BRIDGET AND ROVER’S HIMALAYAN HULLABALOO
Calories consumed - 3,586,392 (each); Alcohol units consumed – top secret;
Wild animals seen – 3; Wild animals sat on – 2; Altitude reached: 3193m (10,537ft);
Late nights – a lot! After three days of lazing around in Kathmandu, savouring the wonderful food and browsing the plethora of souvenir shops, I made my way to the airport early one morning to pick up Bridget who was arriving from London, via Abu Dhabi. After watching what seemed like several hundred people emerge from the plane there was still no sign of her. Just as I was about to conclude she had been abducted in the Middle East and file a missing persons, she appeared, pushing a much smaller trolley than everyone else, who all seemed to have brought in an inordinate amount of goods. Much hugging and “It’s so good to see you-s” later, we made our way to Thamel, the hustling, bustling, vibrant backpacker district of Kathmandu where I had been staying since my arrival from Tibet a few days previously. Lunch was the order of the day, accompanied by several G&Ts. We had lots to catch up on and spent a pleasant afternoon eating, drinking and gossiping before leaving our lunch venue and moving straight on to our dinner venue for more food, wine and chat. It reminded me of my days in PR, the only difference being I didn’t have an expense account anymore! The next morning we were slightly ruing the excesses of the night before as we had to get up very early to catch a bus to Pokhara, 150 kilometres from Kathmandu, where our trek was starting. Initially we had planned to have a couple of days in Kathmandu first but the Maoist guerillas, who are fighting a war with the Nepali government and seem to be the ones calling the shots here, announced a strike. This meant that for two days there would be no transport hence the change of plan. 6.45 am saw us standing at the bus stop, not quite as bright-eyed and bushy tailed as we should have been, to find that our bus was the only one which was absent. A couple of young men assured us that it would arrive soon but we began to wonder when 7.30am came and went, along with a number of other buses. Eventually it arrived and we actually made up time, arriving an hour earlier than scheduled. It transpired the driver had been on the sauce the previous night too. Pokhara is the main destination for anyone going trekking in Nepal as it lies in a valley near the Annapurna mountains. It is smaller, friendlier and more peaceful than Kathmandu - the ideal place to kick back for a few days. Kicking back was not on our agenda however, as the next morning we were leaving for a five-day trek to Poon Hill. Santosh, a very smiley, young, local man was our guide and Goma, a 20-year old trainee female porter was carrying the rucksack. Equality has reached the Himalaya! After meeting Goma, we expressed slight concern to the hotel owner about whether our backpack would be too heavy for her as she was very slight. We were re-assured that all Nepalese women carry heavy loads from a young age and that she would be fine but that didn’t stop us asking her numerous times. Each time she replied she was okay and sometimes even managed to make what was at least a 15kg load look like it was just a rucksack full of cotton wool. Santosh rechristened Bridget as Kate because he said she reminded him of Kate Winslet and I was known for the duration as Luna (as opposed to Loony) because he couldn’t pronounce my name properly.
Day one involved a short car journey to Nyapul from where we would start walking. Initially it was all fairly easy and we ambled along in the sunshine, past villages where water buffaloes ploughed fields and women sifted rice grains from their husks in large sieves similar to those used by the gold prospectors in Spaghetti Westerns. After a traditional Nepali lunch of dal bhat (lentil soup, rice, pickle and vegetable curry) the gradient began to get steeper and I soon began to feel it. While Bridget had been busy doing a little training in the gym, I had not. My lack of fitness, combined with smoking and a nasty, chesty cough was making the going a bit tough so I was very relieved when we arrived at our first guesthouse mid-afternoon. Hile was situated on a steep mountainside from where we were afforded a magnificent view of the opposite valley with its hundreds of rice terraces and scattered dwellings. While we enjoyed some hot ginger tea, Santosh pointed out a village on the other side, at a considerably high elevation. “That’s where we are going tomorrow,” he said.
“You have got to be kidding,” I said.
“Don’t worry, it’s only about 3000 steps – no problem.”
“Mmmmm, can I just stay here and meet you on the way back?” I ventured in the vain hope that he and Bridget might agree. No such luck. That evening we met Henk, a Belgian, who was doing the same trek but was slightly better at it and three lovely German ladies, Ursula, Brigitte and Eva who were on their way back down. “Ah, you haff tree towsant steps…..ees just up and up and up…..you vill be very tiyert tomorrow night,” Ursula informed us while Bridget and I ordered a beer to reduce the mental anguish. The next day I was disheartened to see the weather was fine. Secretly I had been hoping for a torrential downpour so that we wouldn’t have to leave but clearly my rain dance had not impressed the weather Gods as there was a distinct lack of precipitation. Santosh found me some walking sticks from a bamboo grove and off we set. Down and down for the first hour then up. And up. And up. And up. There was no end in sight. Just steps – and a lot of them. My heart was hammering against my chest like a wrongly condemned man on a cell door and my legs were flitting between leaden, lethargic and limp. Bridget on the other hand was going great guns - she was obviously a mountain goat in a previous life. “Bridget, if I didn’t love you, I would hate you for making me do this.”
