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NepalI visited Nepal the last two weeks of February 1996. For most of that time, I was trekking. I also spent a few days visiting the child I sponsor through Save the Children. Here are some of my observations, followed by an account of the trek and the village trip.
Everything I said about telephones, bathrooms, traffic, animals, and waiting in India applies to Nepal as well. It's also a predominantly Hindu country, though Buddhist influences are strong, especially closer to Tibet. It seems cleaner than India; people sweep and wash down walkways, and trash bins are where you need them. Nepalese seem more laid-back, too. The touts in Katmandu are just amateurs compared to those in New Delhi. The main hassles come from small children along the popular trekking routes, who have developed begging habits. The appearance of a tourist triggers a continuous stream of nagging for sweets, pens, and money.
Two weeks were not enough. I wish I'd have had two more weeks to explore the Katmandu valley and trek to the Everest base camp.
Nepal: The TripIn Nepal, unlike in India, I seemed destined for every possible weather variation, every kind of precipitation. I visited many different climatic zones, from humid jungle to cloud-shrouded mountain ridge, from the cool forests of giant rhododendron (lali guras in Nepali) to the desolate Tibetan plateau. Within the space of a few days, I went from being too cold to leave my sleeping bag to too hot to wear shoes.
Nepal is mostly vertical, so farmers have cut terraces into the hillsides, and from a distance they look wrinkled and baggy, like elephants' knees. Villages hug the hills at impossible angles. Roads wind through innumerable hairpins with no guardrails, just stone blocks or sometimes just stones. Above it all, the Himalayas rise up like steeples.
The Himalayas are the result of the Indian subcontinent colliding with the rest of Asia, raising what used to be a seabed to heights above ten thousand feet and buckling the earth's surface to form high, jagged peaks. These permanently snowbound mountains provide the backdrop for trekking and attract mountaineers from around the world. Dozens of glacial valleys and river-cut gorges create a rugged but beautifully sculpted terrain.
Much of the country, the side nearer to India, is flat and low. Most of the population lives in this area, called the terai. Here they produce most of the food and manufactured goods. It's an area few tourists visit except to go on wildlife safaris in Chitwan National Park.
Nepal gets by with a small network of 2-lane highways, but much of the country is inaccessible by car. The highways look like misguided foreign-aid projects, built without teaching anyone how to maintain them. My road trips in Nepal make my white-knuckle rides in India seem like siestas.
Nepal has no railroad. I used to think it was too backward, then I thought it was too poor, but now I think it's just not flat enough.
The Nepalese national dish is dal bhat: a heap of rice the size of Texas, one or more Louisianas of stewed vegetables, and a side bowl of lentil soup, the dal in dal bhat. For special guests, meat or fish replaces one of the vegetables. Sounds tempting, eh? After five or six hours of trekking, dal bhat tastes pretty good.
Nepalese people eat dal bhat twice a day, late morning and early evening, seven days a week. Traditionally, it's eaten with the right hand. You plunk bits of dal and vegetables on your rice, moosh them around, and roll the mixture into a little ball that you pop into your mouth. When you are done, you wash your hand with the water that, if you are an American tourist, you haven't dared to drink.
Popular trekking areas are the lower elevations around the base of Everest and the base of the Annapurna range: Annapurna I, II, III, IV, and Annapurna South. Peaks range from around 7000m to over 8000m, while the trekking routes lie between 1000m and 4000m. Climate changes dramatically within this range; higher up, you see tundra and tiny alpine flowers, and lower down, bananas and oranges grow. Trails are well-established and maintained; they are the roads that connect villages in this car-less region and are used by far more Nepalese than tourists.
Trekking requires a government permit, and in the Annapurna region an additional fee to fund ACAP (the Annapurna Conservation Area Project). ACAP sponsors conservation measures such as reforestation, waste management, and solar hot water. ACAP also helps lodge owners improve their services and set fair prices. You see the same menu in all the lodges along the Jomsom route; they only vary by which words are misspelled.
Trekking in Nepal is at least as strenuous as in the Sierras. I wouldn't recommend it for a beginner unless you hire a porter to carry your pack. (Sherpa refers to a specific Nepalese tribe and doesn't seem to be in use as the common term for a pack-carrier.) I hired a porter for two days to hike through snow at an elevation where I was sucking wind even with no pack.
Chandra, the porter, was thin, as most Nepalese are. He wore a scarf tied like a bandanna around his head, a pair of torn jeans that would fetch a lot of money in the US, and a weathered fleece jacket. On his feet he wore no socks, just a pair of beat-up sneakers. Yet he was more sure-footed and fast than either my companions in their hiking boots or me in my high-tech running shoes. We met porters who wore only rubber flip-flops and carried huge loads: crates, tanks of kerosene, bundles of firewood, baskets of rocks.
