16

The Wild East

It was dusk by the time we reached the monkey temple. It had taken hours to weave between the endless queues of cars and lorries that were waiting for petrol in the shanties. They all wanted to leave the capital. The festival of Dashain was in full swing and people wanted to go home to their villages and celebrate with their families. We climbed the 365 steps to the top of the wooded hill where an enormous white dome topped with a golden pagoda shone in the sunset. Revered macaques dangled from the shrines and made impious gestures to passing pilgrims. For Binod and me, it marked an important milestone in our journey. Swayumbhunath temple, one of the oldest shrines in Nepal, overlooks Kathmandu, with the watchful eyes of Lord Buddha painted onto the glinting tower. We’d come a long way.

From the ramparts, amid a sea of faithful devotees, we stood in awe of a city defiant. Buddhist prayer flags fluttered in a gentle wind. If the media reports were to be believed then the whole town should have been a big pile of rubble after the earthquake, but it wasn’t so. Thamel, the backpacker ghetto, was unaffected and life went on as usual–except there were barely any tourists these days. They’d all been scared off by the Foreign Office advisory that even now, six months on, hadn’t been lifted. But as we descended from the viewpoint and found ourselves in a warren of alleyways, where the local Nepalese were seated in the shop doorways, hopeful as ever to make a sale.

‘Good price, mister,’ said the turquoise bead hawker.

‘Best silk, sir,’ said the Kashmiri carpet man.

‘Very old, won’t find anywhere else,’ warned the Tibetan antiques vendor.

‘You want some stuff?’ asked the drug dealer with a wink.

It was all as I remembered. The Irish pubs, the steak houses, the live bands playing traveller classics, the trekking outfitters, the fake North Face gear and the hundreds of tat shops all selling exactly the same thing. The smells of a congested city where cows get right of way, and the oversized rats scurry through the piles of rubbish, all came flooding back with a nostalgic vengeance. The noise of a thousand car horns; the wheels of cycle rickshaws clattering down the potholed roads; the dodgy wiring overhead; the neon signs of a hundred restaurants, all misspelt.

We checked into a hotel and handed over fat piles of laundry to an enthusiastic receptionist, all too glad of the business. We took a couple of days to rest up and I went shopping for trinkets to add to my collection of souvenirs that now lay hidden in a storage box in London.

Now that we’d reached Kathmandu, everything to the east represented the long walk home, even though it was in the opposite direction. The end was almost in sight. My thoughts wandered back to a grey London. It was mid-October and I imagined the sullen raindrops falling on the Thames and the familiar chatter of people on the daily commute. I thought of tea and toast and mulled wine in Gordon’s. The parakeets of Putney would be roosting now and the leaves of Fulham Palace park reddening with the onset of the festive season. No doubt the Christmas lights were going up and tourists would be clogging the tube and the price of a sausage roll in the Sand’s End had probably surpassed a fiver. I reminded myself that I was lucky to be here in the mountains of Asia rather than stuck on a draughty night bus. But nevertheless I couldn’t seem to shake off a longing to make it back before December. I’d been on the road long enough.

‘You’re going to miss them,’ said Binod.

‘Miss what?’ I replied.

‘The mountains. You don’t have mountains like this in England, do you?’

‘No. Not like this.’

He was probably right. I would miss them. But a mountain–like a seductress–though irresistible, had to be treated with caution; it was wise to know when to walk away, even if deep down, you knew one day you’ll return.

The people were getting ready for their own festivities as we rested. It was the eighth day of Dashain, the most popular celebration in Nepal, and a time when families were reunited, gifts given to children and animals sacrificed to the gods. Tomorrow was to be a big day. The ninth day of the festival is when it reaches its peak, where crowds gather at dawn in the great squares of the ancient city and watch as the Goddess Durga–manifested as the bloodthirsty decapitator Kali–is appeased.

We woke early and made our way to Durbar square, the famous medieval courtyard that housed dozens of temples dating back over five hundred years. I was saddened to see that many of them hadn’t survived the earthquake. The rubble had been cleared now, but many areas were still fenced off, and just the foundation platforms remained.

