We’re now back safe and sound in the UK after our adventure in Nepal. Let the story telling begin!!!
Despite a few mishaps we had a fantastic time and have gotten to know a lot more about Nepal, not only its incredible landscapes but about its people, the political system, the problems and some of the positive things which are happening to address them. We visited two projects which our sponsored charity The Child Welfare Scheme (CWS) supports in Nepal. They are based in Pokhara and work with street children, providing some schooling, basic health care, a night shelter and a micro bank where the children can save the tiny amounts they earn from sorting rags and borrow money to set up their own little enterprises. Most importantly the projects give the children some Tender Loving Care! The project workers are Nepalese and we could see the warmth and affection they had for the children. Some of them had been street children themselves so understood the situation very well. We were very impressed and it’s made us even more determined to reach the £3,000 target with your help! Remember all the donations go to CWS – nothing has gone on funding the trip - we paid for that ourselves. So if you haven’t donated already please do. Many thanks
 
Just to set the scene. Nepal is a long narrow country lying between India and China and is heavily influenced by those two cultures and powers. It moves from the plains of the Terai bordering India into the central hilly area and up into the high Himalayas which border Tibet and China. Kathmandu is in the Eastern Central part of the country with Pokhara about 200km west in the middle of the country. It has a population of 26 million and has only recently emerged from a war which killed an estimated 14,000 people. The political system is still fairly unstable with lots of small parties forming and reforming coalitions. Nepal has a number of different ethnic groups including significant numbers of Tibetans refugees. People mainly follow the Hindu and Buddhist religions and seem very tolerant of each others beliefs.

Here’s a very shortened version of our story.

We spent a few days in Kathmandu, the taxi ride from the airport quickly showed us life in the raw! The traffic was chaotic, taxis, motorbikes, buses, lorries, tuc tucs all weaving and dodging all tooting continuously at each other, at pedestrians, at cyclists, the odd cow wandering while people walked on the roadside, children coming from school, businessmen in suits, women in beautiful saris, defying the dust and fumes!.All along the roads and streets little stalls selling fruit, drinks, a few items, electrical and phone wires everywhere. A backdrop of huge advertising hoardings advertising mobile phones, cosmetics and other western luxuries, lines of old brick single story buildings punctuated with shiny new glinting glass office blocks.
In the following few days we experienced the paradox of this crazy city, the chaotic noisy streets and by contrast, just a short walk and you’re in quiet squares with temples with a medieval village atmosphere.
We visited the Hindu temple of Pashupatinath, one of the most important holy places in Nepal where cremations take place every day on special stone stages beside the river Bagmati. Imagine watching from a hillside cut by stone paths and terraces lined with small stone temples the smoke rising from the river, holy men sitting or reclining and a huge gang of monkeys ranging across the stone terracing, one moment amusing and cute, the next fierce animals driving an offender into the river. We watched the cremations with a large crowd of Nepalese, the river running grey with the ash.
By contrast, the Buddhist Stupa at Bodhnath is a huge whitewashed solid burial mound domed like a mosque but which rises a hundred feet or more with two or three levels where people can walk. At street level pilgrims process around the Stupa under the prayer flags which hang like bunting from its pinnacle and turn the prayer wheels which are hidden in recesses in the walls. At the top of the huge dome the Buddhas eyes watch over the square and the city. We watched the scene from a rooftop restaurant eating Mo Mos (stuffed dumplings). The square was amazingly calm and quiet despite the mad rush of traffic just a few minutes away.
We visited Bhaktapur which is a medieval town outside Kathmandu, with spacious squares dominated by pagoda temples. Just off these squares there are craftspeople working in the street making pots, selling fruit or crafts. Much of life in Nepal is lived outside on the street, pavement, verandah or yard.

The journey from Kathmandu westward to Pokhara in central Nepal normally takes about 6 hours, it took us 12 as our bus broke down. We watched as the alternator was removed and dismantled and repaired by a couple of young lads watched by an audience of tourists and locals. Throwaway technology has not reached Nepal, things get repaired and re-used many times. As this little drama unfolded the lorries and buses streamed passed with their decorated cabs and horns hooting. This east west road is a lifeline for Kathmandu and lorries and buses are the main form of transport and carry everything in and out of the city. Their cabs are decorated like little temples with colourful tranfers on the windscreens, tassles and bunting hung in the cab which are painted on the outside, leaving the driver very little space to view the road!

