Month: June 2016

Ghiling

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The road now climbed above Tsele heading north-west away from the excoriating wind. Neville, Jit and I set off together leaving Netra and Dabendra to finish getting the horses ready. We didn’t walk far before Nev and Jit turned off the road taking a walking track too steep and narrow for the horses. I sat and waited for the horses but was only able to ride a short distance before once more dismounting. We now joined Neville and Jit again as the track climbed very steeply clinging to the edge of the cliff face, overhung with rock in places. It was extremely hard going. It seemed like we would be climbing forever and I kept hoping that around the next bend the path would level out, but we kept climbing.

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The same track on which Peissel led his yaks

As we ascended we saw the mountains to the south rising with us. To the west, steep hills rose above us, dotted with spiky, stunted bushes. Settling on top were dark, heavy clouds that in the end brought only a brief shower.

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After a couple of hours we made a welcome stop at Samar–which name means “red earth”–crossing a small stream surrounded by a grove of trees, following the stony path through a low entry passage to the Annapurna Guest House.

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Here we sat in the kitchen where a wood fire burned in one stove and our host, a woman in traditional Tibetan dress, made us sweet milk tea on a gas cooker, ladling the tea continuously to dissolve the powdered milk.

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In a walled yard outside a man and a young girl sat breaking rocks, which they then put into canvas feed bags. In one corner of the yard dung was spread on the ground to dry for use later as fuel.

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From Samar the path led out through another gateway, down and across a bubbling, milky-blue stream, before once again climbing along the side of a cliff.

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We stopped for lunch at the tiny village of Bhena. The tea house was just three rooms: a kitchen, dining room (which was also the entry) and a bedroom with a storage loft above. A small baby lay softly mewling in the bedroom and suspended above him was a plastic beachball, the only thing resembling a toy that I saw in Mustang. His older sister, who was about five, slowly inched towards us as we sat waiting for our lunch. I took out my phone and showed her how to take a “selfie” with which she was very pleased. After a few more photos that game was exhausted so I took out my small notebook and a pencil and agave it to her to draw in. Instead, she began to write ABDEF, over and over, always leaving out the C. So I wrote it correctly for her and she copied it a few times. I then handed her the pencil, indicating that she could keep it and she skipped away to show everyone.

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After crossing the pass above Bhena, at 3800m, we descended to the impossibly green and beautiful village of Ghiling. As we approached, a man and woman called out and a loud discussion ensued; it was obvious we weren’t expected. Nev and I sat and waited while this was sorted out, but I had resigned myself to camping that night before Netra said “please come” and crossing a walled yard, where the garden was edged with empty Tuborg beer bottles, we entered the tea house via a passageway that led to an interior courtyard covered with a green translucent roof that bathed everything in a weird green light.

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Next morning, Jit took us to the monastery that perches above the village. Back in 1992, when Mustang was first opened up to tourists, thangkas (religious paintings) and statues were stolen from the monastery. Now someone sleeps on a bed inside the entrance to guard it. A square skylight let some light into the dimly lit assembly hall where I lit a butter lamp and the monk dipped a brush into a plastic container of water and flicked it over the lamps, intoning prayers. Outside we climbed onto the roof and Jit pointed to a smaller monastery above, but said it was forbidden for women to enter, and anyway it was locked.

As we looked down on the patchwork fields of Ghiling, Jit pointed to a faint track leading away to the west between low, barren hills; this would lead us to our next destination: Tragmar.

Only later did I learn that Ghiling had lost more than 60 houses in the earthquake.

Tsele

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It was at Tsele that we left the modern world behind.

Now there was no internet, limited phone coverage and patchy electricity. After lunching in Chhusang, we followed the river again before it narrowed dramatically running through a rock tunnel, formed long ago by an enormous piece of the cliff falling against the other side. In the cliff face high above was a uniform row of caves, some of the many thousands that dot the cliffs throughout Mustang, and about which little is known.

IMG_0181When Michel Peissel reached this point he encountered only a simple bridge of planks of wood bolted together, impossible for his yaks to cross. There is now a steel bridge, which we walked across, but the horses had to wade across the shallow river, just as the jeeps do when the water is low enough. A road bridge is now being built and will provide vehicle access all year round.

