here a glorious chance to land a fat bribe. However, unfortunately for him I am quite happy to turn south-east in the morning instead of north-east: the real frustration is not being able to go due north, where Tibet lies less than five hours’ walk away.
Among the more dramatic contrasts of this trek are the frequent swift transitions from season to season. When we left Thangjet at dawn it was winter: sharp air stung our faces, the early light was metallic and the fields were colourless and quiescent. Yet by three o’clock it was high summer in Shablung and we sat arguing with ‘The Police’ under a deep blue sky, among blossom-laden almond-trees which seemed like pink clouds that had drifted to the cliff edge. Here long grass grew lush beneath flowering shrubs, above a flashing green river, and the air was soft with warm content. We had enjoyed an autumn zone too, during our long descent, seeing shining red, black and brown berries and nuts, and walking through the crispness of crimson, orange and russet leaves.
After our very tough climb on leaving Thangjet we had been glad to stop for an early brunch at a four-shack Tamang hamlet half-way down a mountainside. Here the poverty was grim enough, yet the people seemed alert – indeed, almost gay – and they showed both a normal curiosity and a shy friendliness.
The population of these stone-walled, grass – or plank-roofed shacks was thirty-six and there was a prodigious number of charming children who seemed surprisingly fit, apart from the inevitable eye infections. I asked if coughs were common here but apparently they are not. The health of these settlements is largely controlled by chance; if one tubercular trader spends a night in a house he can infect the whole community.
While Mingmar was cooking I watched part of the millet harvest being threshed. On a level, hard-earth terrace in front of one of the shacks an elderly man was rhythmically pounding the grain with a thick six-foot pole; beside him fluttered tall prayer-flags, beyond him was an abrupt drop of 3,000 feet and in the background shone the snow-peaks of Tibet. When the grain had been sufficiently pounded the womenfolk collected it in large, oval wicker baskets and, having taken it to another terrace, spread it out on round wicker trays and tossed it so adroitly that all the chaff quickly flew off. This looked easy, yet when I tried to do it half the grain fell to the ground and half the chaff remained on the tray – to the delight of the onlookers.
While we were eating Mingmar added to my cartographical confusion by declaring that the east-west river which we had just crossed is the Kyirung. Logically the Kyirung should be the north-south river which this torrent joins below Thangjet, which we have been following up from Trisuli and which rises some thirty miles north of the Tibetan frontier town of Kyirung. I note that Messrs Kummerly and Frey have cautiously refrained from naming this river above its confluence (where we stopped for brunch the first day) with what I had perhaps mistakenly assumed to be the young Trisuli, which rises a few miles north-west of Helmu. The whole thing is rather intriguing – and personally I like vague maps that leave one free to speculate.
No less intriguing in its way is the amount of rice consumed daily by Mingmar. Though lean, and hardly five foot tall, he gets through three-quarters of a pound of the stodge at each meal. Two ounces go to make the average rice pudding so you can imagine what twelve ounces looks like when cooked and heaped on a big brass platter. I myself would be immobilised for a week after one such repast – but Mingmar cannot understand how I walk so far and so fast on a mere ladleful of rice and a small tin of sardines. Neither can he understand my impulse to leap into glacial torrents whenever possible. Admittedly these waters are cold, but it is a supremely satisfying sensation to immerse one’s sweaty, weary body beneath a white rush of iciness and then to emerge, tingling, into warm sunshine.
Shablung is only about 3,000 feet high, yet it has an even stronger Tibetan flavour than Thangjet. It is not marked on my map, nor is the considerable torrent that flows from the north-east and here joins the Kyirung – or the Trisuli, as the case may be. The village stands on a little plateau just north of this tributary, which is spanned by a wood and rope suspension bridge, and it is in the shadow of the next high ridge. The Kyirung is crossed by a rope pulley-bridge, on which men hang by the arm high above the water, and beyond it there is a long strip of cultivable land along the lower slopes of the opposite ridge; so the people are relatively prosperous, though the inherent Tibetan filthiness keeps the appearance of squalor well up to local standards. Millet and maize are the main crops, and herds of cattle, goats and sheep graze on the higher pastures. Shablung also has a school house, of which the villagers are inordinately proud; but naturally it is not now staffed, nor likely to be in the foreseeable future.
To outsiders there is an exhilarating atmosphere of siege about all these isolated settlements. They are at the furthest possible remove from the industrial areas of Europe where scraps of countryside, disfigured by pylons and wire-fencing, are only grudgingly tolerated by those to whom financial profit comes first. Here in the Himalayas it is Man who is just tolerated, in meagre communities at infrequent intervals, where the mountains relent enough for him to survive by the exercise of heroic labours – and also by the exercise of much more intelligence than is recognised by those theorising agricultural advisers who come East in droves, laden with university degrees, and who would be dead within a month if left to fend for themselves on a potentially fertile Himalayan mountainside.
Tonight we are staying with a delightful family whose home like all the others in Shablung, is roughly constructed of stone, with a plank roof. Animals are housed on the ground floor and from the street one ascends a shaky step-ladder to a five-foot high doorway which leads to a single room, some twenty-five feet by twenty, with a large stone fireplace sunk into the uneven wooden floor at one end. Over this projects from the wall a smoke-blackened canopy of bamboo-matting laid over wooden slats – something I have never seen elsewhere; it is about five feet above the fire and appears to be used as a hot-press-cum-larder. These houses all have decorated wooden facades which vary considerably in artistry, though even the best of them are more crudely executed than the famous Newari carvings.
At the moment I am sitting in the little window-embrasure making the most of the fast-fading daylight and being attacked by a vanguard of bed-bugs who are too greedy to wait for darkness. From the rafters above hang three bows and a quiverful of arrows, and my unashamedly romantic soul rejoices at the idea of staying with people who still regularly use bows and arrows to shoot wild goat. This household consists of parents – Dawa and Tashi – who are in their early forties, and nine children; the eldest is aged eighteen and the youngest six months, which seems to indicate careful if not restrictive family planning. All have survived, which must be rather unusual in these parts, but at present the three eldest are away tending flocks on the high pastures, from which they will soon be descending for the winter.
Now Mingmar has lit one of our candles and I have moved to sit on the floor. Beyond the fire Tashi is lying on a pile of piebald dzo-skins, naked from the waist up, feeding the baby. Her muscular torso is copper coloured in the flame-light and shoulder-length, lousy black hair draggles round her face as she beams at the infant while it happily sucks. Meanwhile the other children are tumbling in the shadowy background, like a litter of exuberant puppies, and Dawa is chopping with his kukri at a hunk of fresh mutton – making my mouth water at the prospect of meat for supper.
The manifold uses of the kukri fascinate me. One can do anything with it, from beheading an ox or felling a tree to sharpening a pencil or peeling a potato – not to mention killing men on all the battlefields of the world. The nonchalance with which these heavy, razor-sharp weapons are handled by small children is quite terrifying; if they made the slightest miscalculation they could very easily slice off one of their own limbs.