‘Here many of the towers were just made of mud-brick and carved wood,’ said Binod as he showed me round. Some had completely collapsed, whereas others had just fallen over or sustained minor damage. But even this wasn’t enough to stop the party. In between the temples, the city folk had already gathered to make offerings to the statues of Durga. A procession of men beat drums and played flutes and Gurkha soldiers marched in step before the sun had even fully risen above the surrounding hills.

The cobbled streets were covered in pools of bright red blood where animals had been killed the night before.

‘Let’s go and see the sacrifices,’ suggested my guide.

We walked to where a group of soldiers were standing in line and a priest was blessing a pile of offerings: coconuts, baskets of flowers and bananas that surrounded regimental flags. One of the men was in a white gym outfit and held a massive kukri in his hand. He knelt down and began to sharpen it. Near by two buffalo were tied up next to five bleating goats. One by one they were dragged over and splashed with holy water.

‘When the animal shakes it is given as a sign that he approves and accepts that he will be killed,’ said Binod solemnly.

‘Or perhaps he just doesn’t like water thrown in his face?’ I suggested.

Binod looked quizzical. ‘No, he likes it.’ He was convinced.

Then the moment came. A soldier grabbed the hind legs and another the horns, as they held the goat still. The man with the knife raised it above his head and whoosh, down it came, severing the neck in one fell swoop. The body fell to the floor and was dragged in a circle around the shrine leaving a trail of sticky blood. The head was picked up and placed down with the other offerings as it took a minute to actually die; the goat’s eyes still moved and the mouth opened quietly until all was still.

It went on and on. The buffaloes were led to a post where the ropes around their necks were pulled tight like a garrotte as two men held the tails and the same was done. Instead of a kukri an even bigger sword was used, but the effect was the same. The head was lopped off in one. With each sacrifice the soldiers in line fired their rifles into the air at the moment of death, scattering thousands of pigeons into the sky with each loud bang.

It was gruesome and seemingly barbaric, but no different to what goes on behind closed doors in the abattoirs back home, and, not being a vegetarian, I had no cause for complaint. If anything, the festive atmosphere was welcome and the people of Nepal deserved a good party after what they’d been through this year.

As the blood dried under the morning sun and the shadows of the temples shortened, it was time to leave and carry on east.

Apart from the Terai lowlands, the rest of the country is so mountainous that it is said that if you flattened out Nepal, like pulling on a creased tablecloth, then the surface would amount to an area bigger than the whole of the USA. East of the Kathmandu valley we climbed up towards Sagarmatha National Park. Because the monsoon had arrived late this year, there was still an oppressive humidity and haze that filled the sky. Even though it wasn’t cloudy, nothing could be seen of the mountains to the north because of the translucent sheen.

Drinking Everest beer in the backstreets of the old town had made me contemplate. It seemed Binod was thinking the same thing.

‘We can’t go on a Himalayan journey and not see the highest mountain on earth,’ Binod said. ‘It would be a shame.’

He was right. We’d come this far, but as I looked at the map I realised just how off course the famous mountain was. It lay far to the north on the border with Tibet–a two-week walk up a one-way valley.

‘It’s not where we’re going. It’s completely off route,’ I said. Since Tibet was closed to foreigners, I had set my sights on Bhutan, three hundred miles away. It was a place I knew virtually nothing about. I’d been to all the other countries before, but Bhutan was a mysterious blank on the map, a place only whispered about–isolated by its mountains and a monarchy resistant to outside change. I was immensely excited not only to complete my journey, but also to set foot in one of the least known countries in the world.

But first there was the long road through east Nepal and back into India to contend with. And with the onset of winter and the threat of closed passes, I couldn’t afford the time to make the side journey on foot.

We reached the town of Charikot late in the afternoon, five days after leaving Kathmandu. It had been a hard slog uphill, along the main road that leads towards Tibet, and then east again. One day we’d climbed over two thousand metres over the obscenely short distance of ten kilometres. There was a road that zig-zagged up the mountain, weaving between the jungle slopes, but Binod insisted on taking the ancient shortcuts. I always preferred to take the longer and gentler route, but my guide was having none of it.

