13
The Perilous Mountain
Binod and I trudged along in silence, drenched through from the pouring rain. We left the jungle behind and found a rough track that led east to a road. Umanga and Oli said goodbye at a turnoff that led back to the west, to the ranger station. We hadn’t spoken in hours. The rain came in sideways and we resented even the sound of each other’s footsteps as we sloshed through the puddles. A cycle rickshaw passed us and Binod gazed longingly at the multicoloured, rickety vehicle as it chugged off into the distance. We reached a bridge over the Babai river. It was half obscured by mist and a solitary wild elephant stood moodily on the banks below, like a vast grey ghost. Binod sat down on his rucksack and smoked a cigarette. I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to carry on and find somewhere to eat.
Everything was wet and Binod sat shivering on the bridge like a child. I was annoyed with him. He was supposed to be the guide and yet here I was, chivvying him along like an angry parent. I was losing my patience. I was wet and cold and hungry too.
‘Get up,’ I snapped. ‘This isn’t a holiday. You’re my guide, you’re getting paid for this.’
‘I can’t go any more.’
‘Yes you can, you’re being bloody lazy. Get up and walk.’
I stormed off, hoping to set an example.
Luckily it worked. As I turned round to check, I saw him sulking, a hundred metres or so behind me. I picked up my speed and walked on in silence. The rain was demoralising us. This was becoming thoroughly unpleasant and neither of us was enjoying it any more. I could tell that Binod wanted to be at home, and so did I. The jungle had sapped all our energy and the prospect of walking along a main road for two weeks to get to Pokhara was about as appealing as turning around and going back through the leech-infested forest.
Up ahead an army checkpoint dissected the road. There was a lean-to shelter where young corporals sat in string vests drinking tea. Their sodden shirts were steaming as they dried under the shelter.
I ducked in and sat down without invitation. A soldier laughed at my pathetic figure and handed me a cup of tea. Binod, still sulking, didn’t come in and instead went across the road to sit with some local farmers in a shack.
‘Where can we get some food?’ I asked the soldier.
‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘Everything is closed because of the strike.’
Having been in the jungle for a week I’d almost forgotten about the strike. That explained why we hadn’t seen any cars along the road. The whole country had an eerie, deserted feel.
‘What are they striking about?’ I asked the soldier, as Binod couldn’t give me a clear answer.
‘The new constitution. Some like it, some don’t. These Tharu people don’t. They want more representation in the government,’ the soldier told me. ‘The Maoists don’t like it either–they organise strikes for any reason. At least once a month they are out causing trouble.’
‘And why are there no cars?’
‘For a start there’s no fuel. Also the unions put in pickets. If anyone dares break them then the youths will be out smashing up the cars and the drivers will be beaten–sometimes killed. They burn the cars to set an example. Whatever you do, don’t get in a car.’
I sighed. ‘I can’t anyway, I’m walking.’
‘Good,’ he said.
I wondered why the soldiers didn’t do anything about it.
‘We stay out of politics. Too dangerous. The Maoists got into power a few years ago–imagine if we’d tried to fight them, they would now have us all killed.’
The biggest problem for me though, was the fact that I was running low on local currency. I had US dollars left but nobody would accept them. I needed Nepali rupees, and fast.
‘Where’s the nearest bank?’ I asked.
‘You can try Nepalganj.’
I took out my map and stared at the soggy creases. The road we were supposed to take cut through the foothills in a zig-zag pattern for two hundred miles east and Nepalganj was in completely the wrong direction.
‘What about Tulsipur?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s full of Maoists there. Everything will be closed. You’re best going into the hills. Less trouble there.’
Since my first trip to Nepal fourteen years ago I’d learnt a lot more about the Maoists. After I’d escaped the country with Binod’s help, the nation descended into a state of emergency as the Nepali government attempted to stop the communist rebels. Years of truces, insurgencies and counter-insurgencies followed, before the Maoists became a mainstream political party in 2007. Since then, there had been less violence but no shortage of these bandh–the strikes of which the soldier spoke. Apparently the strikes could last for up to a month at a time and it was the most effective way the Maoists could hold whole villages, towns and cities to ransom with nobody able to function until they got their way.
There seemed to be only one good option: to avoid the main road altogether and get back into the mountains as soon as possible. It would be cheaper there, and there was more chance of finding somewhere to change money with a rogue lender. And maybe, just maybe, we could finally escape the rain and get back into the clear, crisp air of the Himalayas so that Binod and I could get on with the walk without the constant harassment of the weather. I decided that was what we’d do and called out to my guide in an effort at reconciliation.