“Good job you love me then isn’t it.”
“Grrrr,” I muttered under my breath, wondering how I’d ever managed to summit Kilimanjaro which was far tougher than this and vowing never to go near a mountain again. At various points along the way we had to stop to let convoys of donkeys and horses pass, carrying, up and down the mountain, the supplies which keep all the trekkers fed and watered during their expeditions. Oh, how many times I was tempted just to jump on the back of one and take the easy way up!
Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity but was in fact only about six hours, we arrived at our guesthouse in Ghoropani, 1150 metres (3,800 ft) higher up the mountain than we’d started that morning. We were knackered but happily the guesthouse had a dining room cum lounge with a huge chimney and after a hot, candlelit shower (solar power - no electricity up this high) we plonked ourselves in front of it with a beer and met a lovely Israeli couple, Sharon and Netta and a Frenchman whose name I forget. The evening was spent playing cards and discussing world politics and the effects of Yassar Arafat’s death. Santosh also introduced us to the delights (!!!) of the Mustang coffee, which is the Nepali equivalent of an Irish coffee only instead of whisky it is local wine which is added. He insisted it would be good for my chest. I insisted it was minging but drank it anyway. The next morning we were to summit Poon Hill where we would be rewarded with amazing views of the Annapurna range (all over 26,000 ft) and the strikingly beautiful, but as yet unclimbed because it’s sacred, Macchapuchre. The sky had turned cloudy that night so Santosh told us he would check it early in the morning and then wake us up if the going was good. Three hours later, at least that’s what it felt like, he was banging on our door and telling us to be ready in 15 minutes. I know he said early but 4.20 AM!!!!!!!!!!!! Neither Bridget nor I are morning people and are especially not good that early in the morning (unless it is 4.20am because we’ve been up all night at a good party) so there was little talk and even less action. We slowly and sleepily pulled our clothes on, re-packed the rucksack and made our way downstairs. More steps to be climbed, in the pitch black, with only a couple of torches to light the way. I felt stroppy and Bridget felt nauseous due to the altitude. Santosh told us we didn’t have to continue if we didn’t feel like it but we are determined Brits and insisted we would get there no matter what. Two hours later we did, just as the sun was rising….but also as the clouds were closing in. We had only a few moments to see the stunning vista of Macchapuchre and the Annapurnas before they were completely concealed. Two cups of hot tea later (the Nepalis have makeshift café’s even at this height, bringing the hot water up each morning for the trekkers) we headed back down for breakfast and then set off again. It was another tough day. I was coughing non-stop and having to rest a lot and Bridget had begun to suffer a pain in her knee. But in the immortal words of Jane Fonda, “No pain, no gain” and sure enough it was worth it when we arrived at our guesthouse at Tadapani late that afternoon and saw the view. It was breathtaking - a crisp, cloudless, blue sky and huge, snowcapped mountains rising to the heavens. Later that evening, after the best lasagna I’ve tasted for a long time, we sat around a huge wooden table, which was heated from underneath by a burning furnace, and played cards. As a treat Santosh let us have a wee nip of that well known whisky – Bagpiper - which didn’t taste at all bad and seemed to ease our aches and pains nicely. Day four was the start of the descent which was good for me but bad for Bridget’s knee. She strapped it up and took some painkillers. Thankfully it wasn’t too long a day, only around five hours of walking. We reached Ghandruk mid afternoon to another stunning panorama. Clouds flirted with the peaks but every so often there was a clear view. That night we caught up with Henk again, the first time we’d seen him since day one. I asked him to join us play cards. “No thank you,” he replied, “I hate cards.” That’s what he thought! Twenty minutes later, after witnessing our hilarity over Goma’s incessant cheating we managed to convince him. After dinner and several beers we started on the Mount Everest whisky, which is made in Nepal in conjunction with a distillery in Scotland. There seemed little Scottish influence however, as it was not terribly tasty but that didn’t stop the five of us getting through a bottle of it. The tipsier we got, the more hilarious the games became particularly when we played the animal game. (Too complicated to describe – just take my word for it that it’s best played when everyone has had a few). The staff and some other trekkers looked on, bewildered, as all manner of bestial noises and actions came from our table. Goma was did such a pathetic impersonation of a cockerel, as if it was dying a slow, painful death rather than proudly announcing the break of day, that each time it was her turn we ended up crying with laughter. It was a late night but a great night. The next morning was also late, but not at all great. The only consolation was that Henk was also feeling hungover. Goma and Santosh on the other hand had been up for hours and had a spring in their step. We later discovered this was because Santosh had been secretly pouring his whisky into everyone else’s glasses when we weren’t looking. The debris of the previous night was still sitting on the table when we eventually emerged from our room and the staff all greeted us with a big smile, “Namaste, you want BIG breakfast this morning?” “Bleughh-mmm-arrgh. Can we have some tea please?” In light of our physical and mental state, the last day seemed to be never-ending but eventually at 4.30 pm we arrived back at our guesthouse in Pokhara – exhausted. A bit later, just as I was nicely tucked up in bed and Bridget was about to switch off the light she said, in an ever so slightly alarmed voice:
“Lynnie, there is something big and black on the wall”.