This evening I myself found use for the kukri as a surgical instrument. Mingmar has been unwell all day, the boil on his face having grown to carbuncle proportions, so I lanced it with the sterilised tip of Dawa’s kukri and squeezed out an awe-inspiring amount of pus. It must have been causing him agony and making him feel as weak as a kitten – but like a good Sherpa he never complained. When the operation was over we were each given a mug of thick brown chang, made from millet instead of the more usual rice or barley. It tasted sour and was full of vaguely alarming foreign bodies; but the alcohol content was gratifyingly high and I did not say ‘no’ to either the second or third rounds.
Earlier this evening the Nyingmapa village lama came to greet me. He is a tall and very handsome man of about thirty-five, whose swinging maroon robes well become him; but he seemed a good deal more interested in trade than in theology and I doubt if he contributes much to the spiritual life of the community.
14 NOVEMBER – A GOMPA ON A MOUNTAIN
This is the first evening that we have arrived at our destination exhausted rather than pleasantly tired; we left Shablung at 6 a.m. and by 5 p.m. had climbed more than 10,000 feet.
On recrossing the suspension bridge outside Shablung we went back towards Thangjet, and in my innocence this slightly puzzled me, as I couldn’t remember seeing any track branching off to the east. Here flat, narrow, maize fields lay on our left and I was enchanted to see a troop of giant silver langurs having their breakfast among the crop. These monkeys do a lot of damage and are always stoned on sight by non-Hindu farmers, so they fled when we appeared, moving most gracefully with long, loping. strides.
Leaving the maize fields behind, the track curved around an almost sheer mountain until Shablung could no longer be seen, and as I was walking ahead a whistle from Mingmar recalled me. I found him pointing towards one particular section of the mountain for no apparent reason, and he said ‘Here we go up’; which we did, for the next ten hours.
Before long I realised that the rough track from Trisuli in fact represents a Nepalese main road. This hardly discernible path, which Mingmar had never used before, was so steep that for the first hour we were not really walking, but pulling ourselves up through long thick grass (there were no trees and few shrubs), using our hands as much as our feet. Soon Mingmar had been left far behind and I was alone, feeling like a lizard on a pyramid and rather proud of my newly acquired ability to follow the illogic of an almost non-existent track.
Often I stopped to rest and look round, and unhopefully I took a few photographs, knowing full well that my unique incompatibility with cameras made the effort a waste of money. Moreover, this incompatibility was now being aggravated by an aversion to the falsification of mountain photography. In such surroundings even the most expertly wielded camera cannot help but lie, and once the reality has been seen the preservation of fragments seems futile. Also it distresses me to break up visually the wholeness of a Himalayan landscape in an effort to see it as a series of ‘good pictures’. So I soon freed myself from my camera and surrendered to the purity of the light, the foaming strength of the already distant river, the heaving complex of mountains on every side and the tantalising cleft that leads to Tibet, drawing one’s eye to that ultimate glory of snow-peaks blazing coldly along the near horizon.
Soon I began to wonder why any path existed here, since it seemed unlikely that even Nepalese humans would settle on such a slope; but then suddenly I found myself scrambling on to a wide, level ledge, where a crop of unripe barley was overlooked by two solid stone farmhouses.
As I walked across this ledge – luxuriating in a movement that was not upward – I fancied something fairy-tale-like about these austere, improbable, grey dwellings. It seemed as if they must be inhabited by witches, whose broomsticks could provide a helicopter service to Shablung; but in reality the settlement consisted of twelve delightful Tamangs, including a young monk from the Gosainkund Lekh Monastery who was visiting the home which he had left at the age of nine. Only this youth had ever seen a Westerner; yet even before Mingmar arrived, to give a lucid explanation of my presence, everyone had welcomed me warmly, though wonderingly.
The origins and patterns of such settlements fascinate me – where the people came from, why they chose to live in so remote a region, where their sons find wives and their daughters husbands, and how far afield they go on trading trips. I asked all these questions, through Mingmar, but got no satisfactory answers to the first two. Questions about why people had settled on this plateau they clearly regarded as absurd; there was land to be cultivated, and water and fuel near by, so it was an obvious place for humans to live – and apparently it was not as isolated as passers-by might imagine. During the summer people from Langtang go to and fro to the yak pastures higher up, and both Thangjet and Shablung are, after all, quite near. In reply to my other questions I was told that marriages are not arranged, the young people choosing their own mates from these neighbouring villages or from the summer settlements of herds-people. Barley is their only saleable commodity and most of this goes to the Langtang folk, who are glad to have an easily accessible supply to supplement the potatoes and radishes that they grow for themselves beside the yak pastures. In exchange they give yak-butter, tea and salt, and for the rest this little community is self-supporting, producing its own tsampa, chang, potatoes, radishes, chillies and goat cheese, and weaving its own blankets and garments from goats’ wool.
These people clearly felt no allegiance to any government, north or south. The surrounding mountains were their nation and their world, and no outside event could be said to affect them much; yet the Dalai Lama’s flight to India and the subsequent Communist persecution of religion in Tibet had undoubtedly made some faint impression on their minds. I tried to find out – without implanting any disturbing ideas – if they feared a Chinese take-over of Nepal, but obviously the possibility did not worry them; either they had never considered it or they felt – probably rightly – that such a development would not make the slightest difference to them on their remote little ledge.
While Mingmar was cooking I sat smoking in the sun, and when I threw away the butt four waiting children dived for this precious prize which was won by a little girl who somehow coaxed two more puffs out of it. The adults then gathered to look wistfully at my packet of ‘Panama’ – a luxury Indian brand costing 8d for twenty. No one actually asked for a cigarette, but when I handed the packet round every face glowed with delight.
After our meal Mingmar and the monk held a long discussion about the track, and as we set off Mingmar informed me that from here onwards there was only a yak-path. I said that this sounded satisfactory, since yak presumably create a more distinct trail than humans; but according to Mingmar such infrequently used paths soon fade away, especially among dead leaves.
An easy twenty-minute climb brought us to the edge of a forest, where all signs of our path vanished, and after a moment’s hesitation Mingmar admitted that he had no idea whether we should now continue upwards or go around the mountain. He only knew that our destination was on the other side of the ridge – and as the ridge in question stretched away vastly to north and south this degree of knowledge was not very helpful. Eventually he decided that we should try rounding the south flank and for the next half-hour we wandered along on the level, sometimes imagining that we had found the yak path, but soon realising that all these faint trails had been made by wood-gatherers from the settlement. Then suddenly we came to a sheer 5,000-foot drop into a side valley and at the sight of this abyss Mingmar shrewdly remarked that we were going in the wrong direction – so we promptly turned back.
Personally I was not at all averse to these haphazard wanderings. Here the trees were wide spaced – many had been felled – and in the brilliant midday sunshine the shrubs and ferns of the undergrowth filled this high silent world with rich autumn glows. We passed several open glades where amidst tawny, tangled grasses I saw the gleam of wild raspberries, strawberries, cranberries and blackberries – and stopped to eat them in fistfuls, with a view to stocking up on Vitamin C.