‘Come for some tea Sir,’ I said to Binod, knowing that the simple act of calling him Sir would mean that all was forgiven. Nobody calls a low-caste man Sir in Nepal, and it meant the world to him.
As we left the army checkpoint behind and walked on up the road I noticed the universal sign for communism–a red hammer and sickle–painted on an arched gateway into a village; clearly their legacy in this part of the country was still strong.
‘They are still popular here in Nepal,’ Binod told me. ‘Many bandh, and rioting, and big protests. There were many deaths before too; they kidnapped school children and murdered men, leaving many widows. But also they did help the poor people, lower caste like me.’
The reality was that even in the twenty-first century, the caste system was still prevalent in South Asia. Not dissimilar to the feudal system of medieval Europe, it follows a strict hierarchy of classes, with the Brahmin priests at the top, followed by the warrior Chetris. Beneath them are the merchants and traders, the Vaishyas. And at the bottom are the Shudras–the farmers, labourers and unskilled workers. Binod had been born into the lowest caste, without land and with little opportunity to better himself. The Maoists promised a more egalitarian structure that would do away with the elitism of the caste system and the old monarchy.
‘These days things have started to change–the Maoists helped that happen,’ he told me. ‘When the Britishers first started coming to the Himalayas, they needed guides and sherpas to show them the mountains. The Brahmins and upper castes were educated, so they could speak good English. But they saw these foreigners as impure, unclean and they refused to help them or guide them. For my people, they had no risk, nothing to lose, so they offered to do guiding for the foreigners. Like Sherpa. The Sherpa people used to be very poor, and now they have earned so much money and good reputation from tourism, and the Brahmins have not.’
‘So don’t they have any power any more?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, they do, they hold most government jobs,’ he replied. ‘And some are still priests even now, they still think they are better than us. They won’t cross the shadow of an untouchable, an outcast, and they would certainly not shake their hand. I am still a bit uncomfortable if I am going into the house of a Brahmin or entering the temple at the same time as him.’ Binod looked slightly ashamed to admit this to me. He continued, ‘But slowly, slowly, things are changing. And the Maoists helped the Nepali people to see that equality is important for the future.’
The night we left Bardia I received a welcome surprise. Amid the rain we arrived sodden at a small lodge at the edge of the forest. As we were hanging our wet clothes on the wooden banister under the shelter of a tin roof I heard a familiar voice.
‘Ay up.’
I looked across the veranda to find my own brother standing there with an enormous grin on his face. He must have anticipated my reaction.
‘What the…?’
‘Well you sounded worried on the phone when we spoke a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I’d come and join you for a few days,’ he said. I remembered calling him after the ominous words of the cannibal Aghori.
‘Pete?’ shouted Binod, running across the decking and slapping my brother on his back.
‘I said I’d come and visit.’
‘I didn’t think I’d see you again. Not here, not this time. Now we are all together.’ Binod looked genuinely delighted.
I couldn’t quite get over it either. I hadn’t seen my brother in months. He rarely visited London, and I rarely visited him in Nottingham where he lived, but five years back he’d wanted to travel in Nepal and so I’d introduced him to Binod. Pete had trekked with him on the Annapurna circuit and stayed at his home in Sarangkot, as I had done nine years before that. It almost felt like we had all come full circle, and Binod too was one of the family.
‘How on earth did you find us?’ I asked, still in astonishment.
He smiled. ‘It wasn’t exactly hard. I knew you’d be coming through Bardia and this is the only place to stay around here for miles. Plus everyone has heard about the lunatic walking all the way to Kathmandu, so I thought I’d hang around here till you arrived.’
‘You realise what you’ve let yourself in for, don’t you?’
‘Yes, well considering the last time we went on holiday I almost froze to death. I did say I wouldn’t do it again but that was twelve years ago and by the time I’d booked my flight I’d forgotten about that. I thought it was about time I joined you on one of your walks.’
It was good to see him after so long, and I guessed that since relations were a bit strained with Binod, having someone else along for a few days would be no bad thing.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘I thought I better bring something to keep away the mosquitoes.’
He handed me a bottle of decent scotch whisky. Binod went to fetch the glasses.
With a delicate set of heads we finally reached Tulsipur, which had the promise of lunch and shelter from the rain. I still desperately needed to change my US dollars into Nepali rupees, and the strike meant that so far all of the banks had been closed. The further we got from the Indian border, the harder it became to encourage people to take foreign currency. The soldier had been right; I saw plenty of signs for ATMs but every one we tried was closed. The security guards who stood outside with their shotguns simply shook their heads.