“Oh no, please, please not a spider,” I replied whilst fumbling for my glasses in the manner of Thelma from Scooby Do.
“Erm, no, it’s a cockroach.” Cockroach was putting it mildly – it was in fact Mr Massive Mutant Cockroach. Now, I’m not particularly fond of roaches but, as they are not spiders, I was willing to try and catch it with the aid of an empty McVities Digestive box. It was a bit too fast however and saw me coming. As instantly as it was on the floor and making a record-breaking run for it, Bridget and I were on the bed and trying hard not to look like hysterical women who jump on a bed and get hysterical. After a bit of shoo-ing, we chased it into the bathroom and slammed the door shut, hoping it would either be squashed or make a bid for freedom out the window. There was another strike on so the next couple of days were spent lazing around, window-shopping, eating and relaxing. Santosh invited us to his family’s house for dinner and the following night we took him and Goma out for dinner to thank them for a wonderful trip. We were sad to leave them as they had been great company for five days. Goma had given both of us a Nepali name; Bridget was Priti, meaning loveable and I was Puja, meaning to worship. Sadly the weather turned nasty on our last day and our scheduled paraglide over the valley was cancelled. Perhaps it was a good thing as I’m sure we would both have dropped out of the sky due to the amount of food we had consumed over the previous week. That night the cockroach re-appeared (did he ever leave?!) ON THE END OF MY BED! This time we enlisted the help of a night porter who brought its miserable life to an end with one swift whack of his shoe. Hah! Royal Chitwan National Park was our next destination – a mere five hours to the south in the plains of Nepal. We travelled with an Australian guy called Eddie who had booked the same tour as us. The hotel was situated on the bank of a river marking the boundary of the jungle which, according to all the brochures we had read, was full of tigers, rhinoceros and other wild animals. As we stepped out of our room an elephant happened to stroll past. Now, I knew they were big, but I didn’t realise they were that big! That evening the three of us sat by a campfire next to the river, with Ganga, the hotel-owner, Robin from Holland, who reckoned he looked like James Dean (he had blond hair and blue eyes) and Francine, an older woman from San Francisco who had been an original hippy back in the 70s and had once gone to Janis Joplin’s house to buy marijuana. Just as we were enjoying a beer and putting the world to rights, a small (when I say small, I mean about the size of a Smart car) rhino wandered into the garden, pushed aside a chair, plonked itself down by the fire and promptly went to sleep. “This is Beauty,” Ganga told us. “She is an orphan and the villagers look after her but she is a rascal. In the morning my garden and my furniture will be ruined. We were all a bit gob smacked at sitting next to a rhino but not too gob smacked to take it in turns to sit on her back. “Never in my life did I ever think I’d get to sit on a rhinoceros,” Eddie remarked. Ganga’s prophecy was spot on - the next morning we noticed two trees had been uprooted and the flower beds were trampled. After breakfast we were off on a crocodile spotting mission in a dug out canoe. I told everyone not to worry if things got hairy as I’d met two Australian lads back in Shanghai whose father had been a crocodile hunter and they had given me precise instructions on how to, for want of a better word, disarm one. The only slight problem was you needed at least five people for the job and there were only four of us. (In case you are interested, here is how it’s done. One person covers the croc’s eyes with something to disorientate it while, simultaneously, three grab its tail to stop it thrashing around and the fifth wires its jaws shut – easy peesy, job done). A few kilometres up the river, where we were to disembark for our jungle walk, we still hadn’t seen any but then ten minutes later Babu, our guide, pointed to a sleeping monster on the opposite bank. Mmmmm, they are quite big too. Before we began the jungle walk, Babo gave us a pep talk on what to do if we happened to bump into a Royal Bengal tiger (do not run – walk slowly backwards away from it), a rhinoceros (climb the nearest tree – if there are no scaleable trees run quickly around any tree and if there are no trees, run in a zigzag motion – fast) or a sloth bear (don’t run, don’t climb trees just stand there and make a lot of noise). Not at all nervous (okay, just a bit) we trampled through the undergrowth for a couple of hours but sadly saw nothing. Deflated we returned to the hotel for lunch. The elephants were being bathed in the river just below the restaurant so