I doubt anyone ever beat them to a bargain, but we find them friendly and hospitable, and although the food served in our lodge may not always be what we order, it helps keep the cold at bay.
It is cold too. Wandering alone up-valley I visit a neighbouring village where yak crossbreeds plough the frozen fields. Winter is in the air. It comes drifting from Annapurnas II and IV as snow plumes are torn from their ridges. It comes from Gangapurna’s glacier, whose icefall tips to a half-frozen lake. And it comes in blusters of wind tasting of snow, yet the sky remains blue and almost cloudless.
Passing a row of well-worn prayer wheels, a metallic clack-clack accompanies each of the prayers as I spin their release. Above a chorten, prayer flags are stripped into tatters by the wind, and because of that wind I go no further, but crouch in the lee of the chorten and listen to the cracking of the flags, thankful to be in view of the Himalaya once more. Heaven, I tell myself, is a crowd of snow mountains and no demands to climb them.
Back in Manang I find Alan drinking hot chocolate behind steamed windows in the dining room of the Yak Lodge, most of whose tables are occupied by trekkers wearing down jackets. Seated opposite him are the Canadians Ray and Linda, with whom we’d shared a lodge in Bahundanda. They arrived an hour ago, having stayed last night a short way down-valley. Ray is wearing a week’s stubble and an incomplete smile. His eyes speak of concern, and when his daughter leaves to visit the chaarpi, he confides in us. ‘She’s kinda sick. I dunno what it is, but she’s not right. Keeps telling me not to worry, but I know that kid, and she’s just not healthy. There’s no way she’s gonna make it over the La until she’s got herself fit.’
‘Is it the altitude?’
‘Nope. At least, I don’t think so. Got pains; I can see that, but she says nothin’. Spends a lot of time visitin’ the chaarpi – in fact she probably knows more about the chaarpis of Nepal than anyone alive!’
‘Have you been to the health post?’
‘Health post?’ asks Ray. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Just across the way. Two doctors are based there. Why don’t you get Linda to go for a check if you’re that concerned?’
The Canadian’s eyes brighten. ‘Hey now, that’s like good news.’
Half an hour later father and daughter wander across to the HRA post. They’re gone for quite a while, and Alan and I are on our third mugs of hot chocolate by the time they return. Linda’s face is still pasty, heavy bags beneath her eyes, her nose glowing with the cold. She smiles a weak smile and pads off to visit the chaarpi again. Her father scrapes the bench, sits beside me and sighs with relief. ‘We’re going down!’ Alan’s eyes briefly meet mine and an eyebrow goes up. We wait, for it’s not our place to pry, after all we hardly know the man, but he wants to share the news.
‘Kidney infection. The German doctor says there’s no way she should go any higher.’ Ray scratches at his week-old beard, then wipes his nose with the back of his engineer’s hand. ‘Maybe there’s a flight we can take from Hongde that’ll get us back to Kathmandu soonest. She’s supposed to be in Japan for the ski season, so we’ll need to get her right. I guess we’ll head out in the morning.’
In Bahundanda Ray doubted his ability to get over the Thorong La, but Linda was going to look after him. In trekking, nothing is certain.
Tonight the chill invades our cell at the Annapurna Hotel. Awake before midnight, I lie listening to the wind while trying to find the courage to get out of my sleeping bag, pull on boots and go for a pee. When at last I do, it’s to find snow falling – big flakes, the size of goose down. It’s still falling as dawn light filters from unseen mountains, and what we can see of Manang reminds me of Christmas. But instead of reindeer, two hefty yaks lie outside our lodge with fresh snow piling round them. No one is going anywhere in this.
Feeling delicate Alan is off his breakfast, but I’m okay and have a double helping of porridge, an omelette, chapatti and several cups of tea. Alan sips his tea and wonders aloud if Mahdri is home yet. When we’d arrived late in the afternoon the day before yesterday, Alan had paid him off. ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘He’ll have been home in no time; downhill with a following wind and no rucksack to slow his pace.’
It had been our plan to go up to Letdar today, move on to Thorong Phedi tomorrow and cross the La the day after, but this snow has put paid to that. Happily we have time to sit and wait, but this morning there’s tension in the dining room. A number of our fellow trekkers have set themselves tight schedules and are frustrated by a day’s forced inactivity; others voice concern that the Thorong La will be impassable for several days, even if the snow stops now, for if it’s snowing like this here, what’s it like 2000 metres up?
We visit the Canadians at the Yak Lodge, where Linda remains in her room, snug in her sleeping bag. Ray is hunched beside the stove, cramped between down-wrapped trekkers. ‘There’s no way we’re going down to Hongde in this,’ he says. ‘We’ll wait a day or two and see what the weather brings.’
Braga is the next village down the trail from Manang. Built in tiers against steep outcrops in a shallow amphitheatre of crags, in the snow it looks like a multi-layered wedding cake in danger of collapse. When we’d passed below it a couple of days ago it had attracted our attention, desert brown against rust-coloured rocks, but we’d been unwilling to stop then as the afternoon was fading and Manang beckoned. Now, with time to explore, we shuffle our way through neglected drifts up to the gompa at the top of the village. The caretaker appears, rattling a bunch of ancient keys, and lets us in.
Innocent of Buddhist culture, I can only feel a reverence I do not understand in this dusty place of nine hundred Himalayan winters, lit as it is by butter lamps with a faltering orange glow. My wandering eyes drift across racks of rectangular manuscripts – scriptures borne down the ages by followers of the Buddha, whose words took shape hundreds of years before Christ began his own ministry. I’m aware of how little I know.
More than a hundred terracotta statues appear as my eyes grow accustomed to the moody light; there are coloured banners hanging from the ceiling, a gong, a drum and smaller instruments used in times of prayer. A large bronze Buddha watches every movement until the caretaker directs us to an upper building where yet more Buddhas gather dust, and in an ante-room we find a collection of archaic knives, swords and rusted muskets, then return to the lower room where silk scarves are placed around our necks with a blessing.
We’ll need that blessing when the snow stops, if we’re to cross the Thorong La.
The stroll back to Manang is through a stark monochrome landscape. The wind has dropped, but heavy clouds fill the valley and empty their contents of damp white flakes. When we call at the Yak to see how Linda is, the room is crowded with more than 50 trekkers as today’s acclimatisation lecture has been transferred here from the HRA building, so we return to the Annapurna to find some French trekkers who’d left yesterday, bound for Letdar. They tell us conditions are very bad up there, which is why they’ve returned, and we speculate that it must be much worse above that. Since it could be days before there’s sufficient improvement to allow a crossing of the pass, the atmosphere is charged with what-ifs and if-onlys.
But next morning all that has changed, the snowfall has ended and remnant clouds scatter to reveal a canopy of deepest blue. Stepping out of the lodge I’m almost blinded by the intensity of light. Flashing crystals of ice prance in the air, the valley is bewitched and I’m excited by its rebirth.
Alan, on the other hand, is still feeling rough. During the night he’d been outside vomiting and now huddles in his sleeping bag as waves of nausea sweep over him. It looks as though Manang will have