‘Binod, can you ask the locals for some help?’
Despite the fact we were back on speaking terms, he’d been hesitant to go out of his way since we’d started falling out.
He just shrugged his shoulders.
I was used to being with Ash who is well travelled and organised or Malang who was an experienced guide and knew which side his bread was buttered. Binod on the other hand was altogether more stubborn.
We walked north from Tulsipur, skint and frustrated. It had been difficult to find porters and even when we’d asked auto-rickshaw drivers to help, they refused to come beyond the outskirts of the village. We were laden with our bags and walking became slow and laborious.
I did however count our blessings. In spite of the strike, we’d still managed to find places to stay. I’d been warned that because of the bandh all the hotels and guesthouses would be closed. Plenty of them were, but up until now we’d managed to convince hard-up hoteliers to let us have a room for a few rupees. Even if we’d wanted to camp, it would have been impractical. Outside of the jungle and national-park areas, every inch of spare land is farmed–not to mention hilly. Rice trellises make up the majority of the foothills and the issue of property is hotly contested in Nepal–as we’d found out. Even if the Nepalis we’d met were on the whole very hospitable, they weren’t likely to let us just camp in their gardens willy nilly.
But we had managed. For all his faults, Binod had begged and pleaded and found us beds every night. It was usually just a filthy mattress in the corner of a room but it was better than nothing. Sometimes if we were lucky there would be a generator and we could pay for a few hours of electricity to charge up our gear and maybe even get the fan working.
As we ascended into the foothills the weather became more pleasant. It had stopped raining and we left the mugginess behind. That evening we reached a small village in the district of Khalanga. It was spread out along the top of a ridge and overlooked the valleys below. It wasn’t much more than a high street with a few shops selling second-hand clothes and spare parts for motorbikes.
‘Let’s see if there’s somewhere to stay,’ I suggested to Binod.
It was already past five p.m. and the sun was hanging low in the sky. It was red and brilliant, yet somehow foreboding.
Pete and I shoved our rucksacks at the side of a restaurant and I ordered some milky chai while Binod went off to have a look around town. Considering its small size the market was bustling with people. Everyone was on foot; even up here it seemed the strike was still in full force. Only ambulances and police jeeps were moving.
Binod came back.
‘Good news and bad news,’ he said.
‘Good news first,’ I replied.
‘I have managed to change some money for you.’ He handed me a wad of notes held together with an elastic band.
‘Good work. How did you manage that?’ I said, relieved that we weren’t destitute any more.
‘I found a man who wanted dollars to escape from Nepal.’
‘And the bad news?’ I asked him.
‘The bad news is that there is nowhere to stay here.’
‘What? Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ said Binod, shrugging. ‘There is no guesthouse. It’s only a small town and I don’t know these people. They are not very friendly–they won’t let us stay.’
I wondered for a moment if it was because of his caste.
‘What about camping?’ I said, before realising the futility of my suggestion. It was already dusk and the light was fading fast. Either side of the street, steep slopes fell away into the valleys and every inch was cultivated with banana, rice and wheat.
There was nowhere to camp here.
‘Well, what do you suggest?’ I asked.
‘There’s a bigger town not far from here, just five or six miles away. Maybe we should go there–there should be a guesthouse.’
My legs were aching and the thought of walking another ten kilometres was out of the question. I knew Binod wasn’t up to it either. Pete on the other hand was fresh and keen but was happy to go along with our suggestions.
‘There’s one vehicle,’ he said. ‘We can drive there and then come back and walk from here in the morning.’
‘I thought they weren’t allowed to go anywhere,’ Pete said, talking about the Maoists and the strike.
‘I already spoke to the driver. He said he will drive after sunset, and nobody will ask, they’ll just think it’s an ambulance and leave him alone.’
It seems like Binod already had it all figured out. I wasn’t so sure. The thought of driving at night along these roads was even worse than walking. I’d already seen plenty of accidents in the hills down to negligent drivers and bad brakes, and it went against everything I knew about health and safety.
‘It’s too dangerous,’ I said. ‘How do we know the brakes even work?’
‘It’s fine,’ said Binod smiling. ‘Just come look.’
Against my better judgement I followed Binod to a small alleyway where an Indian Mahindra SUV was parked. The driver was tinkering away under the wheel arches with a spanner.
‘Namaste,’ said a shadowy figure getting up. It was dark now and I could barely make out his features.