‘Come on, brother, my legs are shorter than yours,’ Binod teased me.

It seemed Binod, like all the porters we’d had along the way, had only one gear. He’d dawdle along at a frustratingly slow pace on the flat roads, then come into his own on the hills and rough tracks. I huffed and sweated all the way to the top, and was relieved to reach the town, which was perched on a cloudy narrow ridge. Mount Everest was tantalisingly close now, but blocked by a series of north–south-running valleys. Anyone wanting to climb the fammountain, or even just reach her base camp, opted for a charter flight to the infamous airstrip at Lukla.

‘Sod it. Let’s fly,’ I said to Binod, unable to resist the temptation any longer. We’d come this far and I knew the call of Chomolungma–mother of the world, as the Tibetans call her–could not simply be ignored. Even if we couldn’t walk there, we simply had to go and pay our respects.

There was no proper airstrip in Charikot so a plane was out of the question. It would have to be a helicopter. Arrangements were made and a hefty sum transferred, but I knew it would be worth it. The next morning we were told to wait on the only flat stretch of land in town–the local recreation area, a scruffy bit of waste ground where goal posts stood rusting after a heavy monsoon. Feral dogs yawned as the cockerels heralded dawn and a few early risers squatted on their haunches, watching with suspicion as Binod and I loitered on the pitch. At seven thirty the unmistakable noise of the chopper broke the quiet and a bright red Eurocopter banked over the forested hillside.

Blasting dust everywhere it landed in the middle of the field and the doors swung open. The pilot, a stout Swede with the head of bull, greeted us as we boarded.

‘It’s half an hour to get there and then you’ve got fifteen minutes on Kala Pattar, that’s all the fuel I have. I’ll keep the blades turning.’

With that he slammed the door shut and we took off, wobbling vertically until we had a clear height and could bank off to the north.

It was a far more pleasant experience than the last time we’d been in a heli on the extraction from Rukum and I meant to enjoy it. Looking down at the shadow of the aircraft as it flitted near and far over the trees and rocky escarpments, we crested the gorges one by one until there we were, in the famous Khumbu valley. The trees suddenly disappeared as we reached four thousand metres and the landscape below became barren. Beneath us was the rocky moraine of the glacier, littered with boulders the size of houses. We were above the haze now and the clouds were nothing but a blanket of white guarding the foothills.

We entered the midst of the mighty Himalayas. The white peaks towered above us and I felt as insignificant as a little fly as we buzzed between them up the valley. Even here though, on a stage of such remote solitude, there was life. Tiny stupas stood proudly on grey hilltops, their colourful prayer flags a monument to man’s continual insistence of dominance over nature.

Surrounded by a wall of glistening snowy peaks we landed on the brown hill of Kala Pattar, at 5,545 metres, looking down on Everest base camp. I couldn’t see any tents at all–there were no climbers this season after the horrors of the earthquake.

Jumping out of the helicopter I looked at my watch.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ repeated the pilot, shouting above the noise of the rotors. I ran across the scree to clear the blades and found a spot on the edge of the ridge. Up above, the morning sky was a perfect blue. We were so close to the heavens that it was a deep, dark blue that formed a sharp contrast to the sparkling slopes around. Binod pointed them out. To our left, the sheer walls of Pumori with its light grey cliffs looking like a watercolour. In the distance ranged Khumbutse and Changtse, an impenetrable barrage of vertical ice with a serrated edge like shark’s teeth. And then to the right, in the foreground, loomed the twisted crown of Nupste, dominating its sister Lhotse which seemed to sit calm and unbothered in the middle distance only a mile away. And there, rising behind her twin guardians was Sagarmatha herself–Everest. She loomed almost black, swept of most of her snow by the ferocious winds, which seemed to provide a halo to the revered summit.

‘It’s nice,’ said Binod, never one for overstatement.

The thrill and awe of looking up at the greatest mountain on earth, I had to admit, was rather nice. I could barely take my eyes off the peak. It looked so cold up there.

‘Don’t you want to climb it?’ said Binod.