Chandra gave me a bamboo walking stick. I don't usually hike with a stick because I don't want to become dependent on one, but after our foray through the snow, I was ready to marry that stick, it saved my neck so many times.
I met Tim and Tienshu a couple of times when I was in India and learned that they were going to Nepal at about the same time that I was. We made plans to meet in Katmandu, but I ran into them totally by luck, just as they were getting their trekking permits, and so I was able to join them when they left the next day.
Tim and Tienshu were four months into a year of traveling. They had been to London, Athens, Turkey, Egypt, and India so far, and would continue after Nepal to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Hong Kong, and through the PRC to Beijing, where Tienshu was born and raised. They had both worked for MCI, but quit their jobs and got married just before they started traveling. Tim is always joking with Tienshu, and she's always punching him in the arm. He's ten years older and more traveled (he spent time in Central and South America), but in some ways he's more of a kid than Tienshu. Tienshu has lived in the US for nine years, coming over initially to go to college. She was looking forward to seeing the changes in Beijing; as she remembers it, no one even owned a car, but now she hears there are terrible traffic jams.
I was surprised at some of the things they talked about until I found out they'd only been married four months. My habit was to lag them on the trail by ten yards or more, not just to give them time together, but also because Tim is six-foot-something and Tienshu, though a foot shorter, is used to keeping up with him. We got along great and made an interesting trio: an American man with an American passport, a Chinese woman with a Chinese passport, and a Chinese woman with an American passport.
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After New Delhi, Katmandu seemed clean and small, but it has its traffic-snarled mazes of narrow streets as well. I stayed in Katmandu only long enough to run errands, so I didn't manage to tour the many temples and palaces.
I was pleased and surprised to find a greater variety of western goods in Katmandu than I'd even found in New Delhi. In the touristy Thamel area, you can get German bread, lasagna, hot dogs, and fried chicken, as well as the full range of Indian food. You can buy T-shirts, underwear, camping gear, and huge, colorful mad-hatter hats that say "Look, I'm a tourist."
To get to the Annapurna area, we took an 8-hour bus ride from Katmandu to Pokhara, my first long-distance bus trip. It's only 200 km, but it takes 8 hours because of the road. In places, there are more potholes than road surface. The driver stopped three times, twice within the first three hours and then once again to view the wreck of a bus that had gone over the embankment into the river the night before. It was a sobering sight. The roof had been completely sheared off and was lying downstream. Someone said five people had died. And then the driver didn't stop again until we got to Pokhara, five hours later, a busload of full bladders. Maybe he was in a hurry to get off the road.
Farm near Tatopani
Pokhara is a pretty town, at least the tourist section
around the lakeside. Several of the Annapurnas are visible, looking
as though they are painted on the sky. Stores sell trekking
supplies, since this is where people stock up for their journeys.
In Nepal, you can get all kinds of name-brand camping gear. Just
name the brand, and they will slap that logo on your pack or boots
or jacket. They don't even do a very good job of faking the logos,
but the equipment is adequate, and the price is right.
In Pokhara, I wore my running shoes for the first time since I left the US. I felt funny wearing shoes that cost what most of the people around me would earn in a year. And I had had this dread ever since Anita's shit-on-shoe experience in New Delhi. Sure enough, the first half hour I had them on, I slipped and dunked one foot in an open sewer--filthy, stinky water. I couldn't get it clean, but soon it wouldn't matter any more.
There are many routes to trek around the Annapurnas. If you want to go where we went, here's what you do: Go to Pokhara. Spend the night in this quiet lakeside town, thinking you wouldn't mind spending a few more. But that would be too easy. In the morning, find the old bus stop in Pokhara, which is just a big empty field with no signs. Get on a bus full of locals and endure an hour's bumpy ride, breathing smells too exotic to identify. Get off in Phedi and start trekking. Climb a stone staircase, the first of many, for about 45 minutes, straight up 800m to Dhampus. Stop for lunch and get your wind back. Continue climbing and head for Beri Kharka. Discover that Beri Kharka isn't where your map says it should be, and end up hiking in twilight. Collapse at the first lodge you see, where you are the only guests. The dining room is outside; there's a fire for heat and candles for light. Take the first of many bucket baths, in the dark, in a stone and mud hut. Sleep comfortably, thanks to polypropylene and goose down.
Terrace fields near Landrung
In the morning, set off for Landrung, which is a
pleasantly level trek for about an hour. Enjoy the view of the Modi
Khola gorge. In Landrung, descend a stone staircase for a knee-shaking, calf-shortening half hour, down 500m to cross the river.
Then go straight up the other side, a never-ending staircase, where
you can only see a couple of switchbacks ahead, above you. Take
many, many rest stops to admire the view and puff. Eight hundred
thigh-burning meters later, arrive at Ghandrung, where they have
electricity! solar heated water! telephone! television! and the
headquarters of ACAP (Annapurna Conservation Area Project). Meet a
friendly Brit who is interning at ACAP. Hear rumors that there is
a meter of snow at the Annapurna base camp, where you are headed.