‘Hello.’
‘I take you Musikot,’ he said, grinning. ‘Cheap price.’
‘It’s late and dark. It’s too dangerous. Do you know where we can sleep tonight?’
The shadow shook his head. ‘Only Musikot. Nothing here. Very safe, no problem, sir.’
I looked at Binod. I could see he was exhausted and so was I. He’d done well to change the money and for the first time in days I could afford to splash out. The prospect of sleeping rough in a muddy car park was suddenly eclipsed by an overbearing desire to get to a real bed. Pete just shrugged.
The driver got into the car and revved the engine.
‘Very good motor, sir. Good brakes too.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Let’s go to Musikot.’
Binod excitedly loaded the bags into the boot of the car and got into the back next to my brother while I sat in the front passenger seat. With the headlights switched off we rolled out of the market and sneaked out of town. It felt strange to be in a car, and even stranger to be trying to escape like a criminal. As we got out of the village the driver turned on the lights and began to relax.
‘No problem, sir. No Maoists this way. We all okay.’
We hadn’t gone more than a mile though before we stopped at a police checkpoint. The driver waved at the policemen on the barrier and opened the back door.
‘My friend come too.’ He grinned.
‘It looks like we have company,’ I grumbled to Pete and Binod.
Being the only motor on the road, it was clearly in high demand and the driver asked Binod and Pete to squeeze up to make way for an off-duty detective. The cop got in silently without even a smile and just nodded for us to carry on.
The road wound up through the hills, which were obscured by blackness. All I could see of the surroundings was the flash of the headlights against a bush or the wide, flat leaves of a banana tree as we wended around the hairpin bends, up and up over a ridge. The road was narrow. To the right the grassy verge sloped upwards, covered in wild bushes, and to the left was a seemingly sheer drop off into the jungle below. Sometimes I could make out the faint sound of a gushing torrent of a river or waterfall in the blackness, but I couldn’t be sure.
There wasn’t enough room in the front seat to get my big map out so I had to content myself with checking our location by the GPS on my mobile phone. The blue dot showed a zig-zag of yellow where the road would now descend into the Bheri valley. We should soon be able to see the lights of Musikot. As far as I was concerned, we couldn’t be there soon enough. The driver wasn’t going particularly fast, or being reckless, but I was still terrified as we swerved to avoid fallen branches and small boulders that had tumbled from the cliffs above.
We must have reached the apex of the ridge as I sensed that we had begun to drive downhill. I was glad as it meant we were halfway there. I looked into the back seat. Pete gazed out of the window as Binod’s head was bouncing rhythmically against the window as he tried to doze off. The off-duty policeman was fast asleep with his mouth fully open, snoring loudly. I wanted to sleep too but the road was too bumpy and I was too scared.
There was a grinding noise as the driver tried to go down a gear. I looked over. He was frantically groping the gear stick and pumping the brakes. The car suddenly jolted and we picked up speed. I knew immediately what was happening.
‘Hit the wall,’ I said, realising the brake cable had snapped. The headlights shone against a neat wall of black on the right-hand side. The road was straight for at least a hundred metres.
‘Hit the fucking wall, go right!’ This time I shouted at him.
The driver looked at me pathetically. He was trying to drive straight, trying his best to go down the gears, but it was no use. ‘Hit the wall, go right now,’ I pleaded.
I could see there was a ditch on the right–it was perfect. All he had to do was turn the steering wheel right and go into the ditch. We’d hit the wall and have a crash but it would be all right. But he didn’t want to scratch his paintwork, I thought. The selfish bastard. Now it was too late. We were going too fast, the wheels clipped the ditch and the driver must have knocked the tyre left. Whatever happened we started to skid, veering left until the car must have been almost on two wheels as it spun to face up the hill, all the while still careering down the road.
The last thing I saw was the edge of the cliff coming closer and closer. It felt like it was all in slow motion–just like in a movie. The headlights lit up the tops of the trees that poked up above the edge of the road, indicating a small taster of what was to come. I knew right then, in that second, that we were about to go off the edge. I knew I was about to die.
Perhaps I’ve suggested that there was pandemonium and panic. There wasn’t. It all must have happened in a matter of seconds. From that initial crunch of the gears, to speeding up, to the failure to hit the wall to the inevitable plunge off the edge of the cliff.