There was a strange familiarity about this scene 10,000 feet up in the Himalayan foothills. If one did not look beyond the immediate cosiness of the warm, mellow woodland one could imagine oneself in an Irish wood on a sunny October day – though however sunny that October day might be one would still need to wear more than the shirt and shorts that were adequate here in mid-November.
When we got back to where our path had vanished Mingmar took off his rucksack, announcing that he was going to look quickly in various directions for some trace of a yak-trail – and soon he came trotting triumphantly back, having found unmistakable signs of the creatures’ progress. This path climbed very steeply, around the northern flank of the ridge, and in general it was visible only to Mingmar’s eyes; had I been alone I would have denied its existence.
Here the forest was a twilit cavern of immensely tall and very ancient trees which repelled the sun and created an atmosphere of chill gloom. Many of these monsters had been blasted by lightning or uprooted by gales and we were slowed by having to scramble under or climb over the rotting, giant trunks that so often lay across our route. Soon my faith in this track was wavering and I suspiciously asked Mingmar how yaks were supposed to negotiate such obstacles. He replied that they jumped over them and, never having seen a yak in action, I felt in no position to argue; but it seemed to me that for this purpose a Grand National winner would be more appropriate than a yak.
The ground here was thickly covered with soft, slippery, black leafmould, and before long there was crackling ice underfoot, for we were climbing steadily. Now it was growing colder every moment and I staged the reverse of a strip-tease show, stopping repeatedly to put on socks, slacks, a vest, a sweater, a windcheater, a balaclava and gloves.
At about 12,000 feet the forest began to thin and then the path levelled out and became plain for all to see, curving past a herdsman’s wooden hut and leading to a windswept, sunlit yak pasture. Now freshly covered snow-peaks were visible directly ahead – no more than a mile away as eagles fly – and I rejoiced at our emergence into this brilliant world of blue, gold and white.
Already I was feeling the lack of oxygen (no doubt because I smoke too much) and was finding it difficult, when climbing, to keep pace with Mingmar. After a ten-minute walk across the plateau we came to a fork in the track, where one branch continued around the mountain and another climbed steeply towards the summit. Some instinct (or perhaps it was only my hammering heart) told me that the gompa path went around, not up; but Mingmar, pointing to three chortens on the summit path, said ‘up!’. So up we went, to the 13,400-foot summit, where there was no sign of any gompa and the icy wind almost stripped the skin off our faces. Moving a little way down I sat in the shelter of a yak-house and said rather breathlessly, ‘I suppose we may call this a mountain-top?’ – but Mingmar replied firmly that it was no more than a high hill-top; apparently in these parts only permanently snow covered peaks qualify as mountains.
By now the sun was about to disappear behind the ridge beyond the Kyirung and we still didn’t know where the gompa was: but I was too exhilarated by the magnificence of the scene to worry. Apart from the snow-peaks our hill-top was the highest point in the area and, despite its relative insignificance, I felt a surge of triumph while surveying the countless lower ridges that surrounded us on every side like the immobile breakers of some fantastic ocean.
Then, wandering over to the eastern edge of the plateau, I saw the shining roof of the little gompa some 1,000 feet below us – approached by that track which went around instead of up. Now I was glad that we had taken the wrong fork, but poor Mingmar almost wept on realizing that our final climb had been unnecessary. No track led directly down, and were we to follow our original path darkness would fall long before we reached shelter – so we decided to attempt a descent in as straight a line as possible.
The gompa had looked quite close from the summit but it took us over an hour to reach it, and that descent was almost as exhausting as the upward climb. At first the slope was densely covered with an odd sort of bushy undergrowth, about five feet high, which had extraordinarily springy and progress-resistant branches; yet without these the way would have been even more difficult – they provided something secure to clutch at when we were in danger of hurtling to eternity on the steepest stretches.
When the gradient eased we entered a weird forest of dead trees, some very tall, some mere broken stumps. All the branches had been lopped off, and at first I assumed that a half hearted forest-fire had recently swept the hillside; but a closer scrutiny revealed no trace of burning so I can only suppose that some obscure disease attacked this forest long ago. Whatever the cause, the effect was extraordinarily sinister in the twilight, and it would not have greatly surprised me had we come upon Dante and Virgil standing on the brink of an abyss watching souls being tortured.
The young monk had told us that the five Nyingmapa lamas who spent each summer in the gompa had recently left, so we expected to find the place deserted – but to my astonished horror we discovered three small children in a stone hut beside the temple. They are aged about eight, six and three and they haven’t seen their mother for over a fortnight; nor do they expect her back until next week. Yet this strange, solitary existence, in a region to which very few travellers come between October and April, doesn’t seem to disturb them in the least. They know nothing of the world beyond their mountainside and would probably be more frightened by a street-scene in Kathmandu than they are by these long, cold, dark nights spent huddled together in a heap of dried bracken. Named Tsiring Droma, Dorje and Tashi Droma they are typical little Tiblets, black with dirt and full of the joys of life – though understandably a little in awe as yet of their Western visitor.
However, despite the apparent contentment of these diminutive waifs I can’t help feeling that their mother must be unnatural by any standards. When alone they have nothing to eat but raw white turnips, which grow on a small patch of fertile soil near the gompa, and in this region hungry snow leopard have been known to kill children during the winter. (As I write the Babes-on-the-Mountain are ravenously devouring some of our rice and Knorr’s tomato soup.)
This hut measures about 20' x 8' and the low ceiling-beams don’t allow me to stand upright. Both they and the thick stone walls have been so tarred by many years of wood-smoke that they now look as though newly painted with shiny black varnish. Since I sat down here in a corner by the huge mud stove – on which the lamas’ cooking is done – a faint, steady, dripping noise has been puzzling me and I have just now realised that it is coming from a huge earthenware jar in which arak (the Tibetan poteen) is being distilled for the edification of Their Reverences next summer.
Normally, while their mother is away, these children sleep in a little empty yak-house at the edge of this level shelf of ground, where the rats are less troublesome than in the hut. When alone they are unable to light a fire, having neither matches nor flint (which deprivation seems the only vestige of commonsense shown by the missing mother), and now they are delightedly spreading malodorous dzo-skins on the floor in front of the stove. Already it’s freezing hard, and the sky is trembling beautifully with the brilliance of the stars.
15 NOVEMBER – THE GOMPA
Yesterday evening I suspected that diarrhoea was on the way and by this morning my prognosis had been proved correct. I would have attributed this to mountain-sickness were Mingmar not similarly afflicted, which indicates a dysentery bacillus acquired en route – probably in the course of our potations at Shablung. I was out four times during the night, which in this weather is enough to give one chilblains on the behind, and by dawn I had got to the stage of scarcely being able to lift my head. Poor Mingmar was no better and we both had massive doses of sulphaguanidine tablets for breakfast, and at three-hourly intervals during the day; as a result we are now rapidly recovering, though neither of us could look at food this evening. (Not that there’s much to look at.) We spent all day lying in hot sun – sheltered from the wind by three chortens that stand beside the yak-house – overlooking a tremendously deep valley that lies between our mountain and the dazzling snow-peaks opposite. Occasionally we stirred to help each other to our feet for the next instalment, and every few hours Mingmar staggered to the hut to brew the tea which our dehydrated bodies craved.