Pokhara was our base for the trek. It’s a lively touristy town set on the lovely lake Phewa Tal with the Annapurnas peeking over the hills. The town is full of shops selling pashminas or trekking gear, interspersed with cafes and restaurants, some with gardens running down to the lake, lovely to relax in the shade and watch the slow boats, not an outboard in earshot!

We met Bhimsen, our guide for the trip and Sobid our porter (sounds very colonial but not like that in reality!). Bhimsen is a small wiry man with watchful wise eyes while Sobid is a smiling friendly guy ready to enjoy a joke. He wanted to train as a teacher but had to give up study to support his family. Joe Campbell who with his wife Janet has been working in Nepal for 7 years very kindly arranged and introduced us to Bhimsen and Sobid who looked after us for the whole trek, including during some scary moments!! Joe also arranged our mini tour of Kathmandu so a huge thank you for all his help!

After a few days we were ready to start our trek but not before getting our permits. Nepal is quite bureaucratic with armies of people issuing and checking paperwork. We had to carry two documents to allow us to trek in the Annapurnas. On a beautiful sunny Monday morning we set off from Naipaul about an hour’s taxi ride out off Pokhara which took us along the Seti river valley and then up through forests to the start of our route at Naipaul.

I don’t intend to give a day by day account of the trek but hopefully can give an impression of the landscape and people and our experiences and feelings as we progressed up to the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) at 13,500 ft. – sounds more impressive than 4,000 metres!

We set off on a sloping path which took us through a hamlet of wooden cabins, one or two rooms with verandahs, some with yards. All along the route we caught glimpses of daily life lived mostly outdoors, children getting ready for school, having their hair brushed or washed, women washing cloths by a stand pipe or in a stream, squatting, chatting and podding beans or winnowing rice or millet, men gathered in little groups playing cards or other games. Children and chickens darting about, dogs asleep in the shade. This first morning we met lots of children and teenagers, neat in their school uniforms walking down the path, heading for the local school or catching a bus on the main road. A scene repeated all over the world but still surprising along these remote paths. We learned to say the daily greeting “Namaste” (emphasis on the “e”) and it was returned with a smile. More formally you join your hands, prayerlike and bow slightly. Giving and taking is always done with two hands. The people we met were generally very open and friendly ready with a warm smile, even the women and children who in other societies might be more wary of strangers. Undoubtedly some of this was to try to persuade us to buy a drink or some jewellery but there was an underlying and natural friendliness and the selling never became intrusive.

The trekking routes are well established paths which, no doubt have been used by local people for hundreds of years to connect their remote communities. Donkey and mule trains use them as far as Chomorong and then porters take over. Everything from gas bottles, furniture, fuel, beer, rice and other foodstuffs is carried along these supply routes. We met and made way for hundreds of porters who seem to glide over the paths as they descended or climbed steadily and sure-footed up the steep steps with huge loads on their backs and as often as not, flip flops on their feet. The majority were small wiry men but we also met a few women porters carrying just as large loads. They used traditional baskets, cargo bags or rucksacks secured with rope or webbing which caught the load mid back and then looped up to the head or forehead. Their neck, back and leg muscles must be incredibly strong. There were resting places all along the route with stone benches to rest your rucksack, catch your breath and drink the all important water.