‘Perhaps one day,’ I said. The allure was certainly there and I imagined for a moment the joy that Hillary and Tenzing must have felt at being the first to the top all those years ago. To know, even briefly, that you are at the highest point on earth would surely be an unsurpassable achievement, even in an age when dozens of climbers make it to the top every season.

But I reminded myself that I wasn’t here to climb mountains–not this time. I would have to be content to watch her from afar for the few minutes I had left. There at the top of the world, in the silence, I thought back to that fateful night in August when I lay screaming at the bottom of a jungle ravine. I realised that I had truly seen both sides of this mountain range, light and dark, heaven and hell.

The pilot whistled and tapped his watch. It was time to go and carry on walking.

We trekked east through Phaplu into the Solukhumbu region, following the course of the Dudh Koshi river to the south as its milky grey waters gushed from the highest mountains on the planet.

The jungle returned and the landscape took on an altogether wilder, more isolated aspect. Roads simply didn’t exist, only overgrown stony paths that weaved through the forests. The shrill whirr of cicadas roared through the canopy and each step was fraught with fear, as whoever was in front faced the threat of walking straight into gigantic spiders’ webs. Just touching them accidentally would cause the creatures to rear and dart straight for one’s face. Sometimes we’d walk down the streams themselves, in a bid to avoid the spiders, hopping from boulder to boulder as little fish and tadpoles darted in the clear pools. Occasionally we’d come across small villages, cut off from the outside world. Habitation was usually preceded by the sudden appearance of rice paddies in the most unusual of places. Terraces dangled off cliffs; secret gardens in the jungle, and long lost shrines that looked like they should feature in a movie set for Indiana Jones. One day we came across a field with tall rice stalks surrounded by impenetrable jungle.

‘Be careful,’ said Binod hastily as I walked on its perimeter. ‘Don’t crush the rice. The people will come and kill us, it’s their life and we must respect it.’

I trod carefully at the front, making sure I didn’t step on a single grain. Then the field ended. A two-metre drop into a stream gulley was the only way down. I jumped, but in the split second before I landed, I saw something move directly below. It was the thick brown tubular body of a snake, gliding between the grass with a terrifying deliberation. I’m glad I saw it when I did; I had just enough time to part my feet before landing them either side of the slippery beast. It slithered straight between my legs and disappeared into a hole in the bank.

‘You’re lucky,’ Binod said, ‘that was a cobra.’

‘No shit,’ I replied. ‘If I had landed on its tail it would have bitten me for sure.’

‘No,’ he said smiling. ‘You’re lucky to see one. They’re a very holy snake in my religion. We say they hold the world together.’

There was no electricity here, only an existence unchanged in centuries. Old Gurkhas sat on the wooden frames of open shacks getting drunk on homebrew. The people looked more ethnically Tibetan here and Binod often struggled to communicate with them. Wizened faces contemplated us with mild amusement but usually they’d let us camp in their terraced fields for a small price. At the village of Shale we camped on a strip of land less than ten feet wide behind someone’s cow shed. Pigs the size of ponies shuffled around the garden and a shaggy black mastiff growled at us, fortunately restrained by his thick metal chain.

That night, we asked to a buy a chicken to eat, but when it came, having been killed by the elder of the village, we were sorely disappointed.

‘Where’s the meat?’ mumbled Binod to himself under his breath.

‘I was about to say the same.’

‘These people have stolen it for themselves. They’ve saved all the good bits and just given us the feet and ass.’

I pushed the rubbery colon around my plate as the peasants grinned through toothless mouths in the darkness. I wanted to complain but didn’t bother.

One lesson this journey had taught me was knowing how to make do. There was no point in complaining; it wouldn’t get you anywhere. You just had to accept things the way they were and get on with it.

‘It’s like when people ask us where we’re going,’ said Binod. ‘It gets boring, the same questions. Having to explain to the villagers and police and army checkpoints what we are doing. No point in getting angry, Lev. Just tell them and smile. It keeps them happy and only wastes five minutes of time. What to do?’

I liked Binod’s philosophical stance. He was content with his lot, more or less, I thought. There was much I’d learned from my guide.