Last night it froze so hard that our water was solid ice this morning, the gompa’s water supply comes from a stream some miles away and is cleverly brought here through a line of hollow tree-trunks, finally trickling from the last of these “pipes” into a large brass jar.
The Babes-on-the-Mountain really are adorable – I’d love to kidnap them. Tsiring Droma, the elder girl, today spent hours sitting near us slicing white turnips, which she then spread out on a bamboo mat so that the sun would dry and preserve them for use later in the winter. The rest of her time was spent with Dorje, the boy, practising the writing of Tibetan – a startlingly erudite pastime explained by the fact that these are the offspring of the lamas, who share one wife or concubine between them and who evidently take quite seriously the educational – if not the material – welfare of their family. Both children show great reverence for their tattered school books, which are pages from the ancient tomes of Buddhist scripture stored in the gompa. A deep respect for every object connected with their religion is ingrained in all Tibetans, however illiterate or uncouth they may be, and this respect is also extended to the religious objects of other faiths – an example of true civilisation which adherents of other faiths could profitably emulate.
On the last lap of our trek to the summit yesterday we saw – to my surprise – innumerable pheasants, but around here the only birds visible are a pair of ravens, who spent much of the day perched on top of the prayer-flag poles, croaking companionably.
There was a most dramatic sunset this evening – ribbons of scarlet above distant, deep blue mountains, and higher a width of clear pale green, and higher still tenuous sheets of orange vapour swiftly spreading across half the sky. But Mingmar did not share my enthusiasm for this display, saying it presaged a blizzard tomorrow.
16 NOVEMBER – THE GOMPA
How right Mingmar was in his weather forecast! We reckon we’re lucky to have got back here safely this evening.
Both of us were in good form on awakening and we breakfasted then, having eaten nothing yesterday. When we left here at half-past seven the sky was cloudless and the snow-keen air intoxicating; but already Mingmar was studying the wind and being gloomy in consequence.
About a mile from the gompa I saw my first leopard-trap – a crude contrivance of wooden stakes built around a deep pit and looking as though it would delude none but the most seriously retarded leopard. Yet Mingmar assured me that this model is very successful.
We were now on the main Thangjet-Gosainkund Lekh track, beside which the gompa is built, and for about an hour we walked around the mountain just below the tree line, passing many herdsmen’s huts and yak-houses. Then we came to a wide expanse of moorland, sloping up to a minor glacier, and here began an easy hour’s climb towards the 15,800-foot pass. Today I found myself well adjusted to the altitude, and I irritated Mingmar by frequently taking off my knapsack and scampering up the low ridge on our left to revel in an unimpeded view of the Langtang range, now thrillingly close. Because of these detours it was almost eleven o’clock as we approached the steep, final lap of the upward path, which here was barely distinguishable beneath new snow. And now we had our initial warning – a grey veil suddenly wisping around the snow-peaks to the south-east. At once Mingmar hesitated, looking rather uneasy; but then – to my surprise – he decided that we should at least cross the pass and survey the weather-scene on the far side, where it might possibly be clearer. However, his optimism was not justified. As we reached the top so did the blizzard and we were almost lifted off the ground by an icy blast. Five minutes earlier the sun had been shining, yet now we were deep in that odd, muffled gloom which seems to belong neither to night nor day, and the thick flurry of flakes was reducing visibility to a few yards. When we quickly turned back our fresh footprints had already been obliterated, and within fifteen minutes we were very thoroughly lost. There seemed no real cause for alarm, with five hours of daylight remaining and the tree line quite close; yet to be blundering around so unsurely in this sort of terrain does put one slightly on edge, and I was relieved when we suddenly emerged into sunshine on an unfamiliar plateau.
Hereabouts a hill is not simply a hill, but a succession of similar looking ridges, and it’s only too easy to go half-way down the wrong ridge before realising one’s mistake. This we did twice, while searching for the main track, and by the time we had found it both of us were feeling the weakening effect of yesterday’s intestinal contretemps; so I then produced my emergency ration of raisins, which we chewed while ambling leisurely downwards, our chilled bodies luxuriating in the warm sunshine.
The children were delighted to see us again and their pleasure quite made up for the disappointment of not being able to continue towards Gosainkund Lekh. Less than half-an-hour after our return the sky again clouded over and as I write it is snowing heavily outside – a cosy sight, as the five of us crouch around a blazing pyramid of logs, eagerly awaiting our rice and soup and boiled turnips; but it would have been pretty grim for the Babes-on-the-Mountain had they been alone this evening.
Mingmar has decided that our best plan for tomorrow is a return along the main track to Thangjet, where we will rejoin our original route. Having followed it about half-way back to Trisuli we can then branch off to the east and explore that high pocket of Sherpa settlements which lies towards Helmu, returning to Kathmandu down the valley of the Indramati River.
17 NOVEMBER – BACK AT THE SHACK ON THE RIDGE
The woman who was so ill here last week died a few days ago, leaving four little children motherless; but as they all look and sound tubercular they may not be long following her.
Today’s nine-hour walk provided superb contrasts. When we left the gompa at 7.30 a.m., having given the children a final hot meal, snow lay a foot deep on the track – yet three hours later we were walking through groves of bamboo and banana-trees. I long to give some not entirely inadequate description of the glory and variety of that 8,000-foot descent, during which we saw many deer and pheasants but not one other human being; yet perhaps it’s best to know when you’re beaten.
Such a continuous descent on a very rough path is much more exhausting than any but the steepest climbs. This morning the nimble Mingmar was always far ahead of me, and he remarked that the majority of Westerners do find these descents very difficult, since we lack that inherent sure-footedness which enables the locals to skim so efficiently down stairways of insecure boulders.
From river-level a 4,000-foot climb took us to Thangjet, where we stopped for brunch. Since our last visit the tea-house has been enriched by a sack of sugar, but as it cost sixpence per teaspoonful we did not indulge.
This afternoon we saw a group of about twenty men and boys transporting newly-cut bamboo poles from the forest to their village – a distance of some five miles. Each load consisted of thirty eight-foot poles, divided into two bundles which were harnessed to the shoulders with long strands of tough jungle-grass. I could hardly believe my eyes when the first four men came racing at top speed down the precipice above our track dragging these unwieldy loads – which made an oddly musical clatter as the ends swept swiftly over the rough ground. At the junction with the main track the men had to do a sharp turn but even then they never slackened speed; and on approaching one of the many shaky, narrow, plank bridges that here span racing torrents they accelerated even more, so that their loads would have no time to slip over the edge and pull them into the water. Rarely have I seen a more impressive display of nerve, skill and strength; these men aroused the sort of admiration that one feels when watching a good toreador in action against a brave bull. Among the last to cross the bridge was a boy who looked about twelve but was probably at least sixteen. Perhaps this was his first bamboo expedition and he did not quite make it, one side of his load slipping off the planks. For a horrible moment it seemed that he must topple into the water; but he had kept his balance by some miracle and now he stood still, straining against the weight of the bamboo, while the man behind him struggled out of his own harness and rushed to pick up the hanging load. He then helped the boy to get safely over by walking behind him, holding both sides of the load clear of the bridge.