As we flew off the edge, and I mean flew–we were going at well over forty miles an hour at this point–I felt my body fill with adrenalin. That’s what happens when your subconscious mind knows you are about to die. Your veins flood with chemicals and you experience absolute clarity. For the first second or two, I held my breath. I knew there was going to be a crash. I knew it would hurt. There was no ‘life flashing before my eyes’, only a massive sensation of loss and resignation. The only thing I thought was the word no. NO, no, no. The words seemed to echo through my entire soul. It can’t end like this. Not at night with Binod and my brother in the car. They’d die too.
Then came the first bounce. The car must have hit a rock or a tree and we somersaulted. Then there was another, and another. We were rolling down, tumbling to a tragic doom at the bottom of an unholy ravine. It felt like I was inside a tumble dryer, each crash more horrific than the last. But with each bounce I couldn’t believe I was still alive. I waited and counted the milliseconds for the next one to come. I knew that with the next one I would hit my head and I’d die. I wondered what it would be like–death. I mean the process of dying. I wondered if it would hurt after death. I hoped it would be painless. I prayed for Pete and Binod. I prayed that mercy might be shown. I didn’t pray to survive, I don’t think. It was too late for that.
As we rolled, something fell into my hands. I grabbed it and held it tight. It was a head. I didn’t know whose head, but all I knew was that I had to protect it come what may. There was no point in trying to save myself at this point. I covered the head with my body, pulling it closer to my chest.
The car came to a crashing halt. I was upside down but couldn’t see. It felt like we’d come to a halt, but no. We shunted again and we were off, rolling two, three, four more times. I couldn’t hear a thing until there was silence, and then I heard everything.
We really had come to a halt now. I let out a breath. Had I held my breath for the whole time? I couldn’t tell. I was dead. The head was gone. I was moving. Not by my own force but some sort of an ethereal motion–propelling me head first through wet grass in slow speed. I think I went through a window, like a worm, utterly flexible and malleable, unrestrained by gravity.
And then I was outside the car with my back to it. I must have been sitting, or kneeling. I still couldn’t see. Everything was black and the silence was overwhelming. Was this heaven or purgatory? No, it was almost certainly hell. I couldn’t feel any pain. All I knew was that I’d left my arm in the car. I had to go back and get it. I felt back through the opening of the smashed window but I couldn’t find the severed limb. I felt at my elbow but no, it was still gone. Yet the oddest thing was that it wasn’t wet. There was no blood. I couldn’t understand why there was no blood. Yes, this was hell.
The silence was overwhelming until it stopped. There was a faint whimper, a subdued groan. It was a muffled sort of pain that didn’t sound at all human. It was pathetic and sordid and I wanted it to stop. And then I realised where I was.
‘Who’s that?’ I shouted, expecting an angel, or the devil perhaps.
I remembered I was with Binod. ‘Is that you, Binod?’ There was more muffled groaning. ‘Oh no.’
Then, suddenly I remembered the words of the cannibal Aghori monk in Haridwar. ‘Your brother, is he dead?’
I was overwhelmed with a paralysing fear and dread at the thought of Peter. No. It surely couldn’t be true. I was in a nightmare and I just wanted to wake up. I tried to scream, ‘Pete. Are you alive?’
And then the pain came.
It was a horrible, evil pain that filled my body with an agony I’d never experienced before. I grasped frantically at my severed arm and realised it wasn’t severed at all, just mangled and pointing the wrong way. I grabbed it. The whole lower limb was utterly numb. I twisted it into shape and gave the most almighty yell I’ve ever given in my life.
‘Lev,’ Pete shouted. ‘I’m here. It’s okay. I’m alive.’
‘Pete,’ I shouted back. Blocking out the pain. ‘Come here.’
‘I’m in the car. I can’t get out. It’s dangling off a cliff and we’re near the water.’
I don’t think I’d ever been so glad to hear anyone’s voice in my life. Pete was alive.
‘Be careful,’ I shouted. The relief of hearing my brother’s voice gave me a brief renewed energy.
I used my good arm to grope for the figure next to me, the one who was muttering and moaning. I pulled him towards me. ‘What happened?’ it said.
I was suddenly elated. He was speaking English. It was Binod and he was alive.
‘Brother? What happened?’ He burst into tears.
I did the same. At that moment Pete, my own brother, emerged from the wreckage.
He’d climbed from the front seat. God only knows how he’d got there. He fell out of the windscreen onto the ground beside us. He was alive, and what’s more, he could stand.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked.
‘Better than you by the looks of things.’ He laughed.
A wave of utter relief and sheer joy came over me. I was alive, and while we were currently in hell, there was at least a chance of salvation.