Just as we were finishing up the elasticated cockerel there was a commotion in the blackness.

‘Bagh, Bagh,’ a man shouted in Tamang.

Men ran into the millet fields clattering pots and pans and flashing wind-up torches. The mastiff howled a blood-curdling cry.

‘What the bloody hell is going on?’ I asked Binod who’d stood up to try and see. Although I have to say the distraction did give me a good excuse to lob the remains of the chicken claws into the bushes.

‘It’s a tiger!’ exclaimed Binod. It’s coming for the goats. I jumped up excitedly, more eager to catch a glimpse of the noble beast than worried about our safety. I strained my eyes but could see nothing except the dull torchlights of the villagers getting more distant.

Binod sat back down and gnawed on a piece of gristle. ‘It’s gone.’

As we slipped into our tents that night listening to the rustling of the cattle in their pen, I wondered if the tiger would return.

It didn’t and I awoke alive and well. As I brushed my teeth with rainwater from a bucket it occurred to me just how many risks I’d already taken on this expedition, or at least what most people back home would consider risks. Of course the truth is, the locals had to deal with these dangers every day, whether it was tigers, landslides, earthquakes or just crappy brakes. I was glad to be going home, yet at the same time I felt sad to be almost at the end of my journey. I’d shared so much with Binod and felt I’d secured an affinity with these mountains, even though they’d almost killed me.

I could see why the people from Afghanistan all the way through Pakistan, India and Nepal held such stoic views. It was their lot to live here, so they might as well accept it with dignity and appreciation. It wasn’t all bad. They had plenty of water, food, shelter and grazing, and when it comes down to it, what more do you need?

‘It’s not like the desert,’ said Binod. ‘We have everything we need.’

Binod had worked as a virtual slave in Saudi Arabia for thirty-one months ten years ago, to earn money to feed his family. So he knew what a desert was, and he felt lucky that he wasn’t still in one. For me, despite the dangers, I felt like the sacrifices and the dangers were all worth it. I’d seen the top of the world and survived to tell the tale.

We left the mountains behind for a while as we emerged back onto the Terai at Belsot, just west of Lahan. Here we were stopped by the police and warned that the Madhesi people were still causing trouble. They told us that the borders were still closed and the Maoists had taken over some towns to the east. So we plodded on as fast as we could through the steamy flat lands, racing to the border with India.

Despite its trials and tribulations I was sad to say goodbye to the country to which I owed so much. Binod was sad to leave Nepal too.

‘I’ll miss Diwali with my family,’ he said, visibly upset. He’d spent his evenings on the phone to Chandra and the kids and always passed on their humbling remarks. ‘They say hello uncle.’ It reminded me that while I was at liberty to spend my days wandering with little responsibility, Binod was a father and husband, and I needed to make sure he was safe. ‘Family always comes first.’ He’d tell me on an almost daily basis. He was right, of course, and if I’d gained any wisdom on this trip it was knowing that you can never take anything, or anyone, for granted, because you don’t know when it all might come crashing down.

India unfurled for the second time on my expedition in the form of West Bengal. The road we took passed through endless floodplains, shimmering rice fields and undulating tea plantations–scores of Bengali girls giggled under heavy baskets full of freshly picked leaves–the legacy of an empire almost forgotten by Indians today. Their thoughts of England were merely idealistic, rather than nostalgic, yet the signs were still there. Rusting agricultural machinery with stamps of King George; the ‘coronation bridge’; British army camouflage on the uniforms of soldiers–some even wore, perhaps unwittingly, the Union Jack on their shoulders.

The highway jerked east, its course dissected by the vast expanses of the numerous tributaries that flowed south into the Brahmaputra. Alongside the road was a railway and as we walked, the scream of a train horn sounded every few minutes as cargoes of tea rumbled west and south, taking their precious loads to the cups of London, just as they had done a hundred years ago. To the north lay Darjeeling and the misty ranges surrounding Kangchenjunga, but where we were going was a wholly different Himalaya, untouched by colonialism, isolated from its neighbours and, if its own image was to be believed, a place of serene happiness and contentment. I could think of no better place to finish my journey than Bhutan.