We followed the bamboo team for an hour, and their endurance, as they hauled these loads uphill, was even more impressive – if less spectacular – than their downhill sprints. Repeatedly one wonders just how these seemingly undernourished bodies manage to achieve physical feats that would be far beyond the powers of most well-fed Westerners.
18 NOVEMBER – SERANG THOLI
What a day! If we are not getting anywhere in particular we are certainly getting off the beaten track – and very nearly off every other track too! By now Mingmar has given up pretending to know exactly where we are, or where we will be by tomorrow night. He says that this whole expedition is “a bad trek”; yet our erratic wanderings suit me very well indeed – I feel blissfully happy all day and every day.
We set off this morning at six o’clock and for the first two hours were following the main track back towards Trisuli. Then we turned east and, having twice lost the faint path, eventually came to a small Tamang village where we stopped for a badly-needed brunch; the morning’s climb had been tough, and by now I am beginning to suffer slightly from protein-deficiency.
This village, of some fifty houses, was almost deserted because the millet harvest has just begun. After brunch Mingmar tried to get some idea of where we should go next, but the only available informant was a deaf nonagenarian who insisted on directing us back to Trisuli; so we were left to the sluggish inspiration of our own senses of direction.
By 3 p.m. we had descended to river-level, where we were confronted by one of those nightmare tree-trunk “bridges” which demand the skill of a trapeze-walker. Admittedly this specimen was only twenty feet long – but it did look terrifyingly insecure, being casually held in place at either side by little piles of loose rocks, while its width could barely accommodate a single human foot. After one glance I funked it completely. Forty feet below the water was churning violently through a boulder-filled channel and even my trick of crossing such bridges a cheval seemed inadvisable. Merely to see Mingmar tripping lightly over almost made me ill and when he returned to take my knapsack I also handed him my shirt, shorts and shoes, informing him that I was going upstream to find some point at which I could either wade or swim across. Then it was his turn to feel ill; he went quite pale and said “You’ll drown!” “Very likely,” I agreed. Yet somehow I prefer drowning to falling off that unspeakable contraption you call a bridge.
It was easier than I had expected to find a fording point. Some quarter-of-a-mile upstream – where the river was about 100 yards wide and ten feet deep – a little dam had been built, and though the current was still strong here it seemed that by swimming diagonally above the dam I could just about make it to the other side. Fortunately my self-confidence when in water equals my lack of self-confidence when over water; I always enjoy a challenge from this element and poor Mingmar, who had anxiously followed me upstream on the opposite bank, was suffering most from tension as I dived into the icy, clear green pool. By the half-way stage I had the measure of the current and knew that there was not the slightest danger; yet I didn’t dare ease off for long enough to yell reassuringly to Mingmar and until I stepped onto the rock beside him he remained convinced that I must drown.
After this refreshment by immersion I was in excellent form for the next lap – a long, long climb up the steepest cultivated slope we have yet seen, where there was no path and we simply pulled ourselves somehow from one narrow terrace of ripening millet to another.
Tonight we are staying in a Tamang hamlet at 7,500 feet, where the slate-roofed houses are built of ochre mud and stone as in the Hindu villages around Pokhara. At the moment the populace are almost pushing each other over a precipice in their efforts to see me; and Mingmar is hardly less of a curiosity, for we are now far from the main tracks and few of these people have ever before seen either a Western female or a Sherpa porter in all his sartorial glory.
The filth of this house is extreme and the stable seemed so much less filthy that I chose it as my bedroom and am now leaning against the warm flank of a reclining buffalo. One hopes that bed-bugs will be fewer here than indoors: and the cow-bugs that must inevitably frequent Nepalese cattle are not so likely to be interested in me.
19 NOVEMBER – SENTHONG
Leaving Serang Tholi at dawn we climbed steadily to the summit of a 9,000-foot hill. Ordinarily the sun comes over the mountains to us, but today we went over a mountain to the sun and it was wonderful to step from cold early shadows into warm golden air, and to see the new, gentle light lying on a wild tumble of deserted mountains.
By ten o’clock we had negotiated two of these mountains, following a faint path that frequently vanished. Then we came to a tiny settlement, on the verge of another cultivated hillside, where we ran into caste trouble for the first time on this trek. When Mingmar inquired where he might cook our brunch we discovered that this was a very orthodox Chetri village in which we, as untouchable non-Hindus, would not be admitted to any house; but eventually we found a woman who consented to cook for us, provided we remained outside her compound.
The conscientious Mingmar was frantically worried at the idea of anyone but himself cooking for me, and he swore that after this meal I would get every disease in the book. However, I consolingly pointed out that my immunities are abnormally well-developed, by Western standards – and also that Chetris are cleaner, as well as more intolerant, than Tamangs. Yet I must admit that this village was loathsomely smelly, and our rice did look and taste as though cooked in a pretty sordid pot. None of the people we have stayed with (apart from the Thakkholi woman at Thangjet) ever practises the art of washing up – unless one counts the licking of platters at the end of a meal, which happens to be the labour-saving device that I too employ when living alone in my own home.
From half-past eleven we walked almost continuously for six hours – first down to river-level, next up and over an 8,800-footer, then two thirds of the way down this “hill” until we came to Senthong, where there are a few Tamang households among many Chetris. It is an odd sensation, when looking for lodgings, to go from door to door asking what the family religion is and receiving cold stares from the Hindus. The Tamangs here are very much poorer than the Chetris and are unmistakably the outcasts of the village; but equally unmistakably they are a far nicer group of people than their Hindu neighbours. I don’t resent being shunned by orthodox Hindus, who can’t reasonably be expected to fraternise with the likes of me, yet it is sad that Hinduism, despite the breadth of its basic philosophy, has in practice the effect of blighting many potentially valuable human contacts – whereas Tibetan Buddhism, however imperfectly understood by the masses, has the precisely opposite effect.
Tonight I have again chosen the cattle-shed as there simply isn’t space for me inside this tiny house, which shelters a complex family of eighteen children and six adults. I discovered last night that cattle are noisy creatures with which to sleep because of their extraordinarily tumultuous digestive processes, which seem to go on all night like a thunderstorm.