Peissel took his yaks up the very steep and narrow gorge of the Ghyakar Khola that runs beside Tsele:

The sides of the canyon were so steep and so close together that in many parts the sunlight could not reach us, and we advanced as if in a cave, from whose bottom we could only occasionally glimpse a bit of blue sky.

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He bypassed Tsele, but we took the almost vertical track beside the khola up to the village, entering via a wooden gateway, following the path as it continued up and between white-washed walls before arriving at our lodge for the night.

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After tea on the terrace that looked out at the dramatic cliffs of the Kali Gandaki canyon, the table cloth nailed to the table so the fierce wind couldn’t whip it away, we explored the small village. It seemed quite deserted. One old man sat alone on a step spinning a prayer wheel and bid us a weary ‘namaste’ as we passed, women were out in the field gathering the harvest together before covering it with what looked like an old tent, and late in the afternoon a noisy game of volleyball was being played in a small courtyard below us, triumphant, joyful cries rising into the dimming light as dusk came on. Our lodge appeared to be the only one open.

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Here the altitude began to bite. We were at 3070m and I had a headache and had begun to feel vaguely unwell, but after I’d eaten some dinner I felt better. I also had some difficulty with the squat toilet. It was not so much the nature of the toilet as its location. It was outside in a separate building reached through a passageway between rooms. At the end of the passageway was a door and it had to be bolted shut to stop it banging in the relentless wind. The problem was that the bolt was on the inside. Inevitably, I had to use the toilet during the night which meant  I had to leave it unbolted and be quick enough to get back inside before someone got annoyed enough by the banging to get up and bolt it. I wasn’t, and when I emerged from the toilet block with only my head torch for light I found  I was locked out. I thought maybe the window next to the door was our room and tapped on it, calling Neville’s name softly, but wasn’t sure enough that it was our room to persist, which was lucky because it wasn’t. There was no other option but to bang on the door until someone opened it. Eventually a rather frightened Nepalese man opened it saying:

“It was open.”

“Wasn’t it bolted?” I replied.

“I didn’t know,” he said.

The conversation made no sense, and I must have looked and sounded angrier than I was.

That night, the Nepalese were glued to the television as their government finally handed down the first constitution. They didn’t know then that it would lead to deadly clashes on the border with India and a four month long blockade creating crippling fuel shortages, bringing the country to a standstill.

I awoke to the sound of the horses’ bells as Dabendra brought them up outside our window and got them ready for the next day’s travel. We would be climbing higher to the village Ghiling.

 

 

 

Kagbeni

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We weren’t long on the trail before I had to dismount. The path along the river became slippery with smooth, wet rocks and the horse threatened to stumble. So I dismounted and walked until the path ended at a sheer rock wall that jutted into the river. Jit chose to double back and take the high path, leaving us with Netra and Dabendra to make our way around the rock. I remounted and Dabendra took off his shoes, rolled up his fraying jeans and, pulling and yelling sternly at the horse, managed to get it to enter the freezing water and over to a bank of gravel. We then went around the rock and crossed back through the water on the other side. Meanwhile, Netra rolled up his pants and, laughing at the cold water, cheerfully waded through and around the rock. I dismounted then Dabendra led the horse back around and led Neville around the same way, holding his walking poles aloft.

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Jit rejoined us after a few minutes and we continued on to the small village of Eklo Batti, just a shop and a couple of lodges, for a brief rest before continuing on to Kagbeni.

When Michel Peissel reached Kagbeni, he found a fortress town where all the houses were joined together for safety, accessed by narrow streets that tunnelled under the houses in places and was towered over by the square, red monastery. Now numerous teahouses obscure the old Kagbeni on approach and beside the old monastery, built in 1429, a new monastery is being built.

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We were the only guests at Nigiri Lodge that night, so named for the clear view of the mountain. We arrived in time for lunch—dal baht and apple fritters—which we ate in the sunny, warm dining room while the wind, which comes up every day like clockwork and builds to gale force by the afternoon, howled around the building and set the prayer flags flapping violently. This wind is driven by air heated down on the plains of India, which rises and is then funnelled up the Kali Gandaki river gorge. Peissel described it as “the ferocious wind from the south” and so it is. When we went out with Jit that afternoon to explore the town, the wind whipped dust into our eyes and stuck to the vaseline on my chapped lips and when I got changed for bed that night, grit fell from my clothes.

