In the Mountains

Last night we went to sleep and this morning awoke to the sound of water trickling down the mountain around us and roaring through the deep, deep gorge upon which side we are perched. This is The Last Resort. We sleep in tents but with tin roofs erected over the top, stone floors and real beds. There are even hot showers if you know where to find them. I thought it would be freezing up here but it’s probably the warmest and most comfortable I’ve been since we arrived. The beds have thick foam mattresses and thick warm blankets and my ever-resourceful husband even managed to bring me a hot cup of milk tea this morning.



We met at The Last Resort office in Kathmandu at 5.45 Saturday morning then, when everyone was present and accounted for, we set off walking through the still dark streets of Thamel down to the main road where two buses were waiting. At that hour the constant horns were mostly silent and there was just the odd hidey-hole shop open with someone perched behind a counter, a single candle burning because the power was out.



We climbed aboard with all our bags (no luggage handling or stowing here) and set off through the hazy early morning of Kathmandu where people squatted by fires of burning rubbish to get some warmth. The road became wider but no less rough as we made our way out of the city and dogs and people still roamed along and across it at random. There was one dead dog in the middle of the road. Another was sniffing at it and had the sense to get out of the way as we came along.



Gradually we climbed out of the valley and as we did the land became greener and the air cleaner. We passed through small villages where people hauled baskets strapped around their foreheads. (We saw two women in Thamel the day before carrying bricks like this from morning until well into the night). Grubby children played shuttlecock from one side of the road to the other. People milled outside those tiny shops you see everywhere that sell odd assortments of things like chips, bottles of whisky, cigarettes, potatoes, instant noodles, a soccer ball. Groups of people walked along the side of the road and occasionally we passed a truck or bus with people crammed inside and on the roof.



I thought the drive was going to be one big harrowing ordeal, but it was quite safe and sedate by Nepali standards. Staying on the left hand side of the road is just a rough guideline in case you do meet another vehicle coming towards you and overtaking anywhere anytime is perfectly normal, even if it’s a tight, narrow bend. But our driver at least seemed to do it carefully if that’s possible. There seems to be an understanding about this. If you come up behind someone and they’re moving slower than you, you beep your horn to let them know you want to get past; they may or may not choose to get out of your way and let you do so, in which case you just keep trying until they do. Then once you decide to overtake you beep your horn the whole time to let others who may be coming in the opposite direction know. You also beep your horn coming around any bend just in case someone else happens to be overtaking. If you do meet someone coming towards you when overtaking you flash your lights at them so they slow down. It seems to work. At least we made it here safely and I even managed to sleep for the last half hour of the trip.



We stopped for a break halfway at a kind of café. Here I experienced my first squat toilet and it was actually fine. It was as clean as it could be and surprising easy to manage. You could get breakfast of rice flakes and potato curry and beans at the cafe. We just had hot milk tea and the boys ate soft drink and Pringles. Our hotel had packed cheese sandwiches and bananas for us, since breakfast was included and they had thermoses of hot water waiting in the lobby so we could have tea before we went.



Out the back of the building next to the café (and I’m using that word in its broadest sense for want of another) were a group of young guys playing a guitar, a tabla and singing and they were really good. This was at 8 in the morning!



When you arrive at The Last Resort you have to walk across a wire suspension bridge strung from one side of the gorge to the other and it’s a long way down. Which is a good thing, because this is where my two oldest children and many other idiots chose to hurl themselves with wild abandon into the abyss. It’s probably not surprising that Dan’s jump was described by the bungy master (!) as the best jump of the day. I saw Christopher jump but missed Dan as I was having a massage instead. Neville said he just stepped up to the edge of the platform and without a moment’s hesitation dove off with supreme confidence. Once you’ve stopped bouncing they pull you down and un-harness you and you have to make your way up along a trail that winds through a village and back to the resort. Of course Dan got lost and found himself jumping people’s fences. Luckily he didn’t end up in Tibet, but made it back to the resort eventually.



Tom’s diarrhoea returned on Saturday. He was already unhappy because he is was too small to do any of the activities so he didn’t have much of a time. On Sunday Christopher and Daniel went canyoning and Tom was happy enough to stay in his bed and read Harry Potter, so Neville and I went walking up the mountain through the tiny villages. A village seems to be defined as about three or more houses. This is subsistence living at its most basic. We passed goats and cows tethered under simple shelters of woven matting held up by bamboo sticks, and chickens and ducks pecking up bits of grain. The sides of the mountains are all terraced so they can grow various crops. The path literally winds through people’s back and front yards. We passed between an old man sitting on his porch smoking a joint and a younger woman sitting on the ground threshing grain. We saw a couple of babies lying on the ground scratching around in the dirt and one little girl sitting with a bowl of rice porridge licking it off her hands. Outside one house was a crippled man lying on the ground. Next to him was a wheelchair and we couldn’t work out how or where he could ever use it in such terrain.



At one house a woman stopped us and asked us to take a photo of her which I did. She then indicated a much older woman who had appeared and so I took a photo of her too. Of course, we then had to cough up some rupees for the privilege. Fair enough I thought, seeing as how we were traipsing right through their properties. When the third woman appeared for a photo session we declined because we were running out of small notes and if it went on we would have had the whole village out for a photo shoot.



We continued up the mountain and it was hard going because it’s all stairs. The people who live there are sherpas so it’s no problem for them. We saw some carrying great bundles of sticks and planks of wood, which they were using to build a floor, all strapped to their foreheads. No wonder the really old people you see are permanently bent double. It would have been great to continue right to the top of the mountain but I think I would have died on the way, so we stopped when we reached a school perched high up on a ridge. It was just a mud brick building with about four rooms, one of them marked "Office" which seemed strangely formal. A teacher came out to speak to us and explained that they had 72 children at the school and that he taught maths and science. There was a rough playground on a terrace below, with a couple of very old, broken see-saws and a toilet block. If they ever played with a ball here no one would be fetching it when it went over the side. It’s amazing to see these kids setting off for school in the mornings because no matter how rough their living conditions they are always clean and immaculately dressed in their uniforms, the girls with their hair plaited and tied with white rags.



We left The Last Resort (reluctantly) about 4pm Sunday and finally arrived back at our house about 9pm. I was all set to go to work the next morning but Tom woke up very pale and weak, so I called Ruth at PA and we’re of to the doctor this afternoon.