20 NOVEMBER – LIKARKA
This morning I was awakened at half-past four by the ancient, soothing rhythm of millet being ground between the stones of a hand-mill. It was still dark and quite cold, and for the next hour I lay drowsily warm in my flea-bag, looking up at the golden throb of the stars and listening to the little stirrings of the village. The rice harvest had everyone on the move early, and as Mingmar and I made our way down to river-level soon after dawn we passed families already threshing grain on the wider terraces of the paddy fields. Here bullocks are used for the threshing, but at Serang Tholi – where the people also have cattle – we had seen the operation done by hand, each separate sheaf being beaten vigorously on the ground until every grain was shaken loose.
Were I only allowed a single adjective to describe Nepal I would have to use “varied”. No two villages are quite alike in language, dress, customs, attitudes, architecture or surroundings, and one could not possibly refer to “a typical village” of this region. Doubtless the isolation imposed by the terrain on each settlement is responsible for this most pleasing diversity, which makes one realise anew how horribly our Western uniformity impoverishes life. And an equally rich variety is found in the landscape; at every turn one is confronted by new, tremendous vistas of unimaginable beauty as though Nature, when creating these mountains, had been exercising the subtle imaginative power of a great musician elaborating on a simple basic theme.
Today has been the most strenuous of the entire trek. This morning’s river was a wide seething torrent, spanned some 80 feet above the water by a swaying, decrepit suspension bridge; but luckily the handrails were sufficiently intact for me to feel no fear of the crossing, and at 7.15 a.m. we began the upward climb. From river-level – 3,400 feet – until we had crossed an 11,800-foot pass there was no respite on level ground, and even Mingmar had to admit that he felt “very tired” at the top – a sensational confession.
We had stopped soon after nine o’clock for an hour’s brunch-break at a three-house Tamang settlement, and these were the last dwellings seen until we crossed the pass at midday and descended some 1,500 feet to this region of scattered Sherpa houses.
After the savagely steep climb up it was a relief to find ourselves looking down from the top of the pass over an easy green slope. Here huge grey boulders were strewn on the grass, patches of unmelted snow gleamed in shady spots, and flocks of long-haired, sturdy goats grazed in the care of a little boy who lay alone on a slab of rock, thoughtfully playing a flute. From this point the circular valley – some fifteen miles in circumference – appeared to be quite shallow, though later we saw the ravine in the centre through which a river flows away to the south. Immediately above us, to the north, a jagged mountain was only thinly wooded with giant pines, but about a mile beyond the sunny expanse of pasture dense forests darkened the sides of the valley. And here I felt more than usually aware of that special tranquillity always experienced at these heights – a depth of peace impossible to describe or explain, but reaching to every fibre of one’s being.
Our destination was a little settlement already visible on the far side of the valley and it looked so deceptively close that now we dawdled along, relishing our walk down the easy incline. Half-an-hour’s ambling brought us to a sheltered hollow where we saw two Sherpa dwellings, with freshly-printed prayer-flags flying between them. There was a well here, beside the path, and pausing to drink from it I noticed something that almost paralysed me with astonishment – wrapping paper off a bar of Lifebuoy soap. I beckoned to Mingmar, and we stood staring at this baffling manifestation of “civilisation” as though we were the first men on the moon and had found an empty matchbox there before us. Then, continuing towards the houses, we came upon two gorgeous silk saris spread on the grass to dry – and next we saw a most beautiful young creature, wearing a pink sari and golden slippers, with attractive bazaar jewellery in her glossy hair and on her slender neck and arms. This vision was leaning against a low stone wall, talking to an older woman with a weather-roughened face whose muscular body was clad in the filthiest of rags and who obviously had never washed in her life.
Mingmar and I did not even attempt to conceal our curiosity; having greeted the women we too sat on the wall, and in reply to questions were told that three years ago the girl had gone to Bombay to be trained as a nurse and was now home on a month’s leave. “Careers for Girls” are of course unheard of in these parts and it was inexplicable to me that this youngster should have had sufficient education to undergo a nurse’s training. Evidently there was a story here, but neither mother nor daughter was very communicative and we could find out nothing more.
I wondered how the girl’s relatives were reacting to the appearance in their midst of such unprecedented elegance and sophistication. Would they feel proud of her, or uneasy, or a little scornful of her fussiness and daintiness? Certainly the girl herself, by so scrupulously maintaining ‘Bombay standards’ against the heaviest of odds, was affirming her belief in the superiority of her new mode of life. She was most affectionate towards her mother, yet she did look rather strained, and it seemed likely that the immediate impact of the return had been disquieting and that she was secretly and guiltily looking forward to her departure.
Meeting this girl helped me to understand why Asian villagers who have had a medical training are so reluctant to return to those areas where help is most needed. For them the sheer novelty of both the material and mental opportunities of urban life is overwhelming, and in such a totally new world they become new people, continually discovering unsuspected potentialities within themselves. Some people accuse them of allowing improved conditions to “go to their heads”; yet this seems an unfair description of the natural excitement caused by widening horizons. The comparative values of what is lost and what gained by migration to a city is not relevant to this argument. These young people are usually conscious only of gaining, and at this stage of individual development are as self-centred as babies, reaching out with both hands for all the advantages of education and unaware that their own good fortune imposes on them a responsibility to help their fellows. It seems unrealistic to demand, from this generation of newly-educated Asians, the self-discipline that would enable them willingly to relinquish their brave new world. Such a sacrifice would require a much riper fruit of education than any that they can be expected to bear; and this is one of the main obstacles that for years to come will hinder Health Programmes in Asia – however generously the West may finance them.
Before leaving this curiously pathetic mother and daughter we had asked about the path through the forest; yet within an hour of entering the twilight beneath the trees we were more lost than one could believe possible. I had expected quite a clear track between the two settlements, but if any such exists we never found it. For over two hours we went scrambling up and down precipitous slopes, through thick, thorny undergrowth, and repeatedly we were thwarted by impassable ravines. At half-past four we knew that less than ninety minutes of daylight remained and now Mingmar was getting really frightened; he had begun to pray non-stop, using that odd Buddhist hum which sounds rather comical until one has become familiar with it. Neither of us had any idea of the way back, so we decided to continue the struggle forward – and then suddenly we came on something that had once been a track, though now it is in a dangerous state of disrepair. Having nervously followed it through two deep dark ravines – even Mingmar was nervous, to my immense gratification – we emerged at last on to another wide stretch of level turf; and twenty minutes later, after crossing several fields of buck-wheat, barley and potatoes, we were relaxing with this charming Sherpa family.
Their house is similar to the one we stayed in at Shablung, though the living-room is twice as big and very much cleaner. Dry maize-cobs hang from the rafters and handsomely carved cupboards line the wall that faces the low door and two tiny windows. If one can judge by the array of silver votive bowls, and silver-bound wooden tea-cups, the family must be quite rich by local standards. Against the wall in one corner leans a four-foot-high copper-banded bamboo churn for making buttered tea, and in a little room leading off this is the family chapel, where eleven tiny butter-lamps flicker cosily beneath a grimy but very lovely thanka representing the Compassionate Aspect of the Lord Buddha.