Jit took us to the monastery and we entered a courtyard to see small boys with shaved heads in maroon robes streaming out of the ancient building to where a monk was giving out afternoon tea. They jumped and tumbled about, one in a spiderman singlet, another in a superman jumper. The monastery had been damaged in the earthquake and a large crack ran the full length of one wall. It was not safe to go up on the roof, but we were still able to enter the main room where, like in all the monasteries we would see, two rows of seats faced each other, and gold statues of Buddha sat placidly inside glass cabinets lit from above. Seven bowls of water and some butter lamps sat along the ledge before them.

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Jit then left us to explore the village on our own and we wandered past the Yakdonalds, the 7Eleven sign, and the image of the Bon protector god with his erect penis. The smell of manure and urine permeated the whole village from the cows that wander the narrow streets. The odd chicken pecked about, old women sat in doorways turning prayer beads through their work-worn hands, and children called “Namaste”. We crossed a wooden bridge over the river and the wind threatened to whip my hat into the muddy, raging torrent below. A monk crossed over just after us and, laughing at the wind, continued on his way in the direction of Tiri.

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That night we warmed ourselves with hot lemon and homemade apple brandy, garlic soup for the effects of altitude, and more apple fritters drizzled with honey. When we retired to bed the only sounds were the calming wind, the pitiful miaowing of a cat and, in the distance, the rushing river.

Onward and Upward

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Clutching our breakfast boxes supplied by our hotel, The Lakeside Retreat, we sat and waited in the airport. An Indian lady came in with her husband, and while he sorted out their baggage she sat down next to me and tried to strike up a conversation. Alas, I understood not a word of her Hindi. She kept pointing out the window at the mountains turning from pink to crystal white in the rising sun. I thought she was trying to impress upon me how beautiful they were. But then she counted the fingers on one hand, held her hand in the shape of a plane, then turned the hand upside down. She smiled a lot at the same time. I really have no idea what she was trying to say.

Low clouds hung below the green hills that ringed the valley but except for a few wisps higher up it was clear. We had just bought scalding hot milk tea when we were called to board, so we had to leave the tea behind and line up at the gate.

Michel Peissel flew to Pokhara from Kathmandu as there was no road between the two in 1965. He took his two assistants Calay and Tashi and 650 pounds of equipment with him, including over a hundred packs of cigarettes. But in 1965 there was also no airport in Jomsom so he had to trek there from Pokhara, a fraught journey during which his porters went on strike for more money then left him halfway. He managed to complete the journey with the help of several yak owners and their recalcitrant yaks. It took over a week to reach Jomsom.

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The flight to Jomsom is just 18 minutes, so no sooner were we up and flying along the Kali Gandaki river gorge that divides the Dauligiri and Annapurna ranges than we began to make our descent.

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After the warm humidity of Pokhara, the cool dry air of Jomsom was a relief; we were now 2000 metres higher. Jit took us to the Mustang Monalisha (sic) hotel where we sat in the sunny upstairs dining room and ate the contents of our breakfast boxes–two boiled eggs, a cheese sandwich, a banana, an apple and a small bottle of sickly sweet Frooti juice–washed down with sweet milk tea. We were waiting for our horses to arrive so I walked out into the street to take a look at Jomsom.

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It was still only about 7am. Smoke rose from chimneys and, except for a rickety bus wheezing up the street, there was little sign of life. Opposite the airport, Nigiri mountain rose high above the town. Jomsom was dry, dusty and brown and it possessed a serenity long absent from the chaotic Kathmandu and the bustling streets of Pokhara.

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After an hour and a half a young boy appeared leading a brown and a white horse. We had been joined at the airport in Pokhara by Netra, our assistant guide, and so with him, our horse-boy Dabendra, our two horses–one for me to ride, one to carry our packs–and Jit, we set off on the first day of our expedition into Upper Mustang, just as Michel Peissel had done fifty years before:

Our path now led us deep into the great gorge of the Kali Gandaki river. As we progressed, gone were the green slopes rising to snow peaks. We entered a parched, desert-like void, made up of huge yellow mounds and great towers of rock, rectangular in shape, soaring masses of eroded cliff, barren and dry. The sky along the horizon to the north was blue and crystal clear. We had left behind the world of vegetation, moisture and greenery, to step on to the edge of the great, barren Central Asian plains.

And so had we.