And you are already cold at night, and it has hailed, rained, and
sleeted, and not one of the three of you has waterproof shoes, and
one of you, who shall remain nameless, is only wearing running
shoes, for crying out loud. Decide to cut over to meet up with the
trail to Jomsom. Hear rumors that there is snow in that direction,
too. Also hear reports of two robberies that occurred on that route
last month. Hire a guide to carry your pack through the snow,
protect you, and keep you from getting lost. Trek up as high as
3000m, where snow drifts a meter high on either side of the trail,
but the trail itself is either packed snow or slushy mud, and other
trekkers have made footprints for you to follow. Spend a very cold
night in Tadapani huddled around a kerosene heater along with
everyone's wet socks.
View of Nilgiri from Jomsom
In the morning, slip and slide over the mountain, up
waterfalls and down ridges, to Ghorepani and the trail to Jomsom.
Meet up with a friendly group of Aussies, Canadians, and
Catalonians (not Spaniards, huff!). Watch big dandruff snow fall
while you warm your toes, which have miraculously stayed dry, by
the big woodstove. In the morning, pick your way down icy
staircases, down 1600m, a knee-wobbler. Descend from the alpine
freezer to the summertime paradise at Tatopani. Enjoy sunny weather
all day. Have your first head-to-toe hot shower in 4 days, and bliss
out at being able to sleep with your head outside your sleeping
bag. Discover why they call this trail the Apple Pie trail--not just
because tourist-oriented lodge owners serve that dessert along this
route, but because it's comparatively easy. You can see the tops of
staircases from the bottom. Western amenities like chocolate cake
and fried chicken are available. Soak your sore legs in the hot
springs that Tatopani (Nepali for hot water) is named for before
setting out the next day on a pleasant, rolling-hill jaunt that
follows the Kali Ghandaki river valley, the deepest river valley
in the world. Encounter a thigh-burner hill an hour outside of
Ghasa, your destination this night. Rethink that Apple-Pie theory,
but realize that you're only a very long day's trek from your ultimate
goal, Jomsom.
In the cloudy morning, have a jaunty walk gradually uphill until you reach Lete, where there is a steep but not too long climb. Here the wind starts to blow, hard and cold, and the rain begins to fall intermittently. Tell yourself this isn't so bad. The trail goes up and down, up and down. Tell yourself you can hack this. The river valley opens up, wider and wider, a giant floor of glacial sand and rubble. Trek right up the middle of this unsheltered expanse, with the wind howling at your back, then at your left side, then in your face, and then on your right side for a while, at times hard enough to knock you off balance. Hear thunder roll and feel the rain pelting, and realize that your left side must be wet but you can't tell because you can't feel that side any more. Start to wonder if your companions ahead of you are lost; but how can you be lost, you're following a river. Spot your destination from far away, the orange trapezoidal roof of a temple in Tukche. Walk and walk, but it doesn't get bigger. Walk and walk some more, stumbling over fist-size pebbles and loose sand. Finally, know that it's still true that if you walk long enough toward a place, you eventually get there. Right away, find a happy lodge with a pleasant owner and lots of hot coals. Thaw out and dry out and change into thermal underwear. Watch the wind and rain from behind a glass pane with your feet by the fire, and say life is good.
In the morning, dress warmly because the day's hike is flat, short, and windy. Feel smug when the wind howls at your back and your Goretex and polypropylene save you. Barely break a sweat, and arrive at Jomsom after just three hours of trekking. It's raining and blowing like yesterday. Discover that Jomsom is no better equipped than any of the other villages you've stayed at. Endure a lukewarm shower and wrap yourself in your last clean clothes, happy to retire the sweat-caked, stinking ones. Discover that the Europeans at your hotel, about a dozen of them, have been waiting for three days for a flight back to Pokhara; because of the storms, no planes or helicopters have come up. Realize that you are stuck, and Jomsom looks particularly charmless. The storm keeps you from day hiking, and you're kind of trekked out anyway.
Sit and watch TV, nurse the cold you just caught, and finish your last postcard. Engage in bouts of gallows humor with a guy from New York, who is getting increasingly anxious to leave. Long for heat, sun, humidity, something to do. Feel like you are in exile at the end of the world, with new prisoners arriving each day.
Nilgiri in the clouds
Wake up the next day to three inches of new snow and
clearing skies. Stand on the roof just to watch the clouds
disappear and the sun break through. See the helicopter land.
Yahoo! Get confirmed on the fourth flight, and spend the morning
taking pictures of the mountain peaks now visible. Take the
helicopter back to Pokhara, and the plane to Katmandu. Take a
shower, shove your pack at the laundry man, and luxuriate in
civilization.
Save the Children is a misnomer. It's not a foster parent program. When you sponsor a child, you fund programs that benefit the whole community. The programs provide adult education in literacy, arithmetic, health and sanitation, cottage industries, and sustainable farming, plus a small amount of material aid (medicines and school supplies). Most of the participants are women, so a better name would be Save the Mothers, but I suppose they wouldn't get as many donors.
Save the Children selects program areas according to need, establishes target goals, and shifts to another area when the goals are achieved. Initially, I sponsored a child in Indonesia, and then another child from the same village when the first child turned 18 and I couldn't "save" him any more. They shifted me to Nepal three years ago when the program in Indonesia reached its goals. I like that their programs are not bottomless pits, that they actually finish.
One of the Save the Children staff, Neena, brought a car and driver to take me to meet my sponsored child. It was a butt-jarring 10-hour journey to the state of Siraha. To my horror, we headed out of Katmandu on the same Death Highway I took to Pokhara. It turns out that it's the national highway, the only road out of town. We'd actually have to go west for a while to reach the road that went east. That road was in no better condition, however. For short stretches it was fine, but then it would deteriorate into tiny bits of pavement amid cratering pits and then disappear altogether, becoming a dirt path over a series of buckled humps designed for the maximum loft of any vehicle and its passengers. I thought that the 4-wheel drive company car was the perfect vehicle for Nepal, but now I think a lunar rover would be more appropriate. At times we went no faster than people walking next to us. At 6 pm when it was getting dark and I was getting hungry, but I couldn't eat any of the food I'd brought for fear of biting off my tongue, I was beginning to wonder why Save the Children hadn't chosen one of the villages we passing; they looked poor enough to me. I almost began to envy the other sponsor who had shown up for a visit the same day; he only had to trek for 10 hours up 2000 feet of vertical to see his child.
We spent the night at the women's quarters of the Save the Children office in the village of Dhangadhi. The next day Neena introduced me to all of the office staff and had them talk about their work. My schedule included, in addition to the meeting with my child, a visit to a mobile clinic, where women received prenatal and postnatal care, and a candlemaking workshop, where they learned to mass-produce candles and package them for sale. We saw part of a gender-sensitivity class that one of the staff women was teaching for another organization. At night, we visited two literacy classes; each had about twenty women. They attend the 3-hour class after working all day, every night for six months. When they complete the class, they are encouraged to form groups to start businesses so that they can have their own incomes. The women seemed strong, not afraid to speak up, comfortable in their groups. They were more self-assured than when their men were around.
My sponsored child Asha lives in a village on the main highway. Some of the other places we went to in Siraha can only be reached by driving off the highway over rutted oxcart-roads for half an hour or more. In these villages, cars are rarely seen and draw a big crowd when they appear.
Asha's home is just a short drive off the road. It's a clean, sturdy mud hut with a thatched roof and a courtyard in front where the family receives visitors. All of the village kids, about twenty or so, came crowding around when our car pulled up. Asha was standing under the eaves, and her mother was tending a small shop, really just several piles of packaged goods, on the front step. They didn't seemed surprised but they didn't seem prepared either. Her father was away working in Katmandu at the time, a slack time in the fields.
Save the Children: Neena, Asha, me, Asha's mom and sister
Asha was tall and willowy compared to the other kids. She
had Katherine Hepburn eyes, alert and intelligent. Through Neena,
I asked about her school, her family, her life. She lives with her
parents, grandfather, two brothers and younger sister, seven people
in a large one-room hut. She said she liked English class, and that
she wanted to pursue higher education. She had been to Katmandu and
to Janakpur, but those were the only times she'd been outside her
village. She looked pretty healthy, just on the verge of becoming
a woman at age 12.
Asha's mother was supposed to be 28 but looked about 50, with thinning, wrinkled skin and gray hair, but twinkling eyes and laugh lines. She got a grant to start her shop under a program called the Poorest of the Poor, which I hope no one ever translates for her. She only spoke when I got up to leave, saying she was sorry she was too poor to reciprocate my gifts (I brought socks for everyone and a big chocolate bar that got smashed up). Asha smiled then too, out of politeness and relief. I gave her stamps and postcards from the US; the picture postcards were a big hit with the kids.
It's hard to view such a different life without feeling like America is a foolishly extravagant place. We are obsessed with appearances, afraid of being fat, ugly, or old. You have to be young and beautiful your whole life. We funnel money into our personal appearance, image and status, the exterior veneer, not the substance. So many gadgets appear on the market at Christmas time because no one knows how to give each other what they really need, what they would cherish, what they would give each other if only it were possible. No one is sated enough to think about the needs of others as well as their own needs in the future. It's not wrong to have more than other people. But it's a terrible mistake to spend the world's limited resources on things that can't possibly make you happy.