This family consists of a grandmother, her son, his wife and five adorable children who stopped being shy of me in record time. As I write, sitting on the floor near the fire, the two younger ones are standing beside me, leaning on my shoulders and intently watching that strange procedure which covers clean paper with a nasty mess of squiggles.
As soon as we arrived here I sat in the window-embrasure to enjoy one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen. This house – at 10,400 feet – faces due west, and I was overlooking range after range of dusk-blue mountains, beyond which the ghostly snows of the distant Dhauligiri Massif were just visible against a crimson horizon. Above this sunset flare was a blue-green ocean of space, in which the golden boat of Venus sailed alone; and higher still the zenith was tinged pinkish brown. Truly this was a most noble scene, so still with peace and so vital with beauty in the ebbing of the day.
On a more mundane level the evening was scarcely less memorable, because we had potatoes and milk for supper. Perhaps only a compatriot could appreciate the gastronomic ecstasy into which an Irishwoman can fall when served with potatoes after living on rice for a fortnight. Yet Mingmar seemed equally thrilled; though he can eat rice in such abundance, potatoes are the staple food of the Sherpas in their home district. He successfully consumed thirty-three large specimens and was quite concerned when, after twelve monsters, I reluctantly declined a third helping for sheer lack of space. Indeed this fourhouse settlement is a veritable food-paradise; we have been able to buy five eggs, which we will hard-boil and take with us tomorrow as both our rice and sardine supplies are getting low.
21 NOVEMBER – A FARM ON A HILLTOP
I am willing to concede that this is only a hill-top, since we are now down to 6,000 feet. The hill in question is a spur of one of the giant mountains that overshadow this valley on both sides, and after the silence of the heights it’s quite disconcerting this evening to hear the roar of the nearby river.
Oddly enough it was Mingmar who felt poorly today, after yesterday’s marathon. This morning’s easy ten-mile walk was mainly downhill and we stopped frequently; yet he made heavy weather of the few inevitable climbs, and when we arrived here at half-past two he suggested that an early halt might be good for me! Perhaps he overindulged in chang last night, forgetting our dire experience after the Shablung binge.
Soon after leaving Likarka at 6.30 a.m. we crossed the steep wooded ridge that rises sharply behind the settlement and that loveliest of valleys was out of sight. About an hour later I saw my first herd of dzo – and was vaguely disappointed to find they look exactly like cows with very bushy tails. They were being guarded by a pair of enormous, ferocious-looking Tibetan mastiffs who almost foamed at the mouth as I wandered through the herd taking photographs. Mingmar says that these dogs are trained to kill intruding humans; during the day they are usually tied to wooden stakes with short, heavy chains and they wear large, clangorous iron bells around their necks. But at night they roam free and are far more dangerous than wild animals; I know several Tibetans whose faces have been horribly disfigured by their attacks. Today I felt decidedly apprehensive when we had to pass a herd in charge of an untied dog; but the enraged creature was restrained by two tiny children who flung their arms around his neck and told him to be quiet. I didn’t really expect him to obey – yet immediately he subsided and began to wag his tail at the children, ignoring us as we sidled past.
Soon afterwards we met a youth returning to Likarka from his first trading expedition to Kathmandu. He had received a Rs. 100 note in payment for wool, but being illiterate and having never before handled big money he was not at all sure what this signified. When he stopped us to ask for a definition Mingmar said that such a large note would be useless in this area, so I changed it for twenty Rs. 5/- notes, to the boy’s delight; he evidently imagined that his father would be much better pleased by twenty notes than by one! He then showed us what had once been a very good Swiss watch; it had been sold him in Kathmandu for – he thought! – Rs. 50/- and was still ticking, but the minute-hand had come off the day before – doubtless because he had been playing too vigorously with the winder. (He had of course no notion how to read the time.) I advised him to leave it alone until he next visited Kathmandu; but then there ensued a lengthy discussion between him and Mingmar on the advisability of exchanging watches. Mingmar’s would have been the better of the two even had the boy’s been perfect; yet the Sherpa trading urge is so strong that apparently a losing deal is preferable to no deal at all and finally Mingmar accepted the broken watch, plus Rs. 25/-, in exchange for his own Omega.
Half-an-hour later we stopped again at one of those “dairies” fairly common in this area, where small herds of dzo are looked after by cheerful shepherdesses who make Tibetan-type cheese and butter. I intend bringing home a piece of the cheese, which has to be seen to be believed. It is harder than any rock except granite and is said to be still edible three centuries after it has been made – if one knows the technique required for eating granite-hard substances. This “dairy” was a little bamboo-matting hut on a grassy slope encircled by the forest and here we each enjoyed a long drink of buttermilk, and a platter of whey fried in butter and pleasantly tainted by the smoke of the wood-fire. Several very young dzo calves stood near by and completely captivated me. At this age they have their father’s thick coat and are bundles of furry huggableness, with huge melting eyes and affectionate licks for all and sundry.
Several other brief delays were caused by Mingmar stopping at every farmhouse en route to enquire if there was any butter for sale; his mother died a year ago and now he wants to make tormas and burn lamps in honour of the anniversary. His trader father had two wives, one living in Namche Bazaar and the other in Lhasa. When he died Mingmar was only four and was brought up by both his mother and his step-mother, who themselves traded extensively between Tibet and India. Lhamo, his twenty-two-year-old sister, now looks after the family trading concerns and Pemba, his elder half-brother, runs one of the Tibetan hotels in Kathmandu – assisted by his own mother. This morning Mingmar bought two pounds of Tibetan cheese for her, as he always brings back a present of her favourite delicacy when he has been away on trek. So between butter for his dead mother and cheese for his live step-mother our progress was considerably slowed.
Obviously his sister Lhamo is Mingmar’s favourite; he repeatedly refers to her with affection and pride, saying what a clever business-woman she is and how much he is looking forward to seeing her, after a year’s separation, when she comes from Lhasa to Kathmandu next month, en route for Calcutta. These Sherpas certainly get around – and they seem to need no passport for all their travels between Tibet, Nepal and India. Of course, Lhamo now flies from Kathmandu to Calcutta, and for all I know travels by truck in Tibet. She has two husbands, so far one who looks after the family farm near Namche Bazaar and one in Kathmandu, who also has another wife permanently resident there to comfort him while the tycoon Lhamo attends to her International Business. No wonder Sherpa relationships are not easy to sort out!
Our last and longest delay came soon after midday, when we paused to watch a religious ceremony being conducted outside a stone hut on a ledge. For some time before reaching this ledge we could hear the wonderful melody of drum, bell, cymbals and conch-shell – music that made me feel very homesick for the Pokhara camp, and that sounded even more stirring against its natural background. I tried to find out what the ceremony was all about, but even if Mingmar knew he clearly did not want to discuss it with an outsider; so I stopped probing and contented myself with imprudently drinking four wooden bowlfuls of the best chang I have ever tasted.
The elderly lama conducting the ceremony was dressed in black instead of the usual maroon robes, and his young monk assistant wore layman’s clothes. Both sat cross-legged on the ground, with their backs to the hut wall, and the Scriptures were laid before the lama on a low wooden table. His Reverence held a bell in his right hand and a dorje in his left – the dorje being frequently abandoned when he needed another swig of chang, which he favoured instead of the buttered-tea consumed endlessly during ceremonies by the more orthodox lamas. At right angles to the wall stood a painting of the Lord Buddha with the usual tormas and butter-lamps laid before it, and in front of this was a hanging drum, some three feet in circumference, which a tall, slim youth, clad in the local kilt, beat regularly in time to the chanting. About thirty people sat nearby in a semi-circle, laughing, chatting, drinking chang and eating cold sliced potatoes. The atmosphere was gay and friendly, and we were made to feel so welcome that we remained with the little group for over half-an-hour, each of us giving an offering to the lama before we left.
The young mother of the Sherpa family with whom we are staying tonight recently spent three years as a coolie on the roads in Assam, and Mingmar told me that it is common for the people of this area to emigrate temporarily to India and work in road gangs with the Tibetan refugees. Then, having saved up more money than they could ever earn in Nepal – and increased it on the way home by astute trading in Kalimpong – they return to settle down here. I attempted to discover whether they are officially accepted into the road gangs as Nepalese citizens, or whether they masquerade as Tibetan refugees; but my questions on this subject were plainly regarded as indelicate so I did not pursue the enquiry.
Tonight Mingmar at last knows where we are and says we will be back at base by midday on 24 November. The track from here to Kathmandu is familiar to him, which seems sad; it has been sheer bliss wandering lost-like from mountain to mountain.
22 NOVEMBER – A HOVEL ON A MOUNTAIN-TOP
This is the most squalid lodging we have encountered on the whole trek; it is even filthier than the children’s hut beside the gompa. The small room is windowless and now that darkness has fallen a bullock, four goats, seven hens and a cock are sharing the apartment with a family of six, plus Mingmar and me. Here we are again above 9,000 feet and the night-air is so cold that the door has been shut fast, allowing no outlet for the billowing wood smoke, which is making me cough incessantly and having the usual excruciating effect on my eyes; but as compensation these gentle, cheerful Tamangs are exceptionally likeable, and their anxiety to make me comfortable is all the more touching because of the irredeemable discomfort of their home.
Today’s walk was another marathon, and by brunch-time I knew why Mingmar had not been keen on going further yesterday afternoon. We started the day’s adventures at 7 a.m. with quite a hazardous fording of a fiercely-fast, waist-deep, icy river. Here Mingmar was the terrified one – for a change – and as we waded across together he clung to me so frantically that he very nearly unbalanced us both. We needed every ounce of our strength to keep upright against the force of the water and it was so extremely difficult to retain a foothold on the large, constantly shifting stones that I didn’t really think we could make it without a ducking.
At times the water had been up to our armpits and now we were painfully cold; but that was soon cured by a ninety-minute climb up a precipitous, slippery and very narrow path through dense scrub. Here it was my turn to be terrified; the snag was that I couldn’t see the crumbling path through the thick grass and undergrowth – but I could see very plainly the drop on the right, though I didn’t dare look down for long enough to estimate its depth.
By about half-past nine we had left this unwholesome path behind and gone downhill again towards the river. We stopped for brunch at a stinking, fly-infested hovel near the junction with the main Kathmandu–Gosainkund Lekh track; and an hour later we were on this highway, sharing it with groups of heavily-laden Tibetans, Tamangs and Chetris and feeling already halfway back to the bustle of metropolitan life.
For the next four hours we continued gradually but steadily downhill, following the river. At times the path led over stretches of colossal boulders, or through bright widths of fine silver sand, and once we crossed a dilapidated suspension bridge that swayed uncertainly 150 feet above the water. One feels slightly impatient about the neglect of these plank bridges; with so much forest on every side there can be no shortage of raw material for their repair.
At three o’clock we reached a village which boasted the first shop seen since our departure from Trisuli. Here we asked for tea, since our own supply expired a few days ago, but the shop stocked only ancient, flyblown, Indian sweets and unsmokable cigarettes and mildewed biscuits – of which we bought two packets for consumption on the spot.
Next we again climbed steeply for three hours – up and up and up, with the shining snow-peaks to the north becoming lovelier every moment. Here the lower, richer slopes are cultivated by Chetris or Newaris and the upper, more barren slopes by Tamangs. The whole region seems very densely populated – and smelly in proportion – when compared with the lonely mountains now behind us. One of the incidental joys of lonely mountains is the absence of that overpowering stench of human excrement which is always present in the more populous parts of Nepal.
These insect-plagued lodgings are beginning to prey slightly on my nerves – and it’s not difficult to foresee that tonight is going to be a bug-classic. Since leaving Trisuli I’ve not had one unbroken night’s rest and, though the locals do not suffer to the same extent, I hear them scratching and muttering in their sleep every night. So the bugs must do real damage to health by making sound sleep impossible.
23 NOVEMBER – KATHMANDU
We achieved yet another marathon today, which got us here ahead of schedule – and what a welcome I received from Tashi! Like most Tibetans she is very soft-spoken so she didn’t bark or yelp, the only audible sign of rejoicing being that peculiar, rapid sniffling noise with which she always greets my returns; but for the first few moments it seemed that she would wriggle out of her skin with joy, or that her over-wagged tail would come adrift – it’s nice to be so important to somebody.
This morning I saw my first total eclipse of the sun, which lasted from about 8.15 until 9.30 – and in honour of which today is yet another public holiday throughout Nepal.
We left our hovel before dawn, since last night even Mingmar was unable to sleep for bugs, and by eight o’clock we had reached the top of a 9,000-foot hill, after an easy climb through crisp, early air. From here we were overlooking a long, deep, narrow valley, and our path now continued almost level for some two miles, before plunging abruptly down to a small village by the river.
As we were scrambling down from the ridge-top to join this path I noticed something very odd about the quality of the light, and simultaneously I registered an unnatural drop in the temperature. Overtaking Mingmar I said, “What on earth is happening? The light’s gone funny, and it’s so cold!” To this obtuse question a native English-speaker might have been forgiven for replying that nothing was happening on earth; but Mingmar merely said, “The moon is having a meal.” I stared at him for a moment, wondering if he were going dotty – and then I realised that the dottiness was on my side, for when he pointed to the sun I saw that about a quarter of its surface had already been obscured by the “hungry” moon.
What an appropriate place this was for experiencing the eeriness of a solar eclipse! As we walked along that path, so high above the valley, we could hear conches being blown wildly and cymbals and drums being beaten frenziedly, while all the lamas and priests of the little villages far below shouted and wailed and screamed in their contest with those evil spirits who, by attacking the sun, were threatening the whole of human existence. This extraordinary panic of sounds, combined with the “evening” twitter of bewildered birds and the unique, greenish half-light, evidently aroused within me some deep racial memory, and for an instant, at the precise moment of total eclipse and estrangement from our whole source of life, I felt as my own that primitive fear which was then dominating the whole of Nepal.