Ngadi Chuli and Manaslu rise from the east bank of the Marsyangdi, while hills west of the river belong to the unseen Annapurnas. So far these are just big hills, nameless hills, and we must trek for several days before we discover the mountains we’ve been dreaming about.
Unlike the Kangchenjunga region, every village has its lodges, and between villages teahouses ply a trade in tea and biscuits, bottles of Coke and Fanta, and bars of Cadbury’s chocolate made in India. Lodges have fanciful names on brightly painted boards – Hotel Himalaya and Lodge, Hotel Mountain View, Hotel Dorchester. Despite the pretentious titles, they’re just simple lodgings with smoky dining areas and bare rooms for sleeping in. Most have dormitories, while some have twin-bedded rooms furnished with wooden sleeping platforms, a thin foam mattress and a greasy pillow; sometimes there’s a small table and a candle and, if we’re lucky, a nail in the wall on which to hang clothes. Toilets are usually found outside in the yard – a narrow cubicle with a hole in the floor – the bathroom is just a standpipe, and when showers are advertised they turn out to be another cubicle next to the chaarpi with a hosepipe dribbling tepid water.
On our first day we trek as far as Bahundanda, a Brahmin village perched on a saddle on a spur of the Ngadi Lekh. Both sides of the hill are stepped with rice terraces, the trail partly shaded by trees and tall poinsettias bright with scarlet bracts. Lined with open-fronted shops, the village square is busy with locals and a few fellow trekkers studying their guidebooks and maps, and as we arrive two unkempt children shriek ‘Namaste’ at us as though we’re deaf. A sign tacked to one of the buildings indicates the way to the police check post, where we show our permits and enter names in a register – a formality to be repeated countless times in the years ahead. The official glances at our permits, then at us. ‘You trek Annapurna Circus?’ he asks, and I can’t decide whether he’s being cynical, making a joke, or if I’ve simply misunderstood his question.
Tonight we share a lodge with Ray, a Canadian railroad engineer with short-cropped hair and pale grey eyes, and his daughter Linda, an attractive young woman in her mid-20s who spends her winters as a ski instructor in Japan. Over pots of tea we chat about mountains and travel and the lure of Nepal, about the day’s journey and prospects for tomorrow, and the onward trail to Manang. Ray has time to kill. ‘More vacation time than I know what to do with,’ he says. ‘Trouble is, I’m not sure I have the energy for this trekking game. Sure found today plenty tough.’
‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll see you make it,’ and his daughter pats him kindly on the knee.
Rising early, Alan and I leave on a trail heading north, twisting downhill through terraces of rice spread in an artistic fan, the early light playing on streams and irrigation ditches, the milky blue Marsyangdi curling round the base of the spur with white-flecked rapids as it cuts through a gorge. Our trail edges a former river bench now crowded with millet. Lemon trees line the pathway. Ahead the valley is restricted by steep hills; on the opposite bank a thin cascade hangs above the river, twitching with a breeze. We pass a solitary lodge, then curve left, descend to a suspension bridge and cross to Syange, a one-street village of shops and lodges. Geordie, Scots and Australian voices drift from a bhatti, but we walk through without stopping and soon find ourselves among cannabis plants. ‘There’ll be some grass smoked tonight,’ says Alan, referring to a couple of trekkers we’d passed earlier.
Ahead the valley narrows. More waterfalls streak the rocks while the trail slants uphill and the gradient increases. The path is well made, in places carved into the rock, and is certainly a great improvement on the route described in 1950 as a series of frail wooden galleries strung across the cliffs. At the top of the rise we stop for a bowl of noodle soup at a small teahouse standing alone with views in both directions, and wonder how serious the Nepalese authorities are in their plan to extend the road from Dumre as far as Manang. The very idea spells disaster.
As we enter Jagat a squall of voices erupts from a field behind one of the houses, where a group of villagers gathers round the carcass of a recently slaughtered buffalo – a bubbling mess of steaming guts and liquid spilling into the harvest stubble. A wall-eyed man with a simple grin and kukri knife in hand has sliced open its belly, while his audience offers advice in the way it’s offered all over the world by those least qualified to give it. The butcher stands bare-legged astride the carcass, his light brown skin spattered with blood. Already he and the onlookers anticipate the taste of fresh meat. It will last them for days.
When the Tibetan salt trade was in full swing, Jagat was a customs post where taxes were levied, but since 1959 cross-border trade between Nepal and Tibet has officially ended, and its reason for existence has changed. Drying racks of sweetcorn cobs now stand above fields where children chase one another in a game of tag. One child trips, sprawling head-first into the stubble. As he explodes with tears a girl I take to be his sister picks him up and swings him onto her back. She can be no more than five years old, but accepts responsibility for his welfare without question.
The valley is little more than a gorge now, the scenery wild, intimidating, and the way ahead apparently blocked by boulders that swallow the river. But when we top another steep rise, before us lies a broad, flat plateau, on the far side of which the toy-like houses of Tal are dwarfed by soaring mountains, as alluring as Shangri-La. This is Buddhist country, and as if to emphasise the fact peace settles over us. A crow barks as it circles overhead, making only a brief intrusion. In the breeze comes the far-off boom of a waterfall, but the breeze is inconsistent, the sound falters, then shuts off completely. Peace settles once more.
Tal’s wide street is lined with shops and lodges, and with ponies tethered to a rail the place has a Wild West appearance – externally, at least – but once we book into a lodge all that changes. We’re back in a medieval world that attempts to ape the 20th century.
A bright-faced woman in a wrap-around chuba entices me across the street to study the bangles, earrings and pocket-sized mani stones on display in her tiny sentry-box of a shop. Her hair is coal black and glossy and hangs halfway down her back. Teasing me for my grey beard she calls me ‘Baje’, so I show her photographs of my wife and daughters and assure her I can wait a while before becoming a grandfather. Calling softly behind her, a beautiful little girl presents herself. She’s gorgeous, like her mother, and smiling sweetly returns my ‘Namaste’.
In Pisang, a spartan village of stone-walled houses at well over 3000 metres, there’s a long mani wall fitted with a row of prayer wheels, each stone in the wall carved with the Buddhist mantra ‘Om mani padme hum’ (‘Hail to the jewel in the lotus’). Cylindrical prayer wheels are likewise etched with manis, and as each wheel is spun it scatters the prayers contained within it, ‘Om mani padme hum’. Strips of cloth bearing the mani imprint hang from long wooden poles, and as we pass through archways, known as kanis, a gallery of Buddhas fades in the shadows of time. The faith lingers on...‘Om mani padme hum’.
Here in the Himalayan rain shadow the Buddha’s timeless prayer is like an electrical charge – unseen, unheard, but felt in every stirring breeze.
Our journey adopts a deeper meaning. It’s more than a walk through an ever-changing landscape – a pilgrimage, perhaps? There’s a cultural intensity as we slip into a very different world that works on our emotions. Alan senses the change too. Having known each other for so long, we have no need to articulate what we feel about the places we explore. Often we’ll wander at our own pace with thoughts undisturbed. Only later will a word or phrase be spoken that conjures a moment in time or a place spirited from memory.
This morning Alan wakes with a streaming cold and a hint of fever. ‘The dry air will be good for it,’ he says. ‘But I’ll see about hiring a porter for a couple of days.’ Within minutes we are joined by a neat-looking Magar with a quiet smile and a name that sounds like ‘Mahdri’. He has no English, and the few Nepali words Alan and I have gathered make for very limited conversation, but smiles count as much as conversation on this winding trail.
It’s