We stayed in lodges on the way, a cross between bed and breakfast and youth hostels. They offered shared rooms, basic toilet and washing facilities and some had showers. “Bathroom” usually meant a stand pipe and a bucket! They provided a set menu of dishes and we ate in communal dining rooms which doubled up as accommodation for porters or as overflow for trekkers. In tiny kitchens with poor lighting and an assortment of cooking implements an amazing variety of western and Nepalese dishes were produced, ranging from the staples Dhal Bhaat, garlic soup, stuffed dumplings (Mo Mos) to fried eggs and omelettes and porridge for breakfast. It was dark by 6 o’clock so we were often in bed by 8pm and aimed to be on our way in the morning by 7 or before. On the way up we stayed in Kimche, Chhomrong, Bamboo, Deorali and ABC. The group had to split in Deorali because Rowan got ill and had to be taken down to Dovan in the middle of the night – a very dangerous trip which Chuck and Bhimsen opted to undertake using head torches to navigate very steep paths and some very risky river crossings. It left Hugh and I and Sobid to continue up to ABC the next morning which we did. Happily Chuck and Bhimsen were able to get up to ABC the day after but Rowan had to stay in Dovan until we rejoined him a few days later. I also got altitude sickness and needed to be helped down from ABC as my eyesight and balance were affected – it took us a day with Hugh and Sobid supporting me for the first few hours. On our return we were reunited in Dovan, then headed back to Chhomrong and then to Landruk (one of our favourites) and finally to Damphus and to Phedi followed by a taxi ride back to Pokhara.
However that’s jumping ahead!
We trekked through a variety of landscapes from rich valleys with hillside terraces of rice and millet, small vegetable patches with beans scrambling through other crops. The corn had already been harvested and the cobs were stacked to dry. We moved from the fertile hillsides into forests of rhododendron and bamboo and as we climbed higher up through the Modi Coli gorge and into the Annapurna Sanctuary vegetation became scarcer and eventually we were walking across moorland scattered with boulders left by a glacier thousands of years ago. Now the panorama of the Annapurnas was all around us and bright clouds like bleached driftwood hung in the valleys beneath the massive snow covered peaks and deep blue sky. We met a shepherd with a mixed flock of sheep and goats picking their way through bracken and scree looking for green shoots. A scene so ancient and universal that it fitted perfectly with this primeval landscape.

I wasn’t sure what to expect at the Annapurna Base Camp or as it is always referred to, ABC. As it turned out it consisted mainly of low stone buildings roofed with corrugated iron sheeting painted a deep blue. It nestled beneath Annapurna South ringed by a low ridge on top of which were a series of memorials to climbers and expeditions who perished on the slopes of the mountain. Strings of prayer flags fluttered from stone cairns creating a mournful scene in the dying light. On the other side of the ridge was a surprise, as you stood on the edge of the ridge and looked down you were looking at a moonscape, a sterile valley of rocks and sand, the debris of a melted glacier. Looking back and down the valley over ABC the massive face of Manchapuchura was lit by the evening sun, golds, reds and oranges gradually draining to grey. That mountain had been with us right from the first morning in Pokhara when we looked out our bedroom window and saw it pointing like a huge arrow head into the blue sky. Perhaps fanciful to say but it seemed almost like a huge Buddha overlooking the vast landscape. Manchapachure or the Fishtail is a sacred mountain which should not be climbed. Apparently some expeditions have ascended to below the summit but have respected the religious belief that no one should reach the summit. One fascinating feature of this mountain is that you mostly see a snow covered triangular peak against a deep blue sky and wonder why its called the Fishtail. Its only when you get into the Annapurna Sanctuary that you realise that what you’ve been looking at is only one of two peaks with a ridge stretching between them like a fishtail, hence the name.

After my painful and unsteady descent from ABC with blurred eyesight and sense of balance disturbed and Hugh and Sobid supporting me, one on each side it was a relief to get down to Dovan and meet up with Rowan and eventually Chuck and Bhimsen returning from ABC. While we’d been trekking the festival of Duwali was taking place and we were in Chhomrong for the last night. Garlands of flowers, mainly marigolds were strung across the entrance to each village and over doorways. On the path into Chhomrong we met a group of children who had set up a little ambush for tourists. They were collecting money for a dance performance they were staging on a grass stage above the path, as ever, the girls being the more elegant dancers! That evening we got our opportunity to join some of the traditional dancing for the end of Duwali. A little troupe of teenagers arrived in the village with a few adults and proceeded to dance and sing. Bhimsen joined in with a kind of dragon dance, low to the ground with elaborate arm and hand movements. Rowan’s was a wilder 70s disco interpretation with flailing arms while I tried to look a bit more ethnic and graceful! The young people seemed unfazed by our clumsy interventions. As the troupe was moving on to the next lodge a collection was taken up for the local school and one of the women (teacher?) gave a little speech and thanked us for our donations – just as at any fundraising do!
 
 
 
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