Robin and Eddie got in the water and climbed on board but the elephants were having none of it and kept throwing them off into the water. There was no way I was going in - I did not wish to have to try out the crocodile disarming technique for real. After lunch I continued my new hobby of mounting large animals and we went for an elephant ride. Not the most comfortable ride of my life but quite interesting. We meandered through the jungle, sometimes on a path and sometimes with Nellie just pulling down or stamping on any trees that stood in our way. Just when we were about to give up hope of seeing anything resembling a wild animal we came across a rhino. It did not seem in the slightest bit perturbed by our presence and just continued munching away at the grass. We got very, very close to it which was amazing but also slightly nerve-wracking as for all we knew it might take offence to us being there and turn on us. That night Bridget, Eddie and I were scheduled to stay in a watchtower in the jungle, next to a watering hole. We persuaded Robin to come with us as he had been in Chitwan for a while and done basically nothing. (In fact he did more in the 48 hours we were there than the in the six previous days put together.) We arrived at the tower full of excitement and felt a bit like the Famous Five, except we didn’t have a dog and we were old enough to drink beer. We waited and waited but to no avail. Although we could hear things in the woods – snapping of twigs, rustling of branches, that sort of thing – we couldn’t see anything. No animal spotting for us so we consoled ourselves with more beer and Snickers. An elephant arrived at 6.30 am to take us back to the hotel and then it was a quick dash for the Kathmandu bus. The journey was supposed to take only five hours but ended up taking eight because of the huge roadblocks caused by Army checks. That night saw us meeting up with Henk again and my old travelling companions Richard and Carol who had arrived from Tibet. A good night was had by all, helped by several bottles of Italian red wine.
Bridget had only 3 days left before flying home so we filled it with sightseeing; Durbar Square – home of many ancient temples and even more annoying blokes wanting to give us a ‘guided tour’ (we pretended we didn’t speak English at one point just to get rid of one – I muttered the few words of Gaelic that I knew and Bridget was mute); Swayambinath – an ancient Buddhist temple where hundreds of monkeys live and which is at the top of 350 steps. When we reached the top Bridget was reading the guidebook to me and paused… “Ah, perhaps this is not a good time to tell you that we could have got a taxi all the way up.” ARGH! Our final destination was Pashupatinath, a sacred place where Hindus cremate the dead. We saw one body being prepared for the ceremony and there were several burning pyres. Once the bodies have burned, the ashes are swept into the river, which eventually flows into the holiest of rivers for Hindus, the Ganges. On her last morning we were up very bright and early – 5am to be exact – in order to get to the airport for our Everest flight. I had been told by Pedro a few weeks previously to try and get seats 7 or 8 as they had the best view, hence our early arrival and place at the front of the queue – nobody was getting past us! When the man eventually opened up the check-in desk and took our tickets from us I asked him to put us in 7 or 8. He refused. I said ‘Look here, we came very early in order to get those seats. Why can’t we have them? They give the best view.” “All seats have good view,” he retorted and allocated us seats 2a and b. ARGH again. Despite the proximity of the wings to our portholes it was quite an impressive hour, flying along the Himalaya. We saw Everest and, in the far distance, Kanchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world on the Nepal/India border. After some last minute shopping we had a late lunch, turning melancholy at the thought of her leaving. We tried to come up with some good excuses for her not to catch the plane; “There’s a strike and I can’t get to the airport”, or “I accidentally broke my leg on the trek and now the doctor has told me to recuperate in Kathmandu and Goa.” But, alas, all good things must come to an end (well, except for me - I’ve got six more months left). Tomorrow I head for the Indian border and a quick pit stop at the Taj Mahal to tick off my second of the seven ancient wonders of the world, before traveling to Goa for Christmas. While you lot are all freezing in the cold and rain of Blighty, I shall be sunning myself on a beach, sipping cocktails and eating chicken curry…..what more could a girl ask for! A very merry Christmas and Happy Hogmanay to you all. Thanks for reading the diary these past six months – only